Growing up in rural Wisconsin with a mom who struggled with hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia was not easy for Kody Green. Even after his mother was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and received treatment, the stigma around mental illness made it difficult for him and his siblings to feel accepted by their community. Dealing with snide remarks from friends and second glances from strangers in public was challenging. The last thing on his mind was becoming an advocate for serious mental illness.

But that’s just what he did.

Using the social-media handle @schizophrenichippie, today Green provides millions of fans a peek at what it’s like to live with the characteristic symptoms of a schizophrenia diagnosis—a complex brain disorder he was diagnosed with at age 21. “From the time when I was a teen, I knew that I was genetically predisposed to having schizophrenia, but the stigma around it still made it hard to accept,” he says.

Kody Green

The day he posted his first “Schizophrenic Storytime” video, he went to sleep with 300 followers and woke up to 10,000. “I quickly started seeing the need for people to be better educated about what schizophrenia really is,” Green says.

Like many struggling with schizophrenia, Green turned to alcohol and drugs in an attempt to cope with his symptoms, and eventually found himself incarcerated. It took hitting rock-bottom for him to finally be ready to reach out for help upon his release. “If you don’t know that there are people out there functioning, living daily lives with this illness, it kind of feels like you have nothing to look forward to,” he says.

As with his mother, receiving the proper treatment had a massive impact on his life, but still, he initially hesitated to share his experience with others. “I was nervous about people knowing about my diagnosis, because of the stigma that I saw my mom go through,” he says.

Eventually, though, he joined an online peer-support group. “For the first couple of meetings, I just listened to other people’s stories, but then I started identifying similarities in myself,” Green says. As those others shared their struggles with addiction and even incarceration, he found the stigmas surrounding his mental illness stung less and less.

Breaking Through the Stigmas

Kojo Sarfo, DNP

While many people with mental health disorders find it difficult to share their experiences, this challenge is often magnified for men, says psychotherapist and nurse practitioner Kojo Sarfo, DNP, who also has a robust social-media presence (@drkojosarfo). “I don’t think there has ever been a time or a space for men to feel like they can ask for help, even amongst friends, because from the time we’re young, we’re conditioned to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, to get things done on our own, and to just figure things out,” he says. “The problem is that a lot of times, the ways that we figure things out lead us to bad habits, bad coping skills, or no coping skills at all.”

A recent Pew survey found that 15 percent of Americans are not very comfortable speaking to anyone—whether it is a close friend, family member, or therapist—about their mental health, and among single Americans that grows to 23 percent. So, by taking their struggles public, and creating safe spaces for everyone affected by mental health disorders to learn more about themselves and each other, both Green and Sarfo are breaking ground.

“The longer you keep things in, the more you have to carry that weight,” says Sarfo, who openly shares his past struggles with depression and other mental illnesses. “But if you think that’s the only way that you can be seen as somebody worthy of respect, then that’s what you’re going to do.”

Get Comfortable Sharing

Talking about mental health and asking for help can feel especially challenging because of the personal nature of a medical diagnosis. “A lot of times when somebody doesn’t want to get help, it’s because they’re afraid of being diagnosed with something and having that term, that label, get conflated with their identity,” Sarfo says.

To counter this, both Green and Sarfo incorporated humor as a central theme in their platforms, leveraging it to ease the discomfort that so many people associate with these labels. “Humor allows you to be in the present moment and not carry so much on your shoulders,” Sarfo says. “It allows me to make sense of what’s going on and to not beat myself up for things, and it does the same for those on the receiving end of it.”

​​In his experience, he says, once a person becomes comfortable receiving and perhaps even sharing information about mental health, they realize that the diagnosis is just a term that explains their symptoms, not a crisis of identity: “When you can give yourself the space to receive a diagnosis, you also allow yourself the opportunity to receive the right treatment.”

Hearing about how others are managing their mental disorders can also have an immense impact. “Knowing there are people out there functioning and living productive lives with the help of treatment and medication can make a huge difference in getting people to open up,” Green says. That can be life-changing, and it’s exactly what drives both Green and Sarfo to continue using their platforms to break through these stigmas and misconceptions. Says Green, “We still have a lot of work to do, but having these conversations and helping people become more aware of what these illnesses entail is a huge step forward.”

To learn more about schizophrenia and discover real stories of what it is like to live with the condition, as well as resources and information about long-acting treatment options, visit HopeForSchizophrenia.com or tune into Unseen & Unheard wherever you listen to podcasts.

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