Living with Schizoaffective Disorder: A Conversation with Vargas Arango and Anomalous Risks for The Monsters We Create
He explores what it’s like to live with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental health condition where a person experiences symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations or delusions, and mood disorders like depression. It’s rare – Vargas Arango is among the 3 in 1,000 people who experience it.
“I’m not dangerous. I’m not crazy. And I’m not delusional,” he says in his podcast, The Monsters We Create. “I’m just one more guy, with a mental health condition, living with it.”
His emotional and deeply personal entry was chosen by our judges, from among 10 finalists. As the grand prize winner of this year’s NPR College Podcast Challenge, he’ll receive a $5,000 scholarship.
A young student in Miami Dade College tells him: “I hear voices” and tells her “I’m going to tell her. I can’t tell the truth”
“I had to tell her I heard voices and that this was happening to me.” The young international student at Miami Dade College in Florida says that he feels presences. “This is who I am. I can’t say I’m not lying. I can’t tell the truth.
It was a huge deal for him to tell her. He was living in a foreign city speaking a different language than the one he was from in his home country and he would be the first person outside of his family.
She was worried they would judge him and her. “‘Like, why are you dating this guy?’ I wanted to protect him as well, she says.
After NPR gave Vargas Arango the news, he calls his parents to tell them. His mom tells him through tears that she’s happy and crying from joy.
Open Mind: A Suicide & Crisis Hotline for a Mental Ill-Behaved Psychiatric Support Person in Need of a Rest
It’s not always to illustrate his experience, he says. He uses voice recordings that are distorted to make fun of the prejudice that people have. He says that they think that you’re hearing voices to hurt someone.
This openness is pretty radical for Vargas Arango. He didn’t really talk about his mental health when he was a kid, but he had a schizoaffective disorder that made him feel like an imaginary friend.
“Imagine what my religious mother was like,” he says. She thought she could see a ghost. I can’t see ghosts. Sadly.”
“I was one of those people that had this perspective of, ‘these people are crazy, these people are dangerous, these people are delusional, you got to be away from them,’” he recalls.
Talking openly about his condition and his treatment – which includes medicine and therapy – and then winning the NPR contest has also helped his family, he says.
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Hotline can be reached if you or someone you know is thinking about taking their own life.