Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Darrell Herrmann : Straight Talk About Living With A Severe Mental Illness

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Send us a text Darrell Herrmann, a retired US Army captain and former computer programmer, shares his remarkable journey of living with schizophrenia since 1984 and his mission to help others with severe mental illness live better lives. • Former US Army captain specializing in field artillery and nuclear weapons before developing schizophrenia • Earned a computer science degree and worked as a programmer for 18 years after his military discharge • Spoke to over 30,000 people in hospital groups before COVID, helping patients understand psychosis • Author of "Straight Talk About Living with Severe Mental Illness," available on Amazon • Explains that diagnosis often changes and finding the right medication takes time and patience • Defines psychosis as experiencing hallucinations and delusions while losing touch with reality • Developed a personal three-bucket strategy to sort real experiences from hallucinations • Advocates for comprehensive education programs for people diagnosed with psychotic disorders • Believes the mental health profession itself is often the biggest source of stigma • Argues most mental health professionals lack proper training in understanding and treating psychosis   https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI) The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mayator. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World, Humanity Over Handcuffs, the Silent Crisis, Special Event. Joining us today is Daryl Herman. He's a retired U.S. Army Captain and Computer programmer

from a small family farm in western Kansas, about 30 miles east of Dodge City. City. Specialized in field artillery and nuclear weapons, his military career ended after he sought treatment in an Army hospital, believing he was being drugged with experimental medicine. Doctors recognized his delusions in emerging psychosis, leading to his discharge. He later earned a college degree and worked as a professional programmer, but job stress triggered mild delusional thinking, prompting him to go on disability. Since then, he's found purpose in volunteering, speaking to patients and writing a book, straight talk about living with severe mental illness.

He continues to advocate for those with serious mental health challenges, bringing tremendous insight to his work. It's truly an honor to have him here generously sharing his deep insights and a remarkable journey with us. Thanks for coming on. No problem. Let's tell us a little bit about your story, because it's a pretty fascinating story of what you've done.

What started your getting in to support the NSSC? I developed schizophrenia in 1984 when I was a captain of the United States Army. My specialty at the time were field artillery nuclear weapons. And obviously, you can't have a military nuclear weapons where he has schizophrenia. So I had to do other things. So I went back to college, you got a computer science degree, became a professional computer programmer, did that for 18 years. And then the stress of doing that and coping with my job and all with my illness just became more than I can manage.

And I decided to go with disability because I found out of this kind of stress which is endemic in the American workplace. And when I went on disability, I made it my mission of life to do everything I could to help other people with serious mental illness live better lives. Ever since and that's what I've been doing, I started doing hospital groups talking to patients in the hospital about how to live better lives with the severe mental illness. And that grew over the years. In the 10 years before COVID, I spoke to more than 30,000 people of those hospital groups. With COVID, all my groups got shut down. And as of now, the hospitals were not reopened for me to come in and do groups. So I have no hospital groups today.

But up until COVID, I was doing many groups a week. Like I said, I saw more than 30,000 people before COVID. As part of that, I learned what the people that were being hospitalized need to know based of my own experience, my own research, and talk to them and answer their questions and find out what they need to know. And as a result of all that, I wrote a book. The book is called Straight Talk About Living, Living, Survemental Illness. and is available on Amazon and paperback, Kindle, or audiobook. It's the things that everybody needs to know, the basics that should know when they're dealing with a suburban illness.

But sadly, most people don't know them. When you first sit down with a new group, what is some of the things that you do say to them to make them realize that they are not in this by themselves? They have someone that will help and definitely know that they are not alone. Most of them know that I think they're not alone, but what I find they don't know is that you can live a relative to normal life after having a cerebral illness. When I was doing those hospital groups, I was usually the first one to ever come in and tell them that you could live a normal life after mental illness. I'd give my own example of being a programmer for 18 years. To most of that, that would just not heard of.

They thought their life was over when they got a diagnosis with a psychotic illness. Okay, so everyone that has this illness is affected differently, of course. then you have to approach it and focus on the things that are most important to them and their lives. What do you find that are some of the more important things that people will bring up to you, that they may not know, or they may just need more clarification about it? There's a lot of things that they need more clarification. That's why I wrote my book. And it's a short book.

It's about 60 or 70 pages, but it's the basic stuff they need to know. Some of the big things they need to know are the fact that diagnosis often changes. You may have it for you now. You may have bipolar or anything. It may have cancer affecting some other time. It often changes. That's one thing they need to know. So don't get worried about your diagnosis changing.

It happens. Another thing that knows that medications are different for everyone. Medication does wonders for one person may be absolute poison to the next. And it takes a lot of time to find the right medication for most of us. Some of us have to try three or four half a dozen before we find something. works really well for us, and it takes time to find the right medication, the right dose, and get on with your life. It's not a easy thing. The doctor doesn't know what's going to work and what side effects you're going to have until you try the medication. There's just no way to know.

Another thing you know is that there's no blame to this illness. It's a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and there's no single cause you can point out. You can't point in any one thing and say this cause the person's illness. It's a combination of things, and there's no blame to be had. It's just something happens like cancer or diabetes or there's no blame. It's an illness just like any other. I think that's a great thing to point out. Now that you've addressed that, I think it needs to be more focused so people do realize that it's not their fault.

Sometimes people with psychosis because of the stigma that's attached with it think that they're bad, but they're really not. They just need some help. So how do you address this with people so they can realize that the, They are not, these demons people think they are. They just need some help. Well, the first thing you have to understand is what psychosis is. And right while the medical system does not teach anymore what psychosis is or what it does to you.

And psychosis, there's a lot goes into the diagnosis. But basically, for practical purposes, there's two things you need to look at. One is having hallucinations, one is having delusions. Hallucinations are such an experience as you have, those around you don't. For instance, you may hear voices that aren't there. You may see things that aren't there. It can affect you the five senses. But why are you experiencing that, it's usually absolutely real to you.

Delusions are fixed, false beliefs you may have, those around you don't. They could be anything imaginable. Could be that you're in the United States or the Antichrist or time traveler or someone's applied to computer chip in your brain. There's no limit. And to the person experiencing psychosis, these are the reality. To them, it's absolutely real, even though it makes no sense to anyone else around them. And that's why they're making decisions and actions.

acting away as a diagnosis that was random because to them, the hallucination's delusions are their reality. And the other way to control those hallucinations, delusions is through medication. But even when you take the medication, once you're a longer psychotic, to be psychotic, you have to have hallucinations illusions, but you also have to lose touch of reality. You have to not realize that it's not real. If you can realize it's real, you're not psychotic. Psychosis is when you can't tell it's not real. But anyway, the medications will get you out of psychosis, but you still remember what went on. To you, it was still real. And unless someone tells you about hallucination illusions and tells you what psychosis is or what it does, you have no way to know,

and you should question things that may have happened to you. And I think that's a big piece of what adenosa notion or a lack of insight is. No one tells people that what psychosis is, what hallucination delusions are, the fact that you can't trust your own mind. As a result, to them it was all real. Another piece of it is that I don't explain what, for example, schizophrenia is. If you're told you have schizophrenia, basically you think that's a villain or a horror movie or a mass murderer or some other dangerous, scared person. And you're sitting here saying, I'm not one of those people. So you're throwing it all out the window, say it doesn't apply to me. It's total nonsense.

And you go on, you don't accept it. I think that's a big piece of ass on ocean that nobody tells people what these illnesses are and how psychosis affects the person. And that's something I've been campaigning to have corrected. But how do you expect a person to understand that they can't trust their own thoughts if you don't tunnel that's a possibility to begin with. Yeah, I think you had in your writing, you had something that was pretty impressive in the fact that a lot of people might not realize this or think about it, but you just touched on it just slightly there. I'd like to expand on that. And that's the fact that after they get the medication and it helps them, they still have the memories of what they thought

happened, what they went through. How do you get past that? Because some of these memories can be very delusional, as you was saying, and not real. So how do you get past that with the medication so that you can separate the two so you can still move forward and not let the past memories affect you? Medications have how do you to do with that at all? Okay. It's all up to you. You have to realize that you cannot trust your own mind.

Okay. There's a lot of ways you can come to that conclusion, but you have to come to that conclusion. There are things that happened to me 40 years ago of my first psychosis that to this day, I don't know what was real, what was hallucination delusions, and I've just had to accept I never will. And that's part of dealing with this illness or other psychiatric illnesses, you have to accept that you can never be sure of what reality is. There's another very troubling aspect of this as well. Some people who experience psychosis develop persistent false memories of things that never actually happened. For example, they may think they were abused sexually or physically as a child, even though it never actually happened. But to them, it's real. They remember it happening, even though it never did.

And some people have major portions of their lives that are fiction, but to them it's real and factual because that's what their mind tells them. Okay. So when that happens, is it medication and therapy that of just talking it out that will help them at least better understand what they've been through so they can move forward and have that better life that they want to have? The medication has nothing to do with that. The medication just stops the psychosis. It stops further problems. All right. The having to realize that it's not real is insight that you have to develop on your own.

And there's no good way to do that. Our mental health professionals right now don't have any idea how to go about that. What I have found the best way to do is just explain what hallucination duties are, what psychosis is, what it does, let them know they could be subject to that. And then let them start thinking about it on their own and say, you know, maybe this thing I experienced doesn't make sense after all. And then they can start questioning and come to realize that themselves may have some experiences that work, real. And that's the only way I go to deal with this, you have to come to it on your own realization. There's no way to force that on someone. If you try to force it, they will not

accept it. They'll fight you. When you had the groups that you had, did you go into those kind of topics or what kind of conversations did you have within those groups? And how long did that usually last far as the group time? Groups typically lasted 45 to 50 minutes. We talked about some of the things I've just talked about, yes. But all the spend a lot of time talking about other things. And that's probably just as important that, again, the mental health isn't doing to teach you about. And that is how to live and cope with the mental illness. Things like what causes relapses, one of the most common causes of relapses. No one tells you that. How do you cope with recognizing you're going down hills so you can ask for help before you end up back in the hospital?

Nobody tells you that. How do you cope with hallucinations, even though you're not psychotic? Some of us still have hallucinations when we're not psychotic and properly medicated and have to carry on. When I was working computer programmer, I occasionally hallucinated things. I had to sort out, is this real? Is this hallucination? And that's another thing I talk about in those groups is helping figure out how to sort out what's real or what's not real, what you're experiencing. Because when you have a psychotic illness, you are subject to not experiencing things that are not real at any time. When you experience that that's not real, in your mind that it is, how do you help or how do you get the people that are around them to understand what they need so that they can still help them get through what they're going through and then eventually, hopefully they'll take and get a better side of where they were?

There's no real purefire solution here. I think the best way is to make sure they understand it can't happen first. That's the key. Understand it can't happen. And they start talking about whether or not this is real. Now, the method I use to determine what's real for me, this is my own method. I developed by my own. I divide the things I experience up into three big buckets.

First bucket of those things are pretty sure real, factual, actually happening, real-world stuff. And the second bucket is those things are pretty sure are not real, not happening, not real-world stuff. hallucinations, illusions. And I have a third bucket of things I'm just not sure about. And I put things in little three buckets based on my past experience with my own illness. If someone is talking to me directly face-to-face, I'm very solid hallucinate that.

So that's probably going to go in the bucket of reel. If I heard something whispered down the corner, down the hallway, those are things that often hallucinate. And then look at what I've just heard and ask myself, does this make sense? Would the person really know that? Would the person really do that? Would it be saying that?

Does it make sense? or is it nonsense? If it doesn't make sense that I put it in the bucket of things that are not real, just dismiss it and move over with my life. But otherwise, I put things in that third bucket until I get some information will allow me to put it in one of the other two buckets.

Sometimes the information never does come. It kind of fosters and frustrates you. You want to know what's real, but I've learned that acting things that are not real can get me a big trouble real quick, so I just leave it into that third bucket and tell it gets some information to allow me to put it in one of the other two buckets.

and sometimes the information never does come. And that's the only way I know to cope with this. That's my strategy. I tell everyone I do with Skyco's, they need a strategy somewhat similar to that. They can have their own strategy, but that's the one I use, that works well for me.

They may want to try it. But you need some kind of strategy to help sort out what's real or what's not real in your world as you go through life. When you first started having these issues, was you aware of it, that it was going on?

What was your thought process to get to that point of where you realized that, okay, this isn't real and this is? It took time. It took time. Because no one teaches you this stuff. No one tells you this stuff. When I became ill, they wouldn't even tell me what my diagnosis was. I was in a military psychiatric ward. I knew I had the right to read my medical records, so I asked for my medical records asked to read them. Well, they had to give them to me, so I read them. I found out my diagnosis was a schizophrenia for a form disorder, but they wouldn't tell me anything about what that meant. about it. It was total nonsense to me. And when I got out of the hospital, I tried to find that in a psychology book because I realized it was a mental illness diagnosis. I never found that in any psychology book, but I did find descriptions of schizophrenia with hallucinations delusions. I was

looking at that and saying, you know, some of the things I experienced don't make sense to me. I don't think they could have been real. So I went on from that and learned how to start doing that stuff. But it was not easy and there was no clear pattern. I didn't. had to develop it on my own because no one knew it told me how to do it. Okay. So with the fact that no one told you and you had to do it on your own, there's a lot of people

out there, unfortunately, they're not going to have that mindset to actually dig, find, and try and work it out. So what would you give people that when they start having this, I mean, it's the big black hole, it's unknown. So

anything unknown can be very scary and when people get scared, they will do things that they normally wouldn't do to compensate for it. How do you tell them where they can take a deep breath and relax a little bit to take and balance that so they can figure out what's going on and what they need to do? I think that's the biggest problem. I'm in the health system today. Is it know what teaches you to this stuff?

When you first become psychiatroth, I sit down and talk about all this stuff, but no one does. If you get hospitalized for psychosis today, what happens is you get put on a medication sometimes of your own free will, sometimes against your will, which you can put on a psychotic medication. In about three, four, four, five days, you're no longer a psychotic, and they discharge you. And that's all they do.

They put you on medication. Well, since you're no longer a psychotic, they discharge you. During that time in the hospital, you most likely receive no other information at all, no therapy, nothing but medication. And that's why we have so many problems, in my opinion, because no one understands what's going on with themselves. I think we need to educate the people there about this stuff. I've been advocating for that for some time.

I think that's what my groups are trying to do. You have to educate them or they can't come to this conclusion. Really, until I found the book, Surviving Schizophrenia, but Dr. E. Fuller Tories, that I really understood what I had. It was like, I do textbooks, gave me the first insight, first glimmerings. When I got back to college after getting out of the Army, I was trying to research the college library, and I couldn't find anything of value. Everything was based on psychoanalysis.

They weren't even talking about medication and most of the stuff I read. And then I found in the same library of the book, Survivors, Schizophrenia but Dr. E. Fuller-Tor-Torri, MD, this was one of the first books ever written about Schizophrenia as a physical medical illness for the layman. That told me what I'd even know got me in the tract of recovery. If I hadn't found that book, I don't think I'd be talking to you today. Wow. So I guess the big question is you've been very fortunate that you found the book. You did your due diligence. You figured it out. And you've been able to work it through so that your life can be what you'd hoped it was in the earlier life. Now, how do we help those that

they don't have that deep dive ability? They're just relying on doctors or they're just relying on psychiatrists or medication to stop it. How do we get it out there so that we can help the greater amount of people that need to help rather than just a select few that might do what you did? Comprehensive education program for everyone to become psychotic. That's what I've been advocating poor for years. If you think about it, if you get diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, you get education as well as insulin. They tell you how to deal with it and give you lots of information, how to cope, stuff like that. If you get diagnosed with sketchfree, you get medication told them going your way. If you do that with type 1 diabetics, they wouldn't get anywhere.

Most of them have been died pretty quickly. And that's what's happening with schizophrenia. We're giving them nothing but medication and send them on their way. There's no education whatsoever. That's where our mental health system is biggest failure is the deal with psychiatosis is no one teaches you how to live with it. The only way to get changes like that sometimes is through the legislation and even that can't help that part of it because you're talking about doctors and the way that they treat people and help them and continue to try to help. It seems like the dog chasing his tail here. How do we figure this thing out? Well, I think we have to get the doctors and mental health professionals to start doing this stuff. That's what I'm advocating for. I have

currently four articles that I've submitted a Schizophrenia Bulletin, which is a professional journal for psychotic illnesses that I've advocating for this. They're under review. I'm trying to get this out in the public and say, we need to be doing this stuff. Right now, the biggest obstacle, the biggest source of stigma about mental illness, I believe comes to the mental health profession itself. There are doctors who don't believe you can do what I did with schizophrenia. There are doctors who don't believe you can have a life with schizophrenia.

We've got to educate the mental health profession itself before we can get anywhere. The mental health profession, in my opinion, is the biggest source of stigma against severe mental illness there is. Wow. That's not good because they're the ones that's supposed to give you support and help. I've talked with several different people, and they went through 10 years of hell, you know, basically figuring this thing out. But then once they figured it out, got the right medication, got the right treatment, they've gone on to have very satisfying lives. So we need to get that out there so that not only the doctors in the mental health institutions, know and promote it, but so that it can help take this stigma away from people that don't

understand it, because I think one of the biggest challenges that we have is the average person, you know, like myself, that don't understand everything about it because we haven't been around it. So we've got to get the masses to understand that just because some label is put on somebody, it doesn't mean it's a death sentence. I agree totally. And that's why I wrote the article on peer guide to psychosis that NSSC is. putting out. That's why I wrote that because we have to educate the general public. We wrote that with specifically in mind legislatures and judges and district attorneys and prosecutors and sheriffs and law professionals and just basically anyone that didn't know this information.

What I did was I tried to explain in simple, clear, easily understandable terms, the very basics of what they know about what psychosis is and what it does to a person. Yeah, because there's this big dark cloud hovering over it and stopping people from understanding that it's not the end of the world. It just means that someone has to take and help these people so they can get back on where they were and start creating the life that they would hope that they're going to have. I agree totally. And I think the mental health professors are a big obstacle of that because a lot of them don't understand it either. Right now, if you're a psychiatrist, you get educated on psychosis and psychotic illness some degree. Some psychiatrists know a lot about it. Some know very little.

Sub psychiatrists do not treat people with psychosis at all. They treat people with depression or anxiety or substance abuse. They don't treat psychosis at all, so they don't understand that either. And we look at psychologists, for example, most psychologists get absolutely no treading whatsoever on psychosis or what goes with it or anything to deal with it. Social workers and licensed counselors, again, they don't get any trety in this. It's totally forward to them. And if you look at our mental health profession right now, basically the general population

and most mental health professionals think if you are a mental health professional, you're qualified to speak with authority on any mental health problem or issue. That's like saying if you're a medical doctor, you can be a general practitioner one day, a heart surgeon the next day, do a lung transplant the day after, do a knee transplant the day after that. It's nonsense. We need specialties of mental health where they have the skills to deal with this stuff.

Dealing with psychosis requires a very special skill set that frankly, most mental health professionals, do not have. So, wow, I just didn't realize it was this deep. How do we get there? I mean, because there are so many layers to this. You've got the legal system, which we always worry about. We've got the medication to get them at least to get it to stop. And then you've got the knowing and the things that you've just gone. The one thing that kind of connect all these things together are the doctors and the nurses and all that that are supposed to help. So if they're challenged, how do we get this to the point of where we can get those people that lessen that challenge

and actually get into the ditch and help dig the ditch and help the people that need to help? I think we've got to start with the mental health professionals. I think that's where we need to be taught what psychosis is, how to deal with it. But most of them just don't know. I find that most mental health professionals, other than psychiatrists, don't even understand what psychosis really is. A lot of them have no idea what to do other than they give you a pill. And there's a whole lot more you need to recovery than just a pill, but most of them think that's what it takes. And we have a problem with the government, too.

There's an agency called SAMHSA, which you probably know of, that has guidelines for recovery. If you look at their guidelines for recovery, they make no exceptions whatsoever for psychosis. They say everything should be free will, self-determination, build your own path recovery, self-actualization, self-determination, self-guided. That works fine if you deal with drug abuse or depression. but we deal with psychosis where you don't know what reality is, how can you do that? You just can't do that. Furthermore, that guideline for psychosis doesn't put any requirement on the institutions like hospitals other than that they have to provide cultural incompetent care and they have to provide

trauma-informed care. Well, cultural competence, most of them don't even understand what psychosis is. How can it be culturally competent to someone with psychosis? As far as trauma-informed care, that's become a buzzword that doesn't really mean a whole lot anymore. And I found my psychotic experiences to be very traumatic. I think most people's psychosis do believe psychosis traumatic, but I've never seen any allowances in a hospital anywhere for trauma as a result of psychosis. They don't even address it.

They just pretend to ignore it. So they're not even doing that. And that's all they're required to do. They're not required to tell you anything else. Not even required to tell you what your diagnosis is or explain what it means. Yeah. Wow. So in closing, you've covered a lot of things,

and I think it's really good information that people need to hear. What would you like to say that you think is the most important thing for people to understand in the closing statement here? I think the most important thing to understand is what psychosis is or what it does to a person. And beyond that, I think the next most important thing is to me to educate people as to how to live with the illness. Because right now we're just basically give it a pill and send them on their way with nothing else. And that doesn't work. Okay, great. Yeah. It's been great. A lot of great information. I really appreciate you coming on.

Thanks. Glad to help. Thank you very much, Tony. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymentor.com. contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask, tell everyone everywhere about why not me the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone, everywhere,

that you are not alone in this world.