About La CLAve
Our mission is to inform and motivate the Latinx community to seek early treatment for serious mental illness. Our overall goal is to reduce the time it takes people with serious mental illness to obtain treatment. Our hope is that knowing the symptoms will help people recognize them promptly and not dismiss them as ongoing life problems. This should help people get care for their loved ones as quickly as possible.
What Are La CLAve Symptoms?
La CLAve is a guide to the symptoms of serious mental illness.
How to identify symptoms:
Studies have found that people with serious mental illness delay receiving professional help. In some cases it can be years before they receive adequate treatment. There are different reasons that contribute to the lateness in obtaining treatment. One of them is the difficulty of recognizing the beginning of mental illness. Family members, friends, priests, and even doctors and nurses, sometimes do not recognize when someone has a serious mental illness. Here are some steps to help identify when some one may have a serious mental illness that needs treatment.
• Take note if there has been a significant change in the person’s behavior/routine. There may be some alteration in sleep (too much or too little), withdrawal from social relations, shifts in mood (sadness), or odd behavior.
• Look for evidence of three main symptoms that we refer to as the CLUE or La CLAve:
False beliefs or delusions
Example: “He has a camera hidden here and he’s watching me to see if I still love him…”
Disorganized speech
Example: “Only if I can fly away with the pigeons and then I can run away to the carnival and buy a vacuum cleaner and clean up the clouds…”
Hallucinations
Example: “Mistakenly seeing and hearing things that are not seen or heard by other people.”
Hallucination example 1
Seeing things that others do not see
Example: “I saw my dead father but no one else in the room saw him. I know he was there. It scared me.”
The “V” represents hallucinations of seeing things that don’t exist. For example, a person may say that they see people, things, lights, or spirits that are not there. They may also see things in a distorted way.
Hallucination example 2
Hearing sounds or voices that others do not hear
Example: “I was hearing this man yelling at me, swearing at me. But I was alone.”
The “E” represents hallucinations of hearing voices, sounds, or talking to someone that is not present. For example, a person may hear voices, sounds, or laughter that does not exist. They may say that the voices tell them to do things and you may hear them speaking to these “voices” as if someone was really there.
