Schizophrenia: A Mental Illness.
According to National Alliance on Mental Illness [NAMI], (2007), "mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functioning." Mental illness can affect anyone at anytime in his or her life and mental illness can cause a person to take his or her own life depending on which type of mental illness the person has developed. There are many people who could successfully be treated for his or her mental illness but the person refuse to seek help and this makes the person's situation worse. I can relate to this belief because of my personal encounter with Sunny, who was in the high school tennis team along with me. I remember his talking about his mother most of the time, and I mistook it as just another parent-child rivalry. He seemed frustrated all the time, and having only his mother with him made him not want to go back home. Since we were unaware of medical affiliation with diseases, we didn’t quite want to understand her situation. Later after high school was over, I met him after 2 years and asked him about the both of them. Then he concluded stating that, he had schizophrenia and that she had committed suicide just few months ago.
Schizophrenia is a most misunderstood disease. It will affect one in every100 Americans during their lifetime, yet too often it is hidden in the closet by families and ignored by professionals. A revolution is underway, for schizophrenia is emerging. Schizophrenia is now known to be a disease of the brain and is not caused by any guilty acts or failures of the patient. Like diabetics, schizophrenics may be able to control their symptoms with medication.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thank you for writing on this topic. I have a family member who suffers from a form of schizophrenia and it is extremely difficult to understand and interact at times. One major disadvantage, like you said, in most cases the person does not think they are ill or even has a prblem at all. This is true with individuals who are bipolar, as well. Mental illness is something that in close to my heart and a cause for action I would like to fight for in the future.
ReplyDelete