5 Ridiculous Myths You Probably Believe About Schizophrenia

[steve2470]

(yes original headline)

http://www.cracked.com/article_21520_5-lies-you-probably-believe-about-my-life-with-schizophrenia.html

(heavily edited)

#5. It's Not Multiple Personalities

#4. Voices Don't Make You Do Terrible Things

#3. You Can't Necessarily Tell Who Has It

#2. The Medication is an Illness of Its Own

#1. The Bullshit People Believe Impacts Your Life More Than the Disorder

[marym625]

1. K&R!

Though, respectively, #4 is not true for some.

I knew a woman with a severe case of paranoid schizophrenia. She was diagnosed at the age 13. Young for this disease.

She suffered so many trials and tribulations. Some of her own doing. She used street drugs to medicate herself because she had such horrible side effects to all the medications for the disease. She had identical twins, one of which died at 2 months. The cause of death was officially SIDS but it was most likely either failure to thrive or something more sinister. The other baby was taken by other family members.

She had another baby that she was able to keep, though she shouldn't have been. He's been in and out of jail since about 18. He's around 25 now.

She finally, after decades of suffering, was able to take a new medication that actually helped her more than it hurt her. She took it for months and she was so very much better and nearly happy with her life. And about 6 months of taking it, she was diagnosed with 3 different types of cancer. She suffered horribly. Such horrible pain. Her sister came and ripped the child from her 9 months before she died. The sister refused to bring the child to see his mom and he was only 11. I never saw anyone fight to live like she did. All because she wanted to see her child. She was placed in a nursing home at the age of 47. The tumor that grew from the cancer in her lungs actually grew so large, it looked like her breast had grown twice the size of the other.

When she died, her brother and sister fought over who had to pay and signing the cremation papers so long that the funeral home sent her body to the coroner.

It was a horrific life and a hard horrible death. Six months of a happy life from the time she was 13 until the time she died at 47. One dead child, one severely screwed up child and one with anger issues that sometimes can't be controlled.

It is a disease that is so misunderstood and so stigmatized that people hardly have a chance.

Thank you for this post.

[steve2470]

2. I did notice #4 was a tad too generous

The problem with schizophrenia, as with other psychiatric diagnoses, is there is a wide variety of functioning levels. At one extreme are people smearing feces in the state psych hospital who will probably never be functional enough to exist outside the hospital. This lady in the article is obviously at the other extreme, or close to it. She does NOT believe the auditory hallucinations (command or otherwise).

Thanks for your post also.

[marym625]

3. You're such a good man.

[steve2470]

4. I'm trying

All I can do.

[drmeow]

6. Good point

I also think the type of schizophrenia also matters. I have (had - I've lost touch with her despite my attempts to stay in contact) a paranoid schizophrenic friend who seemed to believe the voices. Her paranoid schizophrenic roommate seemed to handle it better. My friend eventually disappeared from my life and the last I heard of her she was living on the street (she was a computer engineer and owned a house in Milpitas, CA so she wasn't homeless). When I knew her she seemed to trust, or at least believe, the voices more than the doctors - whether or not she hated them.

[Igel]

5. #2 and #1 are also a bit too generous.

The medications used to treat some more severe forms of the disease really disrupt day-to-day functioning for a number of people. It makes them drowsy, makes them lose focus or drive. It messes with their brains, as any drug like that has to.

So the "bullshit" my brother-in-law believed impacted his life, but not so much. But on meds for his schizophrenia, he sleeps 18-20 hours a day, has trouble concentrating, and no longer understands even the introduction to his unfinished dissertation. Unless they sort out his meds issue--and he's in year 6--he can't hold down a job that requires any kind of schedule. And he can't really hold down a job that requires the same level of concentration from day to day, unless it's a very low level of concentration.

At least he doesn't pay attention to the voices. And when he did pay attention, the weapon that he expected God to have placed in his truck wasn't there, so he couldn't kill his brother, just assault him. Which was fortunate, because by this time his life was in ruins from the voices. He'd alienated everybody but his nuclear family but his family suspected something was wrong. "Mom, is Queen Victoria really our neighbor, working for the CIA?" They had no resources to get him any help, and he compensated sufficiently to mask what was really happening to him. The assault on his brother chucked him into jail, got him a psych eval, forced observation, involuntary incarceration, court-ordered treatment--which meant that he was then in the pipeline for Medicaid since he was appointed his mother's ward at age 30 and he had no funds.

#4 is true in a trivial way: The voices don't force anybody to listen to them. Then again, even at gunpoint the person you're ordering to do something has a choice. Threaten to kill a guy's wife and kids unless he does something, and he still has a choice. "No, I won't do that"--BANG! It's a difficult or unpleasant choice, but it's a choice.

Stereotyping in the name of advocacy and defending some is just as bad as the kind of nonsense that leads to stereotyping that penalizes some. This list could be made much better with a bit of hedging and a less peremptory tone.