Reflective Paper on Schizophrenia

Introduction

After a lot of thinking, I settled on the topic, schizophrenia. In the process of choosing the topic, since I had never heard of nor had information about the disease named schizophrenia, I curiously decided to read the chapter "Schizophrenia, Far from the tree by Andrew Solomon". I could not stop myself searching about schizophrenia before I read the book "Far from the tree." So, I briefly found some information about what schizophrenia is. I figured out that some of the symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations. I also found out that schizophrenia is difficult to treat. The information I had learnt before reading this book were similar but some assertions were doubtful. One of these was the line, "Rather than obscuring the previously known person, this disease eliminates the person" (Solomon 295). The other one was "People in the early stages were horrified and sad, but those who had been sick a long time were not." This sentence was difficult for me to understand and agree because it is expected that those who had been sick for a long time should be more horrified. However, reading the book "Far from the tree" by Andrew Solomon helped me learn more in detail and other aspects of schizophrenia. The book provides various kinds of different personal stories of schizophrenia. It provides an interesting story of a guy named Harry Watson who gives a lesson that even schizophrenia patients can blend into society by working as a cashier or doing simple works. Besides, I also learned that not only do patients act scary or incomprehensible which can be dangerous or a threat to others, but also that the schizophrenia is hard to be observed in childhood but found in late adolescence or early adulthood in general. I also learned about the importance of the given environments.

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In the book "Far from the tree" by Andrew Solomon, Solomon found out that schizophrenia can be treated to some extent and that it is greatly influenced by the people around the patient and also the environment. In the story, Harry Watson was hugely fat and incredibly hostile who does nothing and stays alone. However, he changed positively by meeting new therapists and new environment. "Getting him out of San Francisco and to McLean was an amazing achievement" (Solomon 299). In the book, Solomon found that "Schizophrenia is likely to occur for "a child whose mother becomes anxious and withdraws if the child responds to her as a loving mother" (Solomon 307.) This brings me to think that family therapy greatly matters as well. I also realized that creating a positive environment greatly affects the patient and learned about the horrible tragedies people face if they do not get proper treatment in the early stages of schizophrenia. As Solomon says, "The adding of the nondelusional world puts them in loneliness beyond all reckoning..." (Solomon 296). As the book shows, "Between 5 and 13 percent of people with schizophrenia commit suicide" (Solomon296). This is an indication that if schizophrenia is not addressed properly, the patients may feel depressed and commit suicide. Thus, parents must be willing to assist their children to accept their condition and offer them the necessary assistance. Furthermore, that schizophrenia manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood was an amazing part that I learned from the book.

At the same moment, imagining and assuming myself into the situation with the possibility of getting schizophrenia made me want to learn more about those who experience symptoms of the disease in early adulthood and how to cope with it in the early stages; and finally how I can prevent myself from getting the disease. Also by my personal experience, taking care and living together with my sick cousin made me able to assume myself with the situation being sick.

My mentally ill cousin used to stay with me when we were young. He suffered from an intellectual disability, which has common symptoms as schizophrenia such as delusions or weird actions. Since we were raised together, by experiencing repeats of his harmless weird actions, I learned that his actions were not threatening all the time. However, he sometimes did unintelligible actions that strangers, who were unaware of his actions, can hardly relate to or understand. Some strange actions like screaming or wielding his arms that comes from his anger to destroy something are not only threats to strangers but sometimes to me as well. Watching strangers or my friends get threatened by my cousin's unintentional action and my friends keeping their distance from the relationship with my cousin made me wonder "why do they, not want to stay with him? Even though his actions are scary he did not mean it..." However, the way parents react to the weird action was different. Of course, they are scared of his attitude too but because he is their son, the parents try to embrace and are closer. The parents or close friends of the schizophrenia patient in the story "Far from the tree" have the same idea. With a disease called Schizophrenia, the parents in the story tried to keep the person close to them even in a circumstance that the weird actions are scary. Kitty said,"I was pretty sure he wouldn't push me down the stairs but he would scream and it was scary" (Solomon 299). This consequence comes out because Kitty has a belief in her son. As I experienced, I was also scared sometimes when my cousin acted in the wrong way, but I still kept his company. However, I am still confused about the consequence of the treatment. Even after his treatment for more than 15 years, I still do not see any improvement on his condition.

Of course, to ease the sickness, the patients should be treated. In some cases, schizophrenics may refuse to take medication or take it for a while and then stop. I had another experience which helps me strongly relate to the feeling of not taking pills. I used to take pills because I was addicted to playing computer games. I was only at the age of eleven at that moment. My parents kept forcing me to take medicine but I had no idea about the reason of taking pills. "Is this medicine treating my problem?" I always asked myself. Besides, I felt that I was already cured so I wondered, "Do I still have to take it?" I stopped taking pills on purpose but my parents did not know for a while. However, my parents figured out that I quit taking pills because my addicted symptoms happened again. The schizophrenic patients in the book act in the same way. The patients think that they are cured or they feel like they do not need to take pills, and they feel better. When one stops to take drugs, it affects his or her condition negatively. As Solomon says about the effects of refusing to take drugs, a man with schizophrenia he interviewed, "Off the meds, he felt freer, more alive" (Solomon 312). To stop taking pills for a moment is not a big deal because the patients can start to retake the pills. But the big problem of schizophrenia is that when the patient stops taking pills then their body's immune system considers the pill as nothing so the pill will have no effect on the patient's body and cause a problem. As explained in the book, Malcolm was schizophrenic but it reached a point that he stopped taking the medicine and this affected his condition. Dough says of him, "He was always tinkering with his medication" (Solomon312). This led to his hospitalization. So I wanted to learn more about the difference between taking medicine and not taking it. Why did Malcolm feel freer and alive without taking the pill? Or does the treatment only decrease the symptoms of schizophrenia? Then what is the difference between being treated and not being treated? Because they are still considered as sick!

Conclusion

I learned various and enormous amounts of information from reading the "Schizophrenia" chapter in Far from the Tree. Reading the story, some of the people Solomon interviewed remind me of my cousin. Since I know how hard it is to have a mental disorder in the family by watching my aunt crying, I felt sorry for the patient's family. But I also had lots of doubts and questions. What are the positive aspects the patients can get from treating schizophrenia and what is the process of treatment? The people who suffer long from the schizophrenia do not feel sad or horrified because of the treatment? And how did the patients overcome the disease and how are the patients living now? Therefore, I want to research concepts where I had doubts, such as the process, effects and the importance of the treatment and the consequence of losing one's personality, and the way of preventing from getting the sickness so that it will solve not only my curiosity about schizophrenia but also l help me to treat and understand my cousin better.

Works Cited

Solomon, Andrew. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. Scribner, 2012. Amazon Digital Services LLC, https://www.amazon.com/Far-Tree-Parents-Children-Identity-ebook/dp/B007EDOLJ2.