Schizophrenia is serious encephalopathy which is distorting a way of thinking. Sick persons often have problems with functioning in the society, at the work, at school.. However, this illness usually lasts through the entire life, but it’s possible to control it with the proper treatment. Schizofrenia is psychosis, with kind of the mental illness, in which the man cannot say what is real, and what is included in a sphere of imagination. People with psychotic disorders are losing the contact with reality.
The risk of falling ill with schizophrenia to the entire life is about 1%. Women, as well as men are equally often ill. This is illness of young people – over the half of falling ill is starting before 30 years old. Men are starting being ill on average in a little bit young age (15 -24 years) than women (25 -34 years).
Here I would like to show a few snippets of ” Diary of a Schizophrenic .” (http://joemonster.org/art/28003). I think that this is worth reading , because through this short reading we can look at this disease from a different perspective , from the perspective of the sick person and see how hard is to live with it .
7:00 – I get up. Even though I live alone, I hear steps in the whole apartment. I’m beginning to wonder if anyone is not accidentally broken into at night, so I get up to check it out. Nobody came, the doors are still closed. Despite this I hear steps coming from the kitchen. I check the doors and celebrate the whole apartment still at least three times to make sure that I was alone.
7:30 – I take a nice bath, but during the water filling the tub hear the conversation taking place just outside the door. I know that no one was there, because I checked the doors and all, but I can not help that I hear people debating over whether better material covering car seats are velor or leather. I plunge my head into the water and try to ignore what is not really there.
8:00 – Is there something crawling on my leg? Checking. There is nothing. During the day it happens to me at least once every half hour, so I would not have mentioned it.
9:00 – I eat breakfast and I feel a metallic taste while eating toast. It is so intense that I lose my appetite and I can not finish the meal.
10:00 – I’m going to school, and on the way gravity pulls me strangely right. I feel like he was about to fall over, so sit down and resting until the sense of balance is not reset. I try not to vomit by increasing dizziness.
10:30 – The voice in my head, which by the way his name is Nero, says the response to a group of girls who are walking slowly in front of me along the sidewalk. He tells me that I should gut one of them, the other to strangle entrails of the first and the third kick when he cried looking at the death of colleagues. I overtake them and bad thoughts have gradually subsided.
15:00 – I met a few friends, but the voice in my head constantly shouting at them the worst insults. I can not concentrate on what they say, so awkward throw some excuse and leaving. When a pulling away, the conversation is becoming louder and reminds incomprehensible roar. Nero still says that I am worthless and even colleagues pretend to like me.
16:30 – I’m home again. I hear a knock on the window, as if someone was trying to draw my attention. I know that I live on the second floor and it’s impossible that someone was there, but I still have to check it at least four times.
23:30 – Slowly fall asleep, but at a time when almost drifting I hear a knock at the door. When I check to see if anyone is there, it turns out that it does not burn even light in the corridor, which ignited a photocell, so I’m anxious.
0:45 – When I really fall asleep, Nero makes sure that my last thoughts before sleep are the ones that separate me from those who really care about me. The last thought tells me that to be truly happy I have to kill someone, or someone has to kill me.
Ula Myszak
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