Shining a Light on Schizophrenia

Sarah’s background

This is a story about a girl named Sarah. Sarah was living in a happy family with loving parents. However, her father's business failed and her parents were forced to work in another state when Sarah was 10 years old, so Sarah was entrusted to her grandmother's care.

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Sarah’s experiences

Sarah has lived with her grandmother since 10 years old. According to what she remembers, her parents are too busy to care for her. One day, she received the news from her grandmother that her parents are divorcing. Sarah got really upset. She feels like nobody can understand her. She feels really disappointed with her parents. For her, she thinks that her parents are very irresponsible, that they never care about how she feels.

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Sarah’s symptoms

Gradually, because of the lack of parental care, Sarah struggles with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a kind of mental disorder, also recognized as a brain disorder where there is a neurotransmitter imbalance. When Sarah develops schizophrenia, she has disorder in many aspects of her brain functions.

Her symptoms include auditory and visual hallucination. She has an imaginary friend whom she can see physically and talk to. She named her Ruth.

At school, her classmates noticed that she often behaved strangely, such as she would talk to herself and have emotional swing like easily getting angry or frustrated.

She also suffer from difficulties in her cognitive functions, which are the ability to think, analyze, make decisions and plan. She also has problems with emotional regulation or control, like feeling depressed or having anxiety.

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Sarah committed suicide

At first, Sarah's grandmother has been trying to comfort her. Her grandmother often took her to relax and relieve her sadness.

However, these did not work and Sarah’s negative emotions became increasingly apparent. As grandmother is also getting older, she does not have much energy and ability to care for Sarah.

On the other hand, Ruth is a very bad influence. Ruth has been telling Sarah how unloved she is, and that she does not deserve to live. Ruth has been convincing Sarah to kill herself. One day, Sarah made her decision, she jumped down from the fourth floor of her apartment. She was rushed to the hospital, and she survived with a broken arm.

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Sarah’s treatment and recovery

She was then admitted to a psychiatric ward for treatment. The psychiatrist started giving her antipsychotic medications. With the medication, Ruth was starting to fade. At first Sarah felt like something was missing without Ruth, but slowly she realised that it is better to live without Ruth. Sarah also went through psychotherapy to maintain a healthy emotional being.

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Misconception

There are certain things that people misunderstand about schizophrenia. It depends on the cultural background of the patient. In some cultures, they believe that schizophrenia is caused by demon possession. This makes them go for spiritual healing instead of seeing a psychiatrist.

The other myth is that when you get schizophrenia, you are weaker than other people. This is very wrong because anyone and everyone is at risk of developing schizophrenia, even those with very strong will or highly educated. It is simply not correct to equate schizophrenia as a weakness.

The complexity of schizophrenia may help explain why there are misconceptions about the disease. Schizophrenia does not mean a split personality or multiple personalities. Most people with schizophrenia are not dangerous or violent. They also are not homeless, nor do they live in hospitals. Most people with schizophrenia live with family, in group homes or on their own.