Schizophrenia

by frankiespeakin 38 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Etude

  I had a friend (roommate and ex-bethelite) who developed schizophrenia, which manifested itself after two suicide attempts. Ever since, I've been interested in the disease and try to learn about it as often as possible. I saw how the drugs disconnected my friend from some of his faculties (not being able to form coherent thoughts) and I saw the ineffective treatment professional therapy was providing him.

  I'm convinced that there are multiple causes for it. And if genetics are involved, it may only mean that it may provide a propensity for its onset and not be a direct cause. Studies done with identical twins where one has it and not the other demonstrate that genetic inheritance is not always the culprit. Some researchers have suggested Epigenetics as a possible carrier for molecules that affect one person and not another with identical genes.

  There are mild and extreme forms of it. My friend was seeing "monsters" on the wall and was hearing voices. Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, a behavioral neurologist that made several important discoveries while at U.C. San Diego, has demonstrated that an imbalance of chemistry, either too much or too little of one chemical that inhibits the activity of a part of the brain or makes it get out-of-had with activity, can send our thoughts into extreme states (thinking one is Jesus and can walk on water, that one understands everything in the universe, etc). Some of his patients experience this pathology after and because they suffer from seizures, other's because of damage due to an accident.

  Frankly, I'm reluctant to make a distinction between biological or neurological or chemical causes. In the end, everything that happens inside the brain is due to transmissions of chemicals triggered reciprocally by and for electrical impulses (some chemicals trigger electrical impulses and some electrical impulses trigger the production of other chemicals). That they fail to work, may be due to genetic errors, to accidents or just an innate bad structure in the brain from physical forces or environmental triggers that prevent the normal from happening. Turrets is an interesting disease that shows the lack of control of specific parts of the brain while the sufferer still remains "functional" in most other respects. In a sense, that pathology is very similar in function to schizophrenia but with much less severe consequences.

  It really pains me to see people who suffer with ailments like schizophrenia or Dementia (which slowly eats away your brain and robs your personality). I consider them by far the cruelest of diseases.
• 

  krejames

  My dad was paranoid schizophrenic. he had a nervous breakdwown and was subsequently subject to electro-shock treatment here in hte UK (this is going back to the late 70s). This made him worse and he ended up going back to Sicily for six months for treatment there, and he came back much improved. I have always thought that was probably what started it for him. A few years on from this terrible experience he developed a fear and suspicion of all authority and felt they were stealing his ideas from his brain and spying on him lazer beams. He avoided all form-filling, stopped paying his bills and mortgage and hoarded his money in a cupboard in his house. He must have been very frightened. He was not diagnosed for years and years later (the 90s) when we finally managed to take him to see a doctor, as the bank were threatening to repossess his house but he always refused to take the medication - he never took any as far as I'm aware. As he got older he mellowed and learned to keep himself to himself and eventually moved back to his sicilian hometown. I understand he was fairly reclusive there too and avoided his family there, but I hope he found some peace in his home environment and in the sun.

  It's a really horrible condition and I feel for anyone living with it either a a sufferer or as a family member. Thankfully treatments, care and support are getting better in this country.
• 

  Band on the Run

  May I ask what posters here who have friend or family members with schizoprehnia think of the statement that they are closer to God than what we deem healthy people? It sends me out of my mind and I pride myself on progressive ideas. I see it as an extremely cruel disease. We don't think that cancer people or people with ALS are closer to God.

  I've witnessed up close and personal the great torment caused by this illness. Also, I recall when Manhattan resembled Bombay or Calcultta and was almost completely disrupted by very dangerous mentally ill homeless. I do believe that God can work through awful circumstances. Why would anyone worship such a punitive God. B/c of my physical pain, I completely fail how intense suffering is in accordance with any God worth worship.

  I go bonkers. And these liberal do-gooders who never knew an actual person afflicted, only clients, correct me when I describe what I have experienced and my opinion about it. Regarldess, my opinion is MY opinion. They can't impose their opinion on me. By saying what a horrid ilness is and that forget about God, we need far better science and treatment. Our present knowledge is unconsciable and the drugs terrifying in themselves...No, they are close to God.

  As a progressive, I look for causes that need my expertise. There is something about encountering afflictions in real live people that i know that is more important than reading some academic book knowledge. A variant on the above viewpoint is that mentally challenged people are closer to God.

  Why can't we be equally close to God and not suffer illness? All illnesses deserve equal treatment. From my perspective, my illness did not teach me any great spiritually insight or make me a worthier person. The opposite was true. I do see nobility in how I Handled it and my family's response. Frankly, though, I believe the same graciousness could have been expressed in a socially useful manner. My default position was gracious, rather than cause by pain.

  I have yet to meet any person wo suffers from this illness who self reports being blessed by God - unless it is a delusion. Parents are in so anguish and so little can be done b/c of laws that are needed. They seem so tired not in mystical union wth God.
• 

  nuthouse escapee

  BOTR I have a problem believing these people are 'closer to God'. In their mind maybe they think so and that the voices are from God even when telling them to do horrific things.

  Quite often these ones will feel that they are on a special mission from God. My son did not experience that but my brother did.

  Both my brother and my son were highly intelligent people, non-violent and quite soft spoken---WHEN NORMAL. The delusional ill person became violent, angry, and there was no convincing them they were wrong in their thinking. My son's psychiatrist told us at one point to not waste our time trying to convince our son otherwise once he had a fixated thought in his head. Even the psychiatrist was unable to get through many times.

  My son was tried on several medications before the right combo was found. I remember how horrified my ex and I were when we went to see him the 2nd time he was hospitalized. The medication they tried caused him to shuffle around with a weird smile on his face and to drool uncontrolably. Needless to say they tried another combo of medications that worked very well.

  My sincere sympathies to anyone dealing with this illness either personally or with a family member/friend. The treatments have come a long way. The biggest problem is to convince the person too not go off their meds when they feel good. The relapses become worse.
• 

  still thinking

  The biggest problem is to convince the person too not go off their meds when they feel good. The relapses become worse.

  I agree, my uncle would not take them.

  And as for god....I don't think god is any more than a figment of our imaginations anyway...so yes, it may make them FEEL closer to their god, especially if they hear voices that tell them they are. I do not think their mental state 'makes them closer to a god' or that it should be understood as anything to aspire to.

  My uncle never claimed to hear voices from god. But his voices used to tell him things. And tell him to do things. And he was quite paranoid sometimes not trusting people because a voice told him something.

  Both my brother and my son were highly intelligent people, non-violent and quite soft spoken---WHEN NORMAL....nuthouse

  My uncle was exaclty like this too. He would study a pass exams with flying colours. He loved animals and children. In fact, as I child I really loved him. But sometimes he could be scary and irrational.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  I think the closer to god idea maybe because of the dellusions or perhaps the catatonic state some may be in like Eziekiel lying on his side, imobile for days and cooking his food with shit, also the visionary experience may make them sound prophetic at times in certain cases.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

  http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/pp/ch2.htm
• 

  krejames

  May I ask what posters here who have friend or family members with schizoprehnia think of the statement that they are closer to God than what we deem healthy people?

  My dad thought he was Jesus...and that my sisters and I were children of the devil. I remember my oldest sister saying to him one time, if we're children of the devil, who does that make you?

  On a serious note, we soon learned that the best way to calm him was to agree with everything he said. A lot of his anger and frustration was because no one believed what he was saying. He was genuinely terrified. so in the end, if he said the government was stealing his ideas from his brain, we would act shocked and say how terrible it was. We realised this was the best way to converse with him - he did seem to calm down quite a lot from then on. But it was still a very sad existence for him. Closer to God? Closer to a lot of people's idea of hell, more like.
• 

  NewChapter

  May I ask what posters here who have friend or family members with schizoprehnia think of the statement that they are closer to God than what we deem healthy people? It sends me out of my mind and I pride myself on progressive ideas. I see it as an extremely cruel disease. We don't think that cancer people or people with ALS are closer to God.

  It drives me nuts too! I have 2 family member with it. It is a cruel statement. It also encourages the symptoms. I find it dangerous. You hear a voice? Could be God. Right. Get thee to the doctor for a full workup, and if that voice is saying anything differently, it is not God. Why would god use a symptom of a very serious disease to make contact? This is an illness, this is not a spiritual journey. I've known a number of schizophrenics that were convinced they were talking to God. They needed medicine, and had a habit of stopping them when they felt better. Disaster.

  I also have a friend who is not schizophrenic, but she is mentally ill and exhibits some similar symptoms. She kept getting caught up in that religious thought that God talks to people. Yeah. Then demons talked to her. This is dangerous stuff to mess with. I'm not saying there aren't different ways to treat it, and that must be handled case by case by qualified people, but when someone hears a voice, no matter what it says, no matter how kind it seems, no matter how harmless it appears, urge a person to get checked out! There are many reasons for hearing voices, and they aren't all linked to illness, but one must make absolutely sure.
• 

  Chariklo

  A member of my family has schizophrenia.

  That idea that if they are allowed to have their fantasies they will grow out of it is sheer nonsense, and has nothing to do with the illness as I and my family know it.

  Highly intelligent but somewhat introverted and dreamy from very early childhood, she always seemed slightly out of the ordinary and different, but was always lovely, made strong stable friendships, and was (indeed is) clearly gifted. The illness probably began to show itself in early teens, but wasn't identified as illness until about sixteen years of age.

  Now many years on, she still sometimes has episodes of severe illness that require hospitalisation, but by and large, through times of terrible adversity and trauma for her and for us all, she has learned to understand her illness and to cope with the most terrifying aspects of it. She has always displayed that early ability to make very real, strong and loyal friendships, often with those rejected by society, and these days has the capacity to recognise those with whom friendship would be dangerous. (Been there, done that.) She always takes her medication and these days has great insight into the illness.

  Most inspiringly is the development of some of her considerable creative gifts, albeit coloured by the illness.

  jgnat, I am sending you a PM, for reasons you'll understand when you get it.

  Band on the Run, you wrote

  May I ask what posters here who have friend or family members with schizoprehnia think of the statement that they are closer to God than what we deem healthy people? It sends me out of my mind and I pride myself on progressive ideas. I see it as an extremely cruel disease. We don't think that cancer people or people with ALS are closer to God.

  I'd never heard that before, but thinking about it, I can understand why someone might have expressed that view. From my own knowledge of many people with this condition (through years of visiting different hospitals and also seeing patients out in the community) I'd say that, by and large, in ways probably incomprehensible to died-in-the-wool Jehovah's Witnesses, sufferers of all mental illnesses are very vulnerable, close to the rock bottom realities of life, and they suffer terrible things, both in their own heads and in theior circumstances in the world. because, for many of them, their illness has become chronic and a way of life, they are either unemployable or cannot hold down any job for long, their physical circumstances are closer to destitution than most. Of course, this level of poverty and homelessness is not so of all people who suffer from this condition, but it certainly is of many, even in this country where a National Health Service and reasonably decent social services offer some protection. (How people cope in a country where medical care has to be paid for when it is needed I cannot begin to imagine. It seems barbaric to me, but that's off the subject.)

  I think maybe that awareness of the stark realities of total vulnerability, and so much fear, do give many individuals a spiritual awareness beyond the norm. Personally, the point at whiich I myself consciously and determinedly parted company with the JW's was their thinking and teaching displayed in the book, to me horrific, "Keep Yourself in God's Love". A wicked book, to my mind, its thesis apparently that to be loved by God requires a constant striving for perfection through things like super-cleanliness, tidiness, submissiveness etc. I'm shuddering as I write this, remembering my arguments with elders.

  Not only Christ's teachings, but also the teachings of many of the world's great religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism also recognise that God loves the very vulnerable, the outcasts of society, the poverty-stricken and beggars, viz the parable of Dives and Lazarus. So, Band on the Run, my answer to your question is that I am not sure that sufferers of schizophrenia are, as a generalisation, closer to God, but I am sure that they have great vulnerability and need and to that extent, those who believe in a loving God who cares for those who suffer and are rejected in any way, he is close to them.

  Of course, there are many, many times when their paranoia, depression, hallucinations and general confusion do not allow them to have much spiritual perception at all. And it's important always to remember that many experts don't like to speak of schizophrenia as such, but of a very wide range of schophrenic-type conditions.

  Sorry for such a long answer. I just saw the title of the thread, Schizophrenia, and simply had to see what was under discussion, because this has been part of the background of my life for a very very long time.
• 

  Band on the Run

  Chariklo,

  I believe you raised excellent points. This view of the mentally ill being blessed is not a fringe belief. R.D. Laing glorified it, I believe, though my exposure was so long ago I may be misconstruing it. People are anti-medication. Sadly, love and affection does not seem to be enough to reverse the illness. A bunch of oh so pc Episcoplians expressed this view in a Bible study. They were not mds but were tangentially involved in treatment. First, I know that only a very small % of patients are violent but that this subset is extremely dangerous. ER staff are very afraid b/c when patients come in, no one has made an assessment yet. Many people told me my facial neuralgia was a blessing from God. I am usually a people pleaser but I told them what I thought about such a comment.

  I don't equte pain and suffering with God. Jung wrote a brilliant book called The Problem of Job, asserting that humans were more moral than God.

  People are people to me. We share a common humanity. Perhaps much of this goes back to the Sermon on the Mount. I've know wonderful poor people and contemptible people who are poor.

  Within the past year, the New York Times ran a long article about how America has exported the medical model of illness. Other cultures integrate schizoprehnia more than Americans do. There are other ways to view beyond faulty biology. I found the article complex and fascinating but I had problems following all the arguments. If anyone has an interest in this field, I highly recommend it.