Replies to '11/23 Schizophrenia'

Quote From: fluffyfat

My son suffers from this waking nightmare called schizophrenia and I'm so grateful whenever brave people step forward to help increase awareness and understanding. Mary, you are such a beautiful, intelligent girl, if you weren't married I would be playing match-making mother right this very minute. (ha ha) My dear son was making top grades in college when this awful disease struck. It doesn't run in our family, but then, as Dr. Phil said today the genetic link is not there in most cases. For ten years my son was unmedicated, psychotic, suicidal, cowering with fear and dread. [bWe need to change the law, so that family members can forcibly commit their loved ones for treatment.[/b Asking the adult schizophrenic to make wise decisions for himself is like asking someone with alzheimers to make such decisions. The organ that is sick is the one needed to make good decisions, so, unfortunately, the last thing someone who is paranoid will want to do is go voluntarily to the doctor -- his illness will cause him to fear that the doctor will "use him as a guinea pig" or "put monitoring devices in his head', etc. We must vote to allow parents to get help for our children, as it is now we have to wait for them to be "a danger to himself or others." Since most schizophrenics are as gentle and frightened as lambs, they go without treatment for years. I finally, going against every mother's instinct, called the police on my son one night, and fibbed that he had threatened suicide (he was highly psychotic at the time.) They took him to a psychiatric hospital, started him on Zyprexa and he has been doing wonderfully well ever since. He works full time, enjoys hobbies and friends, and since switching to Abilify, he is even back to his slender weight. [bSchizophrenia is not a rare disease.[/b It is far more common in the U.S. than muscular dystrophy, MS, AIDS, and many other diseases that we hear about all the time. It is the number one disabler of young people; yet when was the last time you saw a march or telethon for schizophrenia? Every year millions are collected for the March of Dimes, when will we start to address this devastated disease? It's been estimated that forty percent of our homeless have severe mental illness. Is this the way Americans treat our sick? Please continue to help raise awareness of this disease, Dr. Phil -- and thank you, for getting the ball rolling. To paraphrase one of my favorite Dr. Philisms "Let's step up to the plate and demand a cure for these people!"