How can this illness not have a cure? (Not cancer) (My Experience of Schizophrenia)

Member Name: Claribella

Product:	My Experience of Schizophrenia
Date:	10/12/08 (144 review reads)
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Disadvantages: Every single thing about it

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects just 1% of the population usually between the ages of 15-25. It causes paranoia, delusions and hallucinations. There is no cure for it but it can be controlled by various medications. There is no test to say whether you have actually got schizophrenia, it can only be determined by what the sufferer tells you. I've never suffered from it personally but someone very close to me has. Here is my story.

My mum was pregnant with my brother and she and my dad were overjoyed. He came into the world on 6th April 1981 and just 6 weeks later she found out she was pregnant with me. As we grew up we were so close and everyone thought we were twins. We had such fun but my brother was always getting into trouble and looking back now I'm sure they would have diagnosed him with ADHD if they knew more about it then. He would always do random things that I would never have dreamed of doing.

When we got to our teens we didn't spend much time together anymore and he got involved with the wrong crowd at school. He started smoking Cannabis from the age of 13 years old and his addiction grew worse and worse. As the years progressed so did his addiction. These days he has a heroin habit and can't survive the day without his hits.

By the time he was about 19 years old he had changed and was very depressed and unpredictable. I went around to see him one day and he didn't answer the door. I continued knocking and eventually I noticed the curtain wiggle. I shouted through the letterbox and he eventually opened the door with a knife in his hands. He said that people were trying to kill him. There were many occasions like this and I just assumed he was taking too many drugs and it was causing him to be paranoid.

He also had angry outbursts which I'm not sure is a typical trait of schizophrenia or if it's because of other issues. One day I was giving him a lift and he didn't like what I said so grabbed the wheel and steered me onto the other side of the road. He's been known to go at people with hammers and other violent stuff.

One particular day he just went mental and ended up being taken to a residential place in our area for people with mental health issues. They kept him in and had him sectioned so he couldn't leave of his own will. My mum and dad were called and over time they had meetings with health professionals and various other people. Eventually my brother was diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

They put him on medication to help him control the paranoia and the voices that he was hearing in his head. It took them quite some time to get his dosage right but they got there. He has a CPN that visits him everyday to make sure he's ok and he helps him.

The most upsetting thing about all of this is that it may have been avoided. Studies show that Cannabis can bring on Schizophrenia. The doctors told us that you can have the gene and it can lie dormant for a lifetime but Cannabis can imbalance it which causes the Schizophrenia. Maybe if he hadn't touched the drugs then he might be living a full life right now.

The other thing about my brother is that he has a huge drug habit now so the recreational drugs he takes upsets the drugs he is prescribed for his condition (or he forgets to take them because he's so out of his head) so it isn't really under control.

My brother is quite lucky in the fact that he knows to a point when he unwell. If the voices are telling him to do something he can detach himself slightly and realize that it's not quite right so he will ring my mum or his CPN and they will admit him to hospital.

With the condition my brother has been in and out of hospital more times than I can count. He has spent half of his life in there and there will probably never be a time when he could hold down a job.

As you can imagine the condition has had a huge affect on my family and I believe my mum has been hit the hardest. Yes I am his sister and he is my flesh and blood but I have my own family now and I have been able to detach from him. As much as I love him I have to think about my two babies. I recently made the hardest decision that I have ever made and chose to cut him off for the safety of my children. Like I said earlier he is violent (that's not saying all schizophrenics are violent but this is my personal experience) and I don't want my children being part of that.

I am now a mum. I know what it is like to carry a tiny life inside of me and watch my two boys grow up and accomplish milestones. I just can't imagine what my mum goes through every single day of her life. It must tear her to pieces when my brother rings her up telling her that the voices in his head are telling him to kill her.

After all these years of watching my brother with this heartbreaking condition I got to thinking about all the members of my family and my extended family. You see my mum's mum was in and out of mental hospitals when my mum was growing up. She used to go nuts and had to take medication although she doesn't now. My mum is one of five, four girls and one boy. The boy, my uncle has smoked cannabis since his teens and he has suffered with mental health problems along the way. My mum's eldest sister was fine for a while then a few years ago she went mental and was put on tablets. My mum's sister who is exactly a year older than her has manic depression and really goes off her head sometimes. Her son has been in and out of hospital for mental health problems and has recently had an attack, thinking that it was the First World War and I was a soldier plotting to kill him. He told me this when he was well but at the time I didn't realize anything was wrong with him. I was sat on the sofa across the room from him and he was completely freaking out in his mind but calm on the outside. If I was aware of what he was thinking then obviously I would have left.
My mum has also been on anti-depressants but I'm not sure if that's because of what she has been through with my brother. So I was pretty sure it was hereditary and Wikipedia says that it can be.

I have two friends who have schizophrenia but you wouldn't know. They take their medication everyday without fail and one of them has a full time job. They are really nice people normally but on the odd occasion they think they can do without the medication and stop taking the tablets. They don't tell their partners and slowly they start seeing things and believing things that don't exist. One of them wrote a letter to the Queen saying that she knew that they were after her and was going to watching out for them. She really believed this though. Unfortunately her illness has taken its toll on her family and children and they are no longer in touch with her. Needless to say her children have tonnes of problems.

This illness is such an awful thing to live with and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I feel so much for my brother and it pains me to know that even if he does kick his heroin habit he will probably never live a day without being reliant on tablets for the rest of his life:( It also scares me that Schizophrenics have a higher suicide rate than any other. I dread picking up the phone sometimes thinking that it will be my mum telling me he has gone:(.

Summary: Hate this illness.