On the Outside, Looking In... (My Experience of Schizophrenia)

Member Name: QuinnElaine

Product:	My Experience of Schizophrenia
Date:	10/12/01 (106 review reads)
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Advantages: With medication, love, and understanding it will not rule the life of you or your loved one.

Disadvantages: Most cases go untreated., Most cases end in suicide., There is still as strong social stigma attached by those who cannot understand this disorder, or have not taken the time to educate themselves.

What is schizophrenia? It is not Multiple Personality Disorder where a person’s psyche has splintered into other personas, although they are grouped togethor.

Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling brain disease with many possible symptoms and extremes. Paranoia: if you can‘t even trust yourself or your senses, do you think you would be trusting anyone else? Delusions which could range from something simple and easily overlooked (like social withdrawal) to loudly proclaiming beliefs that are obviously impossible to everyone else (“Elvis is helping the aliens control us through microwaves“, for example).

Sudden shocking changes in behavior (I could actually see this symptom being confused for Multiple Personality), illusions (similar to hallucinations but a sensory stimulus is actually present but is incorrectly interpreted by the individual), or hallucinations (perceptions that occur without connection to an sensory stimulus) that affect any or all of the senses are the most common examples of symptoms.

No one is really sure as of yet, what causes schizophrenia. It may be a chemical imbalance of the body, it may be an abnormality in the brain or brain cells themselves or some other possible explanation still waiting to be discovered.

Current statistics say that more than 2 million Americans suffer from this illness in any given year, it occurs just as often among either sex usually manifesting in the late teens or early twenties, substance abuse among schizophrenics is high *especially* nicotine dependence (stimulants, like nicotine, are thought to actually interfere with antipsychotic medications), approximately 10% commit or attempt suicide and only one if five of all chronic schizophrenics are ever successfully treated.

I have also read a very interesting study that was done somewhere back around the late sixties or early seventies in Ireland, trying to find a reason for that nati
on’s high concentration of schizophrenics. The numbers were something like three times any other population of similar size! The trait of schizophrenia is believed to be hereditary. Children of a schizophrenic parent have a 10% chance of contracting it themselves and identical twins run the highest risk at something like a 50 or 60% chance. Regardless of where you are from, the numbers are just not very encouraging.

Schizophrenia can be treated with a combination of antipsychotic medications, therapy, and treatment of other possible complications, like depression. All aspects of treatment are important but none more so than the correct dosage and prompt daily consumption of medication! Without the correct or consistent dosage, relapses are sure to follow. Even if medication is faithfully taken it is still possible to have a relapse since these medications do *not* prevent schizophrenic episodes they merely lessen the frequency and intensity.

Now that you know a little more about this illness, let me tell you what it was like watching my Mom dance along the edge of this precipice. Before she was correctly diagnosed, she would have what everyone thought were ’nervous breakdowns’ where she would make odd statements that seemed disjointed, often the *nearly* made sense but the overly calm almost unemotional way in which she would deliver them would still tip you off. That is another fairly common symptom by the way.

I remember the last time I was ever around for one of Mom‘s episodes. I was about eight or so and Pop-o (her father) was staying with us. He had obviously been at a loss when confronted with Mom’s behavior and had ended up calling the police or perhaps an ambulance who had sent for the police. I remember waking up and climbing out of the huge bed I had shared with Mom (since Pop-o had my room), wandering tentatively out into the living room where Mom was talking to a voice I did not recognize.


I was quite surprised to find a police officer there attempting to talk to Mom who sat on the couch with one leg curled under her and the other foot propped on the coffee table. The smoke from her cigarette curled between them as Mom’s emotionally flattened voice tried to explain to him why cops should wear white instead of black or dark blue. I remember seeing the momentary flicker of understanding in his eyes, along with bewilderment, uncertainty, sadness and yes, fear... before he noticed I was watching them. I remember Pop-o holding me back as the officer quickly handcuffed Mom and began to haul her out to his car while she shouted obscenities at him and her father.

I had never before been on hand for such a display. Sure, I knew a lot of the signs that Mom was about to have another one of these mysterious ‘attacks’ that no one seemed to understand. That look in her eye that seemed to show all the frantic feelings, will and energy that was locked behind her extremely calm demeanor. It almost seemed to me that Mom’s calm was like a self defense tactic she used to hold off all the turmoil she felt inside. The calm voice, actions or statements that didn’t seem to make sense were hints too of the coming storm.

Actually, in retrospect I find it amazing that Mom managed to hide the actual episodes from me! How on Earth did she do it? I can only remember witnessing actual episodes a handful of times. More often I would come home from school or a friend’s house to find everything we owned had been casually removed from its’ place and dropped on the floor, or the door locked tight against me and *someone* guarding the entrance as they waited for me, a neighbor, a caseworker, a family member or policeman. These episodes had been happening with greater frequency and I found out years later that Mom had asked Pop-o there because she was worried about what might happen to Me if she had another episode.


Now, Mom hated hospitals. Can you imagine the psych ward of L.A. County Hospital? Yeah, I don’t blame her! Regardless of what hospital she ended up in, she would pull herself together just long enough to tell them what they wanted to hear. I imagine she left a Mom shaped cloud she probably rocketed out of there so fast...each time she left. She had been diagnosed with a variety of things before the episode that I have related to you. Severe depression, Bi-polar disorder, and Nervous breakdown were the most common.

This time though, she was determined to stick it out and find out what was wrong. Why she couldn’t “think straight” (a common complaint among schizophrenics) and why she kept hearing things that she *knew* weren’t there. This was the trip where she was finally correctly diagnosed. It took her awhile to accept it all, to fully realize that she *had* to take this medication every day for the rest of her life and she did have a few more episodes in later years. Usually when she was under inordinate amounts of stress or was without her medication for some reason.

It has been about ten years since Mom had a relapse now and I am proud to say that not only has she kept up with her treatments faithfully but she has also stopped smoking after all these years! My Mom was the One out of her Five. She made it through to the other side where, sadly, so many others never do.

For me as a child, I knew that this was something out of Mom’s control. I could see it coming over her like a fever or a convulsion. No one would tell me what was wrong, even offer a possibility of what it was, until I began to demand answers. The episode prior to the major one that I shared here, I saw all the signs and knew that Mom needed help. It was just us.

I snuck her address book and the telephone into my room. I can still remember turning the pages and wondering who I should call. I decided to go with our latest
social worker. She had become quite attached to Mom and me, almost like a family friend. She would stop by occasionally with a pretty little plant or some other gift for us, I especially remember the bell jar inside which you arranged and displayed the butterfly and other natural contents included. I was thinking of the butterfly inside that jar when I called her and tried to explain what was happening.

I wish I remembered her name, she *was* a very kind and caring woman who tried her best, but she didn’t have any answers for me when I asked her what was doing this to my Mom. Nor do I recall her offering any substantial assistance on that occasion, I seem to recall telling her, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of us. I’ll find someone who knows. “ I believe I turned to one of our family members next. It wasn’t until later when I asked Mom’s sister, Aunt Trish, that I finally started to get some answers and it was only around then that the doctors themselves were getting a clear idea for the first time.

Not knowing was hard, it was worse than seeing my Mom in the midst of an episode, worse than the ignorant taunts of children or thoughtless comments of adults, it was even worse than coming home to a locked door and a stranger. In fact, Not Knowing was probably the driving force behind the nightmares that were so often wrapped around the theme of losing my Mom. Keeping a fear nameless allows it to grow in the darkness until it is large enough to consume you, if you let it.

Many years later, when I looked back upon this time I remembered how strongly I connected the Moon to my mother. In my mind’s eye as a child, it was as if she had the Moon at her back all the time, filling her with light and dreams or as if she were the Moon herself and had stepped down from the sky to be mortal for awhile.

As an adult, I could also see the age old metaphor of instability so often linked with
the Moon. If we had lived long ago in the earliest of times, I could imagine my Mother as one of the ’fairy touched’ who roamed the hills of Ireland or a slim woman in white who offered up nonsense as a prophecy. There was no medication then.

It is an image I still carry with me; my Mother dancing with abandon, isolated under a bright moon, her face utterly eerily calm. This is what it was like to see my Mom dancing at the edge of her personal abyss. I am so thankful that instead, we live in a day and age where she can dance in the sunlight with her laughter rising to the sky.

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