Diagnosed With Schizophrenic Disorder
Dave, a 32 years old man; wakes up one morning to be talking to himself, hearing voices that others are not hearing, and talking randomly. At first, we all thought he was just having a nightmare, so we calm him down to get ready for work. Later on in the day, we had a phone call from Dave’s manager. He said Dave has been talking to himself, unable to perform his daily task, and saying he is Christ and that people are planning to kill him. Hurriedly, we rushed to his job and took him to the hospital for diagnosis. Upon diagnosis, doctors diagnosed him of delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and deterioration of adaptive behavior generally known as Schizophrenia.
Delusions are false ideas that are maintained by a schizophrenic patient even though such do not exist. Dave constantly kept saying he was Christ and that he was about to be killed even though such was not visible. As a result, he was confined to a bed in the psychiatric hospital. This led to his inability to take care of himself, loss of emotion and proper thinking. This put a stop on his life and dreams because he’s been hospitalized. He can no longer fend for himself, how much more make reliable decisions. This is one of the signs of schizophrenia. It puts your life on hold and renders you helpless. It slowed every family member down financially because we had to pay from pocket to pay the ever increasing hospital bill.
Aside delusions there is hallucinations, which is hearing voices of people talking while in reality, it does not exist. Dave heard voices that no one heard while with him. This made all of us feel like he is insane. Can you imagine the embarrassment associated with that? At first we started avoiding him until we realized that he was having hallucinations which might be as result of mental disorder. As a result, we started avoiding him and being scared of having discussions with him because of incessant words he would be saying, like: leave me alone; I am driving an armored car. The list is endless. This made him socially deprived. Not our own fault, we loved our won safety too. This ailment made us almost start avoiding someone we loved.
Although hallucinations are one of the symptoms, deterioration of adaptive behavior is another which includes inability of the schizophrenic patient to perform his daily task and personal care. As a result of this brain disorder, Dave was unable to perform daily task of taking a bath or shower, change his clothes, and sometimes, he prefers sleeping in the garage instead of his bedroom. This worsened condition was apparent in Dave’s case, because getting along with friends and family became a problem. Severally, He would curse neighbors, passerby and even become violent by smashing vehicles parked in the garage or parking lot. Overall, he became a threat to the society we resided. This changed our lives socially and also made us unsafe because he sometimes open all the doors to the house while were asleep.
Schizophrenia which is a split mind mental disorder is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and worsened adaptive behavior. Although they are a number of unique symptoms, but they all share some common characteristics which can even be seen in their subtypes like: paranoid, catatonic, and disorganized type. The United States Government estimates that 1.1 million Americans suffer from this disease. This disease costs Americans over 32 Billion Dollars annually and it also leads to loss of productivity in the economy. As such, this ailment affects all of us directly or indirectly either through family members or our tax dollars. Bibliography
Wayne W. (2010) Psychology Themes and Variations. Eight Edition.Las Vegas. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved November 26, 2011.