Schizophrenia Essay, Research Paper

FOUR WOMEN—ONE DISEASE—FOUR VERY DIFFERENT LIVES

“Some of the Voices are Nice” Jane, August 1999

Margie Borschke started her journey to the truth of the much feared and stigmatized disease: schizophrenia in the schizophrenic ward of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She was lead on this journey by Shannon Flynn who works at the institute, but who also, surprisingly enough, suffers from schizophrenia. The dominant thing that first stuck out on her journey was the “padded room.”

Schizophrenia is an incurable brain disease that affects more than two-million Americans. There is no real known cause, though many professionals in the field feel it’s a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Parents may carry the gene for it, or it can be passed by non-inherited factors like a virus during the mother’s pregnancy. Symptoms of the disease may include auditory hallucinations, delisions, unorganized thought processes, withdrawl, lack of concentration, or lack of emotions. It is not split or multiple personality disorder. Suprisingly, people with the disease are no more violent than the general “healthy” population. More often than not, they are hurtful to themselves, which, inturn, leads to a 10% suicide rate amongst the schizophrenic population.