Schizophrenia is a severe mental condition that affects nearly 1 in 100 people. Symptoms of schizophrenia include disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. A person who suffers from schizophrenia may exhibit positive or negative symptoms, greatly influencing their behavior. A person with positive symptoms may exhibit bizarre behaviors, such as the inability to remain still, and may also experience hallucinations and delusions. A person with negative symptoms is affected in the exact opposite way as people with positive symptoms – they have an absence of appropriate behaviors including a toneless voice, expressionless face, catatonia, or apathy toward emotional situations. Schizophrenia usually emerges as people transition into mature adults, and many cases are discovered between the ages of 20 and 25 years old.
Schizophrenia is an issue close to my heart because of my cousin, Miranda, who was diagnosed with it 5 years ago. When Miranda was about 17 years old, her parents went through an extremely rough divorce that took a toll on her and her two siblings. Her parents eventually stopped talking altogether and my three cousins were torn between their mother and their father (and his new girlfriend). About a year after the situation began we started noticing and hearing odd things about Miranda. She had cut off her long, brown curls to an almost boy-like cut, and whenever we were together she would be extremely fidgety and had an unorganized stream of thoughts. My aunt also told us that she had been claiming to hear voices telling her that people were after her and trying to kill her and her family. Miranda was immediately checked into a mental institution and put on medication.
Learning about schizophrenia now, I notice that Miranda displayed all the positive symptoms of the condition – restlessness, unorganized thoughts, delusions, and auditory hallucinations. Although I am no doctor, my guess is that Miranda developed acute schizophrenia, which, as we are learning, can be a reaction to life stress (in this case her parents’ divorce). The stress-vulnerability model says that certain environmental conditions, such as stress, can trigger schizophrenia if the individual is genetically predisposed. Five years post-diagnosis, Miranda is doing much better and seems to exhibit normal behaviors when I’m around her. Although I’m sure that she still suffers from some symptoms, my hopes are that it is, indeed, acute schizophrenia and recovery is possible.
