The exact cause of this disorder isn’t known; but the combination of genetics, the environment, and your brain chemistry play a big role.
Schizophrenia is chronic, which means it can last for up to your entire life.
A common myth is that schizophrenia is a “split personality”. IT IS NOT.
What exactly is it?
Well firstly, it’s thoughts, actions, and/or experiences that seem “out-of-touch” with reality.
The person may have disorganized speech or behaviors, as well as memory loss.
If a person has schizophrenia, they’ll likely have trouble concentrating and not participate in activities.
The biggest thing about schizophrenia is that the person with this disorder has trouble distinguishing between reality and non-reality. This is why some people suffering can be delusional and have disorganized thinking. They literally cannot connect and organize their thoughts logically.
Many dealing with this also suffer from hallucinations.
Like my biological grandfather.
I’ve never met the man. Before I was born my grandmother remarried. But a few years ago, my bio. grandfather found my mom and reached out to her. They began texting back and forth, but something seemed eerily off. She showed me their texts and he would text her multiple times if she didn’t answer and claim she was purposely ignoring him. Then a big shock came.
My mother told me he was Schizophrenic.
Suddenly everything made sense. He claimed all these things because he didn’t know what was real or not. He legitimately thought maybe my mom was ignoring him.
Fast forward a couple of weeks since the news. My grandfather asked if the two could meet up for awhile to catch up. My mom agreed.
After they met up for awhile, my mom told me even more shocking news: He claimed someone was after him.
Now, my mom knew this wasn’t true but she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
What would you do if you constantly felt as if someone was after you or someone was ignoring you on purpose and all these other things?
Then he started giving my mom money.
The reasoning behind this I’m not entirely sure. But all I know is that it was not normal or usual for this to happen.
Eventually and sadly, my mom quit contacting him because she didn’t know how to handle these situations, because she of course had never dealt with this sort of thing before.
Schizophrenia is real and it can be intimidating to others around the sufferer. This is because, like all mental illnesses, you never truly know what’s going on inside someones head.
Schizophrenia is not curable by any means, but there is medicine you can take to subside the effects of it. However, many with the disorder opt out of the medications because when they take the drugs, they “feel as if they are not themselves”. They feel drugged out and tired and just plain lose themselves.
I myself don’t know what the best thing for someone with this disorder is, but what I do know is that people don’t educate themselves enough with this illness in particular, creating many misconceptions.
So maybe the best thing someone without Schizophrenia can do is learn about it and educate themselves and better understand and stop the stigma. Schizophrenics aren’t scary or dangerous. They’re scared and lost in their own minds. They’re human, too. They’re beautiful beings; like all people; illness and everything.
All The Feels 