I shared my apartment with a roommate. My relationship with the girl grew stronger with time and we decided to live in together at my apartment. I sometimes smoked marijuana and we tried cocaine together. Gradually, I started sleeping a lot, became very depressed and more reserved than ever before. I lost faith in people and suspected my girlfriend of having an affair with my roommate. One day, I caught them red-handed which resulted in parting ways with each other. This incident had a toll over me, making me more depressed and paranoid. I could not concentrate on my work either. After one year, I sought medical help, which did not bring about enough changes in my sleep pattern or depression.

My parents came to my rescue. I took leave from work and attended a programme for outpatients in a local hospital there. In six months, I started feeling better. Doctor introduced me to Stelazine, which aided me in forgetting my bitter experiences. I regained my faith in people and slowly started getting rid of depression.

After my recovery to an extent, I left the hospital and moved to my house with significant reduction in medication. However, I was not aware about the diagnosis. For some period, I underwent counselling at a local hospital and I learned that I had schizophrenia. I got upset about this fact and I ended the medication with a thought that I will be a patient only if I take medication. However, after six months I underwent treatment for depression at hospital. By then my thoughts became scrambled and I started trusting none.

Doctor prescribed Navane to me. I found Navane to be effective, as it cleared my thoughts within an hour of its intake, while I was at office. I had an urge for more intake of navane, but my doctor advised against it. During the next 4 years, my life was on a slow mode. I remained at hospital for almost eight to nine months on an average every year.

Since my financial condition worsened, I moved to parents house .I started visiting local psychiatrist and she diagnosed me with schizophrenia and she prescribed navane with dosage of 20 mg a day. I totally quit street drugs as well as alcohol during those four years since I doctors warned me how it can affect my schizophrenic condition.

I joined Hunter College and restarted my studies. I met Daisy there and married her after falling in love. After marriage, we settled at Toronto. I continued my studies at a night college there, while working as designer at a company during daytime. Psychiatrist in Toronto prescribed me risperidal and it made me feel so good.

In my 12^th year after getting schizophrenia, it is hard to believe that I lived six year without any reliable diagnosis. Now I am perfectly all right. I could not have achieved this recovery without the support from beloved life partner, various doctors as well as psychiatrists and most importantly medications. I earned my honours degree in computer science and I got better job with another company.

From the stories of schizophrenia, you can notice that the key factors for schizophrenic recovery are proper medication, avoidance of street drugs, proper diagnosis, counselling, as well as therapy.

I have a good relation with Dr. George Melvin and I consider him as one my best friends. I was more than happy to accept the invitation from him for attending a three-day conference organised by a mental health rehabilitation organisation in South Africa. I asked my younger brother Adam Schindler, if he could come along with me to South Africa to attend the conference, as I was closer to him.

We both had a nice journey and we attended the conference .The conference indeed turned out to be a platform for many individuals who recovered from schizophrenia and those who are working for the welfare of schizophrenia patients. My brother found their speeches as very inspiring. He consulted his friends, and our twin sisters about creating a schizophrenia family support group. After returning home, with the help of our sisters and friends he created the group. We came across many people who suffered from schizophrenia and most of them joined our initiative. There were around 7members initially.

Dr. George Melvin always took initiative for organising our group meetings and used to talk about schizophrenia with us. Adam voluntarily became our group leader and tried to find various community links as well as tried to talk to family members of schizophrenia patients. Both Dr. George Melvin and Adam talked with other members of their families. Those conversations had great impact on those people.

However, I started facing problems once Adam left for England for higher studies. Even though our group continued to function, but no one came forward to take the role left by Adam. Our group became stagnant due to apathy of other members. Soon I found myself facing depression. Dr. George Melvin worked with me to overcome my depression.

For coping up with the state of my depression, doctor gave a suggestion that I should pray and keep faith in god. I started consulting a Christian organisation through internet and they started answering my prayers. While surfing through internet, I collected useful information regarding schizophrenia and it helped me in having better awareness about my illness. I started communicating Adam and the members of the mental health organisation in Africa. They sent me inspiring responses and the knowledge that my brother loves me so dearly made me so glad.

That organisation sent me some of their pamphlets and I chose to show it to the psychiatrists that I knew. I gave them some of those copies. As they found it exciting, they agreed to provide us with referrals. Impressed by my initiative, a psychiatrist who was a member of another schizophrenia related organisation gave me an invitation to attend their conference. I became much more confident and I approached Suzy a friend of Adam for anti-psychotic drugs, as she was a licensed paediatrician. Since she was a friend of my brother and knew about our group, she voluntarily came and took the responsibility of leading the group. During this phase, I started mingling with my family with closeness. They were happy that I was recovering well and they stopped feeling ashamed about my illness. Their support was the main reason why I recovered from schizophrenia. My story is one among hundreds of inspiring stories schizophrenia.

Even though I got a good job in an insurance company, I started waking up so late in the afternoons and skipping office. Due to the fear about a conspiracy to kill me by some people, I left my apartment and started living with my parents. Though I did not reveal my fear, they took me to a psychiatrist’s clinic out of worry regarding my crumbling career. He prescribed me some anti-depressants.

How ever, things did not get any better as my beliefs about conspiracy to kill me became stronger and I felt that my neighbours have big hand in it. Out of fear, I sent them mails saying, “Please spare me or I will take you on.” They caught me and considering my state of mind, they admitted me in crisis center. I underwent treatment there.

While I was at the crisis center, doctor prescribed me Risperdal. From the people there, I learned that my response to the medicine was positive. Soon I got rid of my fears about conspiracy. As I attended activities in the center actively, and behaved well, authorities were cordial to me.

After leaving the crisis center, I gave my best effort, to be normal. I found some part-time jobs and later I got a full time job departmental store. However, I wished for a job, which was in line with my interests. Since I was interested in drawing cartoons, I started working as a cartoonist in a magazine. Impressed by the cartoons a daily newspaper recruited me to draw contemporary cartoons. I could not retain the job for long. I gave up the medication, as I found difficult to keep up the schedule and I I started worrying again again. I started drawing malicious cartoons about famous people without thinking much. After getting complaints from individuals, they fired me.

I did not take medication afterwards. I kept working in various companies in short notice. Eight months was the longest duration for which, I retained a job, and it was in a drug-manufacturing factory. I started living in a new apartment with hostile neighbours. I had frequent fights with them over issues. One day they came as a group and attacked me with motto of eviction. I was hospitalized as I ended up with nasty injuries, while police arrested them.

After leaving hospital, though I went to my parents’ apartment for staying, as I was not taking medication, they forcefully hospitalized me again. This time doctors put me with people recovering from mental illness. Finally, I accepted the very fact that I had illness. From the experiences shared by the fellow inmates, I trained myself in not fighting or ignoring that I have mental illness.

After recovering, I got a job in an agency working for the welfare of immigrants. For the first time in life, I retained a job for more than 3 years after finishing my studies 14 years ago. This is my story of schizophrenia.

My serious struggle with depression started when I was around 18.With conviction, I felt that some people were deliberately working against me and wanted to harm me. I still remember my experience at wall mart. As I was walking inside the mart for picking up stuffs, I felt that some people were tracking my movement .I feared that they were from the secret agency, which was looking for nailing someone as gangster to cover up their mismanagement of gang rivalries. In past, I always used to hear some voices .However, this time I found them more striking. “Escape from here! Escape from here! Escape from here!” I walked as quickly as possible towards the exit door while keeping eye on people around me. I prepared myself well for a scenario, where agents might come in helicopter or in other vehicles to seize me.

After reaching home safely, at night I wrote a journal regarding my experience at mall. One Paragraph in it reads like this, “Secret agencies are trying to nab me for charging a false case against me, to cover up the mess that they made in curtailing gangsters. They already made plans for catching me within a few days. If you find me missing and you get this message, please locate me from some secret cell of secret agency, in New York.”

I was not able to sleep over the next four days. I used to sit on a chair near the window during those nights .I kept staring at the street to find whether someone is coming. My parents did observe my weird actions. However, I chose not to comprehend them about my fears, as I did not trust them. More over I was not sure about their support.

After some days, as usual, I was sitting inside my room, and I felt that I heard some noise rising from downstairs. Out of anxiety, I rushed downstairs and I found shadow of a man sitting on couch, as there was power cut. He explained that he came there for protecting me. He warned that if I visit wall mart again the secret agents will arrest me and would charge me as a gangster. He also said that they have framed enough fake evidences as well as eyewitnesses to prove that I am a gangster involved in killing many people. Seizing a gangster can help them in reinstating their credibility.

Due to fear or anxiety, I tried to commit suicide. Fortunately, my parents stopped me at the right moment before I triggered my pistol. They consulted a psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with schizophrenia. Since then, I am under medication and I have been attending regular counselling sessions .Though I am not fully recovered, I can tell you that I am in far better condition that what I was under 4 years back. This is my real life story schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a rare, serious mental disorder, which affects humans. Only one percentage of human population ends up with this brain disease. Schizophrenia interferes in the normal functioning of brain. This illness induces disorganised or highly irrational behaviour in humans. Schizophrenia changes the feelings, consciousness, thoughts, and understandings of individuals’. Schizophrenia patients’ struggles to undertake responsibilities, think coherently, interact normally, and express emotions properly.

Factors that causes Schizophrenia

For the development of schizophrenia, inherited factor such as Chemical imbalance inside the brain is essential. Genetic, environmental, as well as behavioural factors have role in occurrence of schizophrenia. Generally, one gender is prone to schizophrenia if the factors are environmental and genetic. During childhood, males have greater chance to have schizophrenia. During adolescence, adulthood males as well as females have equal chance to have schizophrenia.

Who are prone to schizophrenia?

Symptoms of schizophrenia appear first among men during later part of teenage or during earlier twenties. However, among women it appears while their twenties or initial part of thirties. Children born in a family, which has schizophrenia patients, have greater chance to have schizophrenia unlike other children. There is around eight-percentage chance for the sibling of a schizophrenia patient to have the disease. There is around fifteen-percentage chance for kid of a schizophrenia patient to have the disease.

Symptoms of schizophrenia

Unusual behaviour

Social isolation

Difficulty in undertaking responsibilities at office or school

Unrealistic Superiority complex

Extremely varying moods

Delusions

No control over emotions

Hallucinations

Acute anxiety

Abnormal as well as detailed ideas or thoughts

Disorganised behaviour

Inability to differentiate reality from dreams

Confused thinking process

Extreme suspicion 

These are the main symptoms of schizophrenia. Symptoms such as delusions, abnormal behaviour, hallucinations etc comes under positive symptoms, while symptoms like social isolation, inability to control emotions etc comes under negative symptoms.

Children experiences only auditory hallucinations. Adults experiences delusions, thought disorders and all other effects. Schizophrenia symptoms might look like that of other mental illnesses. Therefore, for diagnosis of schizophrenia, it is better to consult a doctor or psychiatrist.

Treatment for schizophrenia

Doctor will consider the age, medical history, degree of illness, overall health, expectation regarding the future course of illness, reactions to certain therapies or medications or procedures, preference of the patient before determining a suitable treatment.

Unlike other mental illnesses, the treatment meant for schizophrenia is generally complex. A combination of medications and therapies might be essential for meeting the requirements of individual schizophrenia patients. Neuroletptics medications, antipsychotic medications, electroconvulsive therapy, individual as well as family psychotherapy, specialized educational programs, schizophrenia support groups etc are the major treatments for schizophrenia. Neuroleptic medicines reduce the severity of the hallucinations as well as delusions. Antipsychotic medications are for fighting against psychotic illness symptoms.ECT is for faster recovery from symptoms.

Preventive measures for avoiding schizophrenia

There is no preventive measure currently known for avoiding schizophrenia. Early detection as well as intervention can help in improving the schizophrenia patients’ lives. Treatments will be successful only if there is prompt and proper addressing of initial psychotic symptoms. Patients must comply with the medicines prescribed by doctors. For maintaining the effectiveness of treatment, there must be variation in of medications as well as dosages. For detailed information, please consult a doctor.

Let us have an etiology of schizophrenia to know more about this illness. The major reason for schizophrenia is reversion of the sexual energy as well as the ego. The mind reverses itself to the state of infancy as well as self-love. Normal heterosexual love will not be supportive enough for the adult patients to adjust with their social responsibility. Over secretion of hormones from sexual glands can cause accumulation of the stimulating chemicals, inside digestive systems of hormones. This can cause schizophrenia.

Studies conducted on schizophrenia patients convinced many leading psychologists to believe that heredity also causes schizophrenia. Trauma during the birth can also be a reason for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia patients’ direct biological relatives carry a greater risk of getting schizophrenia unlike others. Only a meagre percentage of Second degree as well as third degree relatives of schizophrenia patients inherits the schizophrenia. Good percentage of monozygotic twins has more chance for getting schizophrenia unlike the dizygotic twins.

Maladjustment of the body towards a new environment can cause schizophrenia as it can lead to reversion of life force as well as emotional complexes. The amount as well as kind of stresses that an individual undergoes over a period can lead to schizophrenia. Among children, infections in the viral central nervous system pose greater risk of getting schizophrenia.

Conflict between the masculine as well as feminine elements of an individual is a cause for schizophrenia as per Neo Freudian Otto Rank’s studies. Those who find suitable as well as acceptable expression for their instincts related to the self-respect are prone to schizophrenia. Those who are having introvert nature are more susceptible.

Studies show that many dead schizophrenic patients had abnormalities in the structure of brains. Many of the schizophrenic patients have their cranial ventricles in enlarged state. Some of the patients have rather unique cortical laterality accompanied by dysfunction in left hemisphere of the brain. There is significant amount of gray matter loss in the brains of schizophrenic patients.

Defects related to the biochemical reactions that regulates the activities of GAD1 genes can lead to schizophrenia.GAD1 is an important gene which has big role in the production of an important chemical messenger with in human brain. Generally, GAD1 turns on at rather higher rates during prefrontal cortex development. However, in schizophrenia patients the increase in GAD1 is rather at lower rates. Oligogenic inheritance and polygenic inheritance are two type of additive effects related to genes which causes human vulnerability to schizophrenia. Some other risk factors related to schizophrenia include poor nutrition, exposure to certain influenza, exposure to war zones, poverty, incompatibility in Rh factor of blood, and depression. Detailed etiology schizophrenia will give better idea about schizophrenia.

You may wonder what the relation between John Nash and Schizophrenia is! Schizophrenia can be termed as a disorder of brain, which affects young people in the age group between 17 and 28. The movie “A Beautiful Mind” throws light on the John Nash Schizophrenia phenomena. Movie takes viewers through the struggle as well as re emergence of a mathematician from paranoid schizophrenia. “A beautiful Mind” is the cinematic version of the john Nash’s biography written by Sylvia Nasar in the same name.

John Nash’s Schizophrenia recover was not a pretty one. It took three decades for John Nash to recover from schizophrenia with the help of antipsychotic drugs. However, it threw lot of questions regarding the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs and its efficiency in long-term recovery process. Not just John Nash, there is a long list of famous people who suffered from schizophrenia which includes Meera PopKin, Andy Goram, Bob Mosley, Lionel Aldridge and many more.

John Nash’s wife admitted him to McLean Hospital in 1959 after prolonged erratic behaviour and fear about some organisation chasing him. There the doctors’ diagnosed John Nash paranoid schizophrenia as well as clinical depression. After his release, he tried to obtain political asylum in East Germany as well as France. French police deported him back to USA after arrest as per the USA government’s request.

He after getting admission at a hospital in New Jersey in the year 1961 started undergoing insulin shock therapy as well as antipsychotic medications. For around nine years he continued treatment in various hospitals and after 1970, he refused to visit any hospital and never took medication. John Nash believed that antipsychotics drugs are not that effective and people do not consider the ill effects that the mentally ill patients have to suffer due to it. As per his words, Nash made a gradual recovery from schizophrenia over the due course of time.

There is a fact to be looked upon, a good number of schizophrenia patients in developing countries recovered from it. While schizophrenia patients in USA as well as other developed countries remains chronically ill. Studies also point out that those who gave up antipsychotic drugs gradually recovered from schizophrenia. Therefore, it is obvious to think whether antipsychotic drugs helped John Nash in any manner in his recovery! John Nash’s recovery from this chronic illness showed that living life in a simple manner is more effective than drugs.

Lots of work has been done in order to establish what the characteristics present in a schizophrenic handwriting are.               

A schizophrenia patient’s handwriting is often quite distinguished. Those who trust graphology and its science can even tell the typical traits of schizophrenia handwriting. For instance, their handwriting is usually quite illegible as well as chaotic by nature. Many a tines the words or the letters could be missing too. In many cases, they have been seen to write in multiple languages, all in one sentence, and such a jumble that they only would be able to completely understand it properly. Sometimes, they cab write perfectly normal too, before getting back to their confused writing pattern once again after a while.

Some of the most prominent attributes to their handwriting are:

Use of capital letters: the capital letters and pen strokes may get reversed and disconnected. They even show a tendency like many internet using teenagers (these teenagers cannot be called schizophrenic though), who suddenly start writing capital letters in the middle of their words.

Multiple writing style: often schizophrenia handwriting shows multiple handwriting styles in the very same page. They write in varying styles, in just one go of writing. However, since multiple personality disorder patients do this too, there is often confusion in regards to which disease the person is actually suffering form.

Strength and handwriting pressure: schizophrenic handwriting of schizophrenia patients often shows great variations in writing pressure for instance while sometimes they may write with very heavy pressure, suddenly they just might begin to write with very light pressure. This happens while they are writing at one go, and not even on different writing occasions, suggesting violent fluctuations in writing feel, in a very short span of time.

However, owing to the excessive variations in symptoms, Schizophrenia often gets tough to diagnose. Sadly there is no fool proof test like blood test, that can be trusted to confirm if the disease. Needless to say, diagnosis depends on careful observation of the patient and of course the patient’s own account of experiences, symptoms and psychotic episodes, this must be done by an expert, who preferably also understands handwriting analysis, so that studying their handwriting can also serve as a profitable tool. Since strangely irregular handwriting is definitely a characteristic feature, it can help predicting if the disease is present, and if professional help might be sought. Though of course, graphology may not always make perfectly accurate prediction, it definitely can be counted on for suggestions.

The worth of the antipsychotic schizophrenia medication compliance cannot be underestimated. They can help in reducing the duration and episodes of the symptoms milder also decreasing their frequency. Though they are not exactly percent for the cure, most patients tend to benefit from it. According to the statistics, about seventy percent of those under drugs show improvement while twenty five percent improve, but not as much. Unfortunately, the remaining five percent even show deterioration.

The neuroleptic and Antipsychotic medications are capable of influencing the brain communication neurotransmitter cells. The symptoms of schizophrenia or at least the positive symptoms are said to result from multiple transmitter system problems that includes glutamate, secrotonin, and dopamine, which these drugs are capable of correcting or reducing.

Though these medications for schizophrenia are capable of helping the patient, not all function the same way. Thus no particular schizophrenia medication can be categorically stated as the best option. The effects of the medications vary with patient to patient. The conditions of side effects (the cases of which can be sometimes serious) must also be carefully observed. The dosage and the course of medication for schizophrenia should be balanced and determined for every patient carefully, by either the psychiatrist or, any allied medical expert working under a psychiatrist. The medicines often take up to months to begin showing visible effects, and thus lots of patience is required while having medication treatment for schizophrenia.

The Atypical and Generation of Medicine

There can be two types of medication of schizophrenia including paranoid schizophrenia medications: The ‘typical drugs’ of the first generation and the ‘atypical drugs’ and the dopamine partial agonists of the second generation. The first kind belongs to the very first family of schizophrenia medications including drugs like loxapine, thoridazine, thiothixene, fluphenazine, trifluoperazine, chlorpromazine and haloperidol. The send generation, developed much later includes: clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine, ziprasidone, aripiprazolea and quetiapine. The name of these drugs and the difference between these names helps in determining how they are expected to work. While the typical drugs of the first generation are expected to work by affecting the dopamine, the atypical schizophrenia medications were supposed to affect the neurotransmitter system. However, according to the latest researches, both classes of drugs mostly revolve around affecting the dopamine.

However, in spite of this fact, the typical drugs can have certain advantages over the typical ones in schizophrenia medication treatment. For instance, in schizophrenia treatment medication they are supposed to provide greater relief form negative symptoms, better prevention form relapses and capacity to function, less of EPS and TD, and less scope of cognitive impairment.