Schizophrenia is Real

New Delhi: Schizophrenia, with its dramatic manifestations, has often garnered attention from all areas of interest, from scientists to writers and filmmakers. A disabling disease that affects 1% of the world population, schizophrenia causes deficits in thought processes, perceptions and emotional responsiveness. A person with schizophrenia can suffer from hallucinations that involve seeing, hearing and smelling imaginary things, and experience the paranoia of being targeted.

Doctors have theorized that prenatal conditions can directly lead to schizophrenia. Genome sequencing has also proved effective for understanding what causes schizophrenia. Until antipsychotics are 100% effective, and the origin of this disease can be accurately identified, schizophrenia will continue to be a baffling and extremely frightening enigma.

Schizophrenia

Hallucinations, delusions, disorganization, lack of motivation and ambition and thought and behavior, withdrawal from society, extreme mood swings, difficult speech process, and overall depravity of humanity.
According to Kendra Cherry, these are all very common symptoms for a schizophrenic. However there are so many symptoms that it’s hard to give an exact checklist of what it means to have schizophrenia.
All I can say is that it sounds like hell. Miserable Mark, who sat there “scared, shaking, convulsing in excruciating pain and bottomless despair.” Imagine being so delusional you were convinced that your dad committed suicide and your lover died in an earthquake. Imagine that you thought your friends were poisoning you, and you took the poison anyway because they were doing you a favor. Or imagine wanting to die because you thought it would be fun. Or imagine walking around knowing the world is going to end any second. On second thought, don’t imagine those things. Value your sanity.

Commentary on The Eden Express II

Why was Mark so attached to the farm? After he had come back, the farm concretely and certainly became his Eden. R.L. Stevenson was right when he said that It is a better thing to travel hopefully than it is to arrive. Mark’s journey had ended and he has arrived? Now what? The only thing to do was to soak in the indescribable beauty and bliss of it all. Everything was absolutely perfect.
But somehow something was not right. The reader can identify a sort of addiction to the farm within Mark. After leaving the farm for a trip into town, Mark experienced grueling stomach problems. He says, “maybe I had become addicted to something in the water or air up there and my stomach troubles when I left were withdrawal symptoms.” Something engraved in Mark’s subconscious made living in Paradise too much for his mind to handle.
His breaking point must have started when he had his first hallucination. One night, a huge face flashed before his eyes. It was all too real to him – the face kept rushing closer and closer, until he was physically inside of the face. “No way to get any perspective on the thing at all, and for all I really knew it was still light-years away and coming and coming and coming.” The face was full of vivid colors, and was very homely to look at. To Mark, “there was nothing at all unreal about that face.” It seemed to him to be some divine experience, some way of reminding him of his own insignificance.
And this is just the beginning of his schizophrenic symptoms. I find it fascinating to read from an inside perspective what insanity feels like.
A post on schizophrenia and more about Mark Vonnegut to come.

Commentary on The Eden Express I

Mark Vonnegut, son of the ’60s and devoted hippie, had finally found his Paradise. When he was stripped away from his secluded farm in British Columbia, he started experiencing schizophrenic symptoms. He was in New York City – the land of infinite automobile noises and endless pollution. All he wanted was to be back home where the valleys and rivers comforted his soul. He began to cry in uncontrollable spurts. He no longer remembered nor cared to remember how to act in social situations. He slowly lost his sense of time and his sense of direction. His only goal was to be back home.

I’ve decided to cash in a little public sanity for inner peace of mind. At the going rate of exchange I’d be a fool not to.

Was it the attachment to the land in B.C. that caused him to act this way? Was it the dope he was taking? Also, why did he start refusing the drugs? He hated the environment of NYC – his subconscious still belonged to his land. For some reason, he was not processing his transition. Nothing seemed important besides the farm.

Introduction

I don’t know very much about psychology. I haven’t had any experience in the field and I’ve never taken a psych course. But I will tell you one thing – I’m very passionate about it.

I don’t mean to be cliché and boring, I’m just using this blog as motivation to learn more about psychology. Since I want to be a psychiatrist, it can’t hurt to get some preliminary research in before I head off into the great big world of medical school. 

I think I should make it clear that I do not intend to master psychology in anyway through this blog. Like John Watson, I am blogging about something I admire, not something I wish to fully understand (in John Watson’s case, that unsolvable enigma would be none other than Sherlock Holmes). 

My goal for this blog: post random tidbits of psychological information that I read in books, magazines, or online articles. My first posts will probably center around schizophrenia (I’m currently reading The Eden Express – a delightful book on Mark Vonnegut’s recovery from schiz). This topic has interested me very much for quite sometime. Other books I plan to read are The Future of the Mind, The Ever-Transcneding Spirit: The Psychology of Human Relationships, Consciousness, and Development, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. 

I’m thrilled for my adventure as a blogger. I hope to have just the right amount of sophistication and squalor (I’m a big fan of J.D. Salinger) throughout my blogging process. 

Oh, and sorry I forgot to mention the authors of the books I plan to read. What is a writer without his words anyway?

In case you care my lovely, nonexistent audience, the authors in order as mentioned: Mark Vonnegut, Michio Kaku, Turo Sato, Oliver Sacks, and Oliver Sacks.