Schizophrenia is in the news these days, especially with people’s concern about the Greyhound bus killer Vince Li’s partial return to the community after several years of treatment for his illness.
Helping people overcome their fears through a better understanding of the disease was a large part of the goal behind a public forum held on May 20, 2015 at the Centre Culturelle Franco-Manitobain in Winnipeg.
An artist’s view of living with schizophrenia, by Craig Finn
For many people, schizophrenia is a mysterious sickness, largely misunderstood and easily confused with Multiple Personality Disorder and other illnesses. However, schizophrenia has its own characteristics and challenges, different from many other mental illnesses.
Although schizophrenia can take different forms and have various levels of severity, its most basic element is that sufferers hear voices in their heads and often believe these voices are real and that they have to obey what they hear. Sometimes this can lead to murderous attacks on others, but more often, it leads to self-harm and sometimes suicide.
Members of the panel gave first-hand stories of living or dealing with schizophrenia, both from the perspective of patients living with the disorder and from the viewpoint of doctors, family members, or community workers dealing with the sufferers. Managing schizophrenia is a lifelong process, the panelists emphasized, since there is no real cure for the disease.
Even medication is only a partial reprieve from the illness, especially since the side effects are often so severe that going off the drugs often seems like a better option than enduring the constant struggles that the “cures” often bring.
However, as several panelists noted, medication is only part of a treatment plan that should involve counselling, community support, and family involvement.
Ensuring that these kinds of supports are in place is essential, the panelists noted, especially in view of what has happened in the past few decades. During this time, the government has closed many of the institutions that formerly housed the mentally ill, believing that to have patients locked away was an inferior option to letting them live in the community with the proper supports to help them live normal lives.
The theory of integrating the mentally ill into the community was good, the panelists agreed, but unfortunately the government failed to maintain the necessary supports for keeping everything working as it should.
The result has been a marked decline in the number and quality of services available to sufferers and their families, even with increased private or community initiatives that attempt to fill in the gaps.
For some people with schizophrenia, the unavailability or unreliability of services has made an already difficult situation even worse than it was before. Unlike most other ailments, mental illness carries a social stigma with it, making it difficult for sufferers to seek treatment or to obtain a diagnosis.
Added to the problem is the lack of attention to an illness that affects about one percent of Manitobans.
The media can also sometimes exacerbate the problem when it reports on mental health-related topics without noting that many people can be treated quite successfully and live relatively normal lives.
Several audience members were very interested in the topic of schizophrenia, as their questions revealed. If even a few of them take their new knowledge to the places where they live and work, they might help to increase the general public’s understanding of this mysterious illness.
Thanks for this article, Susan. You tell the story so well, I feel I was there, at the panel discussions. This is a difficult story to tell, for many of the reasons you list. Schizophrenia is a topic which is often shrouded in fear and anger. Education is one of the tools we need to use regularly to move forward for those living with mental conditions, including schizophrenia. Discussion and awareness are two other tools. Kindness is yet another. Each day we do have the choice to be kind to others, especially in small ways. Not always easy to do, certainly.
Your article leads me to ask myself who is not a victim, or rather are we all effected by mental health and mental illness because we are all part of the same community. Things happen to us. That’s life. Whether we realize it or not, we are all living together in some sense, and we do need to care for each other. In fact isn’t caring for each other an act of self-interest at some level? Thanks for raising the discussion, Susan.
Great story Susan. Just before last Christmas a dear friend and artist who was schizophrenic took his life. He was only in his thirties. His death was a huge loss as he had such a big heart and was so much into helping others who were struggling with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. I was kind of angry with him for ending his life and thought it was a selfish thing to do but at his funeral I talked with his family and they told me that he was the least selfish person that they knew. They told me his struggle was over. It made me realize that I really didn’t know what he was going through. I just saw him and always knew him as a beautiful person who had so much to share.