They aren’t mental

“I thought space aliens were after me. I didn’t dare leave my room and covered all my windows with aluminum foil to keep them out. I refused to eat because I thought the food was poisoned.”

Schizophrenia (pronounced like SKITZ-ZOphrenia) is a growing disease in our society. In North America, 1 out of 100 people are expected to develop Schizophrenia. Men tend to be diagnosed in their teens, while woman, the outset is usually few later. Many people aren’t aware of what it’s really about, so they assume the person is just crazy, like those hobo’s you meet in Down Town. Partly that’s true; many of those “hobo’s” are diagnosed with schizophrenia. Basically people who have schizophrenia have hallucinations. They see and hear things which are not in existence. People with schizophrenia may have episodes (hallucinations) and their family might not even know. I mean really think about it, if your sister tells you about a new friend at school, it won’t cross your mind that it’s imaginary. It isn’t anything out of the ordinary, except these episodes get worst over time. Schizophrenia develops gradually overtime. At first one might began to lose interest in their usual pursuit and withdraw from friends and family. Sometimes other people see that as stress or depression. They prefer to be alone and cannot concentrate well on their usual daily things. They may also become intensely preoccupied with religion or philosophy (this doesn’t have to happen to everyone, but its likely to). This period can last for weeks, months, sometimes a year or two. After that, they begin to have active delusions, hallucinations, marked distortions in thinking and disturbances in behaviour and feelings. It’s all downhill from there; the symptoms just get worst as time goes by. They become suspicious of everything; they don’t trust people or things. They feel like a victim, as though everyone is out to get them. They stop caring for their health and personal hygiene.
Some lucky people with schizophrenia might not have an episode for years and live a completely normal life. Some (even luckier) people might only have few episodes their whole life, and they might not even know they had it. Of course people who have schizophrenia have medication, which helps stop the hallucinations and it numbs their mind. The medication makes them sleep all the time and they can never concentrate, their brain takes awhile to process things.
There is a bigger picture to this though; the person who has schizophrenia is one issue. Their surroundings are another. I don’t think anyone will truly ever understand how a person can be normal without being….well normal. People with schizophrenia usually lose their friends and family because they become difficult to handle. Friends and Family become frustrated with one who has schizophrenia because at one point, they just can’t handle it anymore. I try to think about, what it would be like to see things which didn’t exist. I mean I could be going to school everyday, talking to tons of people, attending lectures with a class full of students and a professor and all this could be just in my mind. People with schizophrenia can physically feel everything they see. For example, if they see that they have been stabbed, they can see and feel the blood on their body.

This is making my head pound. Trust me, writing the word s c h i z o p h r e n i a 30 times (without misspelling it) can do that to a person.