posted July 02, 2009 07:01 PM         

I have been torn apart when I write this. My mother has been suffering from delusional schizophrenia for years and my father took no action in curing it for one simple reason: He had no idea what my mother was going through and he still does not have, even the psychiatrist treating her is only intellectually aware of what is happening.

The "symptoms" as the psychiatrists call it started several years ago (according to them every disease is a collection of symptoms and every human being is a disease or no disease meaning every human being is a collection of symptoms) but I am aware that the disease was present very long ago when I was only a child and I have made enquiries and now I know my mother had been ill right from when she was a child. Another name for schizophrenia is Acute sensitivity and she had been treated and insulted with total lack of sensitivity, by even her close siblings(who claim to be know her well, I know how wrong they have been, they don't know her at all - they are the fools) thinking she was just a foolish woman.

Psychiatrist treat such illnesses as pure biological disorders and any psychological root causes have not been researched so far ( the greatest mistake the researchers have made) yet the truth is the medicines they prescribe help the patients to some extent.

I become irritated when people consider such serious illnesses ( I do not want to use the word "disorder") to be just "depression" and just "an outing every weekend" will cure the illness. I try to explain them that it is not that simple, you have no idea what these patients are experiencing and any such explanations I give - I look like the fool.

Schizophrenia - a state of mind where the patient has lost the ability to distinguish between his own fantasies and reality. Everyone has got fantasies, dreams and hopes but people generally know a fantasy like becoming a film star from reality that it may be possible. Everyone wants to have an actress as their lovers, but people generally know it is not only not possible it is foolish too. Schizophrenics have lost the ability.

In other words, schizophrenics are incapable of accepting reality. Reality keeps hitting their psyche from all directions and the only way they can maintain peace of mind is by escape into their delusional world. They must be guided to have the strength to accept reality.

Bipolar disorder - People with bipolar disorder undergo extreme mood cycles alternating between extreme elation and extreme depression. All of us have mood cycles, we don't feel the same way throughout the day, our mood keeps changing - even with those stable Taureans who become irritable when their routine is disturbed. Manic depressives, I think (and this is just my perception of it) try to live life to the fullest, to a level of involvement more than what is necessary. This may be because their lives are too mundane and normal or that is how they feel inside. They try to compensate this by feeling extremes in elation and depression. The solution is to help them really enjoy what they do and really feel depressed when something goes bad instead of feeling that life is just mundane no matter what happens.

Depression - People suffering depression feel terribly sad and cannot work on anything for a reasonable amount of time. Even small tasks seem mountainous. They basically are unable to release their feelings of sadness which gets locked inside. They have to release their feelings of sadness and this they cannot do by themselves. Someone must help them out.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - People suffering from illness try to do everything with the left brain - that's what it boils down to from my analysis. They are unable to exercise the right brain. Their way of understanding anything is through the left brain. How can you be really sure that you have locked your door in the house? The OCD patient's only solution is to examine the lock again though the right brain tells them everything is okay, the left brain is unable to accept this input. So they keep checking the lock again and again. They must be guided to activate their right brain, to truly experience/i] the present moment. This they cannot do themselves and need outside help.

The basic to this is [i]understanding. Unless the kith and kin of the patients understand the real miseries the patient is suffering and see it from their point of view, without brushing it aside by superficial evaluations of their state of mind (which only hurts them even more), such illnesses cannot be resolved without the help of medicines. People think a person is mad only when he acts mad. No a mad person is mad all the time. Sometimes he shows it and sometimes he doesn't. Just because he doesn't show it does not mean he is "normal". Normal people have this disease of Acute Insensitivity, they cannot be sensitive to critical mental illnesses of other people. May be they ALSO need treatment.

And the other thing is a mad person is not really mad. There is always a witness within a person that keeps watching what is happening and the witness tries to resolve the situation. The witness is the key to most mental illnesses. That is why the Indian sages kept advising: "Do not participate. Be a witness" They had no psychiatric medicines at their disposal during those historic times and they had to tell people such statements that many people do not fully understand.

I would like to rephrase the above statement as below:

"I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. I am not Me. I am something independent of all of them."

Hope you guys got the point.