Schizophrenia: The Disease and Treatment Options :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Schizophrenia: The Disease and Treatment Options Leann was a beautiful 17-year- old with a great future ahead of her. She was the star of TV commercials, and sang in the high school choir. She was the envy of all the schoolgirls and the teachers' favorite. She lived in Crawford, Colorado and helped her family on the farm. She had high hopes of becoming a beautician and hairdresser and going on to college or technical school to develop her talent. Now, at age 45 she lives in an apartment in an assisted living center in Grand Junction, where she has lived for the last 23 years of her life. She endures the multitude of medications. She sits in her room, writes songs and sends them to famous country singers, like Toby Keith, hoping to hear her song on the radio someday. She walks downtown to the swimming pool and goes for a swim every once in a while during the hot summer days. She tries to live as normally as she can. About every night we get a call at our house around 6:00 every evening. On good nights she talks about her day and asks us how we are, and what we are going to do the next day. She talks about how she sent her song to some singer and sent something else to the White House. She tells me that I should go to Mesa State College and study to be a hairdresser. On bad nights, however, it is a totally different story. During one of her bad night conversations, she talks about off the wall things that none of my family can understand. She talks about how she thinks my sister can "call events" (tell the future) and how somebody told her that it was true. We try to tell her that my sister can't tell the future, but she doesn't believe us. She talks about how people just come into her apartment and harass her. She thinks that everything she sees is connected with some big plan or conspiracy against her. Often, she will be talking about one thing, and then giggle and just jump to something totally different. All the random changes in subjects and crazy ideas are typical to those who suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, a disorder that affects over 2 million Americans (Mayo Clinic, 1998). Often Leann hears voices and sees people who do not exist and that is how she gets all her ideas about her or others reading minds and telling the future.