Effects of Having a Schizophrenic Family Member Essay

A. What is Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is a complex brain disorder that makes it hard for people affected to think clearly, have normal emotional responses, act normally in social situations and tell the difference between what is real and what is not. It makes people withdraw from the outside world and always act out in fear. People suffering from schizophrenia may see or hear things that don’t exist, speak in strange ways, think that people are trying to harm them, and always feel as if they are being watched. They have difficulty in doing activities of daily life. This disease is caused either by one’s genetic make-up or abnormal brain structure. But the environment can be a cause too, as for the environmental factors, more and more research is pointing to stress. Like any other disease, schizophrenia has its own symptoms like strange ways of speaking, inability to express emotion and irrational statements. It is in these symptoms that we can detect persons with schizophrenia. And it is important that we diagnose them for medical treatment for schizophrenia may lead to violent behavior. B. Statement of the Problem People with schizophrenia don’t relate with people well and therefore makes it hard for the people who care for them to maintain a healthy relationship with them, the people they are related to, for example. For Schizophrenic people, it is hard to hold a stable job or even care for themselves. This makes them dependent on others and who else is best to care for them than their own family. However, schizophrenia sometimes results to violent behavior due to their inability to think clearly and belief that people are always trying to harm them. That is why many of their family members don’t know how to deal with them and this causes stress within the family. C. Thesis Statement Effects of Having a Schizophrenic Family Member D. Significance of the Study Schizophrenia is not a rare condition. The lifetime risk of developing schizophrenia is widely accepted to be 1 in a 100. It therefore affects thousands of families. The love and support of a family is vital in treating Schizophrenia but it is difficult to cope with its symptoms. A family member deals with extreme reactions, deterioration from personal hygiene, inability to concentrate and social withdrawal. It is seen that families only put up with the patients for a short period of time because of their frustration in what seems to be lack of progress in treatments. In their inability to understand a person with schizophrenia, a family’s emotional support may wane and some even cut off all contact with their schizophrenic son, daughter, or sibling.