Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Kenyth:
Schizophrenia is a very sad and often misunderstood disease. An old school friend of my brothers was treated for it since he was a teen. Thorazine, among other things were used. He is very strange. Self absorbed and impulsive. He was found by police wandering the streets in the wee hours of the morning. He was agitated, weilding a pistol, and muttering to himself. He got into a shootout with the officers. Though he was shot multiple times, they were minor wounds. He was lucky beyond belief! No one else was hurt. He hadn't been taking the medication regularly and was vividly hallucinating that "they" were out to get him. Anyone could have been "them" as "they" were always disguised. I blame his parents for not monitoring his medication. The idiot prosecutor wanted the insanity plea thrown out despite the medical record. He was institutionalized temporarily and is back out. God hopes that someone watches his medication from now on.
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The problem with medication also of course is the terrible side effects nearly all schiphrenia medications have, even the newer ones, which discourage compliance enormously, especially when there is a lack of monitoring. The move to deinstitutionalise and move to community care was a travesty, mostly because the community care, at least here in Australia, is hugely lacking and most are left unattended in hostels or homeless. It doesn't help either that there is so much misinformation about schizophrenia and people are allowed to make 'humourous' movies like Me Myself and Irene prolonging the view that schizophrenia is having multiple personalities, and the fact that whenever a person who commits a crime who happens to have schizophrenia this is reported, whether it is the cause or not. In some cases the schizophrenia is to blame, though more often they harm themselves rather than others, but usually the schizophrenia is totally unrelated and yet by reporting it it is seen as the cause and increases the stigma and fear.