Open and Closed Spaces

He woke up with a strange heaviness in his head . His eyes too were red and puffy.
Right above his bedside was a poster that he had been given in a workshop long back.

It read 'You are never alone in Schizophrenia'

I read somewhere that one in every hundred people in India suffer from this disease and yet so many people in todays world have not even heard of this word . I have come across people who have looked puzzled on hearing this word , some have nodded in agreement and told me that they knew what it was as they had watched the Russell Crowe starrer 'The Beautiful Mind'.

This blog post is my attempt in explaining an illness that continues to intrigue me . It is an illness characterized by hallucinations, disorganized thinking and social withdrawal . It is another thing hearing about it and it is a completely different world if you are actually living it .

Doctors all over the world are trying to understand this disease . A lot of research is going on to understand if this can ever be cured . Some say in the years to come , they will find a cure which will involve putting a chip in the brain to take care of the chemical imbalances in the brain .
All this is too good to hear . And I am glad that there are people who are working on it.
What bothers me the most is why the medical community does not realize that social factors too play an important role in the outcome of this disease.While doctors treat one part of the illness, they potentially complicate another part of the illness that being of social withdrawl .

A patient begins to feel different from the rest , he begins to realize how his illness makes him behave differently , react differently and gradually with time he accepts that he is less than others in terms of health and happiness and that he may not be able to lead a normal life .

Who treats that? No one.

It is definitely a benefit that back in India families play a crucial role . Families stick together like a rock and help the patient cope up with the illness . But what about the families? Someone has to be there to guide them. Someone has to be there to tell them what to do , what not to do. There is no one in the medical community who is thinking of that . Atleast not in India.

Medical doctors need to think about this . They need to think why mental illnesses are only aimed at treating the brain , at controlling the chemical imbalances in the brain..in the body?

What about the rest?And what role do people like us have to play in fixing yet another problem ? A disease with a problem or a problem with a disease?

I wonder how much better it is in western countries...