The Forgotten People

The Forgotten People

In a few of my previous blogs,  I may have touched upon the topic of schizophrenia. For thirteen years I worked as a mental health worker in two residential rehabilitation facilities for persons with severe and persistent psychiatric disorders. The vast majority of the clients I worked with had schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a biological brain disorder that can render some very debilitating symptoms grouped as either positive or negative symptoms. The positive symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations and delusions. The negative symptoms include fatigue, lack of motivation, blunt affect, poverty of speech and a few other disabling symptoms. The prognosis for a person receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia is usually not very hopeful. The supposition is that the person with schizophrenia is going to lose many basic things associated with a good quality of life. Theses include things like gainful employment, a good education and a decent material standard of living. Unfortunately, in many cases this direful prognosis proves to be accurate. I will be continuing this series by looking at the exact nature of the problem and some of the possible solutions