Sheldon: Quiet Sunset Thoughts

With this pic, I firmly make my debut as a strong advocate for mental illness awareness and research. All of them in general, but especially schizophrenia. Why does this matter in relation to the picture, you ask? Sheldon, the guy shown, has undifferentiated schizophrenia. In fact, I'll give you a summary of what I know about schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a serious psychosis (a mental illness that affects one's perception of reality). The symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, various thought disorders, and cognitive and emotional impairments. Even with all these things, the hallucination of hearing voices is the hallmark. There are several categories.

One with paranoid schizophrenia may always feel persecuted and have hallucinations and delusions that support the paranoia.

In disorganized schizophrenia, or hebephrenia, grossly (very) disorganized behavior is present. The patient may not communicate clear thoughts, may act immaturely, and/or have hallucinations and/or delusions that seem bizarre.

There's simple schizophrenia, but I don't know much about this one, so I won't describe lest I mess up.

In catatonic schizophrenia, the symptoms include wild yet meaningless motions (flailing, I believe), pointless mimicry, and stupors as they're called, in which the patient remains motionless, either resisting repositioning or holding the reposition.

Undifferentiated schizophrenia is diagnosed when the patient presents symptoms from more than one type of this psychosis but don't fit in particular category. Like I said before, Sheldon has this one.

Residual schizophrenia is schizophrenia that fades off but leaves some symptoms behind. Like hallucinations and lack of hygiene.

And people, let's try to stop saying "crazy" people are violent. It's rude, insulting, and they aren't for the most part. Very few mentally ill persons are violent, and fewer kill. Substance abuse makes a huge difference and can boost this up to almost a third, but seriously. Most of the population with schizophrenia prefer to be left alone. And if they become violent, it's most likely going to be out of fear of prosecution, and it'll probably be within the family.

And it's not funny either. Laughing at people's problems is just messed up and wrong. If someone we cared about had schizophrenia, it wouldn't be nearly as funny. And just 'cause it ISN'T our family, therefore, NOT our problem, does that mean we should laugh 'cause it's someone else's? Think about it.