World Schizophrenia Day

Today (May 24) is World Schizophrenia Day. Crudely speaking a day to remember mad people. A bunch of people whom the world would conveniently like to forget. A scar on the otherwise engaged population. A black mark on the otherwise multicolored happy bunch of mostly mediocre species whose sole aim is to promote their own brand of which mad people tend to tarnish. So why do we need to have this day for those who would better not be present, a day to mark an illness which may have brought incalculable sadness to so many around the world through the ages?

Schizophrenia is a disease with both negative and positive symptoms. Positive symptoms include delusions, psychosis, hearing voices, and hallucinations. Negative symptoms include lethargy, lack of motivation, restlessness among many others. Having this illness is like God has given you a permanent place in hell. A hell where you have to battle the demons alone and without any training. And if you have people with you who would help you out, they too are made a member of this satanic place. Their battles in life have multiplied.

If you read the research about schizophrenia, it will be enough to give you depression. Doctors have nothing good to say about their patients. People with this illness lack reward motivation. They lack the Theory of Mind. They are more likely to commit a crime. The list goes on. Imagine a person who has negative emotions thrown at them all day and all night long. It’s like you are in hell and above that people are making all efforts to throw in a burning pit (assuming all hell is not a burning pit).

It’s difficult for someone with all these symptoms to compete in this world. It’s like they are in a race with 20 kilos of weight on them while the other participants run free. Most people give up. And society considers this as the status quo. Few bother to stop and think about whether it was possible for the person to go on. Whether society could change themselves and make way for someone like them. The pace of the world is fast. So people with this illness better take rest. This is sometimes out of empathy but mostly to weed them out of sight and keep moving.

This death of hope is our most crucial blow to the patients. A hope crushed is a life destroyed. People keep saying that once you get this illness, you are never going to lead a normal life again. Something dies inside the patient and sadly inside their loved ones. It’s like a fight has been lost even before you are in the ring.

Everything is not that bad though. In all this gloom there are lovely flowers. Everyone has at least heard of John Nash, the famous mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Even though Prof. Nash did most of his pioneering work before he was sick, he still kept working after he was able to overcome his sickness. There are other positive examples. Many families fight hard for their loved ones. They are a delight in the otherwise harsh world.

A big sunshine is the effort put in by the mental health community to help the patients. Even though the illness is not very well understood and all their prescriptions may not be useful, the mental health community is growing every day. Many of them are empathetic and passionate about mental health which helps the patient community in leaps and bounds and sometimes is a lifeline for the families. In my country though, except for a few enthusiasts and practitioners, the mental health community is surprisingly absent. It’s a tellingly abysmal condition in the small towns and villages where patients are doomed if they have a condition like schizophrenia.

So now I come to the question I started with. This day needs to be celebrated because we need to know more about the disease. This day needs to be celebrated so that we can show more empathy to the patients rather than shutting them down. More importantly shutting their ambitions down. This day may enlarge the mental health community. Most importantly this day should bring in hope, hope that a normal and happy life is possible. After all what are we without hope. Happy World Schizophrenia Day.