Schizoaffective Disorder: Personal Experience - Essay Example

Schizoaffective Disorder: Personal Experience Mental health problems are serious obstacles for individual’s life. They negatively affect the course of the individual’s activity and in some cases may prevent a person from any activity. These problems also often affect the lives of the people close to the patient – family and relatives, and the point of concern is what way they should behave and treat their relative with a frightening diagnosis. Schizoaffective Disorder: Personal Experience Psychiatry is a sphere of medicine in particular and human activity in general which reasonably distracts many people from itself due to different facts which cannot be left unattended. Many diseases and disorders treated by the psychiatrists have frightening and often unbearable symptoms which healthy people seldom deal with and try to avoid experiencing them in any way. The fact is that in some situations it is simply impossible to avoid contacting psychiatrists, for example, if one of the family members has a diagnosis related to psychotic disorders. My family has such a patient: my sister Nadine is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. This affects our life in a peculiar way which will be revealed below. A Brief Outline of the Disorder It is necessary to investigate into the essence of the mentioned disorder to better understand the related experience of my family. Schizoaffective disorder is a chronic condition of mental health which characterizes by the combination of symptoms predominantly of two mental health disorders: mood disorder symptoms (depression and mania) and schizophrenia (delusions and hallucinations). (NAMI, 2015). It is necessary to mention that this disorder is not as well studied as the two main disorders which symptoms schizoaffective disorder comprises. (Mayo Clinic, 2014). There are, however, symptoms which make it possible to differentiate this diagnosis among the other ones which my family has admitted with my sister Nadine, such as disorganization of speech, disorganization of behavior which sometimes is catatonic. The fact that these symptoms have been observed for much longer than two months, namely for five years, there are no other variants but schizoaffective disorder. (Psych Central, 2014). The thing that we have been wondering at the doctor’s is the causes of this psychotic disorder, but we have been surprised at hearing that the exact reasons and causes are unknown. We have been explained that the reasons include different types of triggers, such as genetic predetermination, factors of the individual’s environment (stress for example), and brain chemistry peculiarities. (Better Health Channel, 2012). We have also been explained that in case of genetic reasons predomination, the thing that is inherited by the patient is not the illness itself, but the difference in the brain development, which we have suspected based on Nadine’s everyday activity and behavior. (van Os, Kapur, 2009, 641). Personal Interest and Experience Witnessing the sister’s problems and the parents’ disturbance on the mentioned disorder, I have become interested in personal investigation of both theoretical and practical resources on schizoaffective disorder. I cannot say that I have found good news for myself or my family members and Nadine, the patient, but I at least have come to a certain degree of the problem perception and understanding which has shed some light on what we have been experiencing for five years already. I have found out that the schizoaffective disorder diagnosis is difficult to state, and the reason is that this disorder may combine many symptoms from the other mental health problems. (Better Health Channel, 2012). I have also discovered that the symptoms like hearing voices which are heard by no one except the patient, hallucinations – seeing the things which are unreal or do not exist in real time and space, feeling controlled by someone are present with my sister – she often tells us to hear to this or that voice which says us to do certain things, or points at the objects that are real for her personally. We, me and my mother, have also noticed that Nadine often switches between the topics of the conversation too fast without observing the sequence and the sense, which is another symptom of the mental health damage observed. (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2013). The primary question which is of the greatest interest, both for me and other members of my family, particularly for my mother who lives together with Nadine, is in what ways schizoaffective disorder is treated and if it is treatable at all. I have studied that the disorder mentioned needs a combination of different ways of treatment: medication (that is, biological), counselling (psychological approach) and aspects of social character. This combination has the best treatment efficiency which has been proved by the scientific researches. (Mental Illness Fellowship Victoria, 2013, 1). Family Relations (Mother-Daughter) As I have already mentioned before, my mother lives together with Nadine. This is the fact which has contradictory meaning for both of them: on one hand, the daughter is constantly under surveillance of a mentally healthy person capable of making decisions and taking proper actions; on the other hand, the mother is, obviously, in her sixties which means that she is not powerful enough, both from physical and moral perspectives, to react and even resist to some of the patient’s behavior peculiarities, for example, the above mentioned catatonic behavior. The point of concern is also that the mother is the best caregiver in this very case because she knows her daughter better than anyone and, therefore, knows how to communicate with her, and the daughter, in her turn, prefers the mother as a closest person; at the same time, the mother, due to her age, often shows signs of being a bit tired of constant tension caused by the need to exercise control and caregiving to the daughter. The thing which made us concerned at the very beginning of the treatment, and the fact that we were warned by the therapist about possibility of this event, was that after the beginning of the treatment course the patient might feel some relief and refuse from continuing the treatment course. (Queensland Mental Health, 2014). The mother, however, managed to resist to this initiative of Nadine and took unbelievable efforts to reassure her of her being wrong in this matter. I shall also mention the fact that the mother often tells me, when the daughter does not hear us, that she is sometimes frightened by the hallucinations which may occur with no reference to the mood condition, which has made us consider involvement of other people who are close to our family to provide help to my mother. (Tigoboff, 2009, 10). My mother, as a person of different generation, still thinks that the diagnosis from a psychiatrist to one of the members of the family makes the family guilty for this fact and gives the physician opportunity to blame the family rather than to provide proper support and help, but I do not stop assuring her that today the society does not perceive the words from psychotic diagnosis as something threatening and, on the contrary, strives for overwhelming assistance to the families affected by this phenomenon. Moreover, the researches conducted by contemporary scientists and practitioners from psychiatric field prove that the progress in approaches to medication has made it possible to successfully treat mental health problems and give the patients and their families hope for at least quiet life. (Gluck, 2007). My family, and I and my mother in particular, have understood the fact that family support is a significant component of emotional assistance to the patient and a considerable contribution to the positive treatment course. This is why we (I personally do it more often, and the mother, obviously, because of her age) have decided to communicate with the professional therapists and psychiatrists on the sister’s disorder to receive the most complete and relevant information and be ready for anything that might happen within the course of practical treatment. (Gluck, 2007). My family in general assesses the schizoaffective disorder of our relative, a sister and a daughter, as a complicated condition of mental health and a problem which needs attention and treatment. Caregiving process is never an easy activity, and in case with a patient with a psychotic disorder this process becomes much more difficult and demands much more resources, in all the meanings of this word, from those providing the care. I must admit, however, that this shall not be a distracting circumstance which may prevent people from taking such responsibility on oneself, but, on the contrary, a kind of testing of family relations and ties. The family shall provide all the necessary and possible support in any kind and form to save her member, even if the diagnosis may seem shocking and frightening. Conclusion Psychotic disorder is a word combination which frightens many people, but the families which have members with such mental health problems must resist to this fact and provide assistance for the patient in any volume required and in accordance with the recommendations of the psychotherapist or psychiatrist. My family has managed to find resources of material and mental character to provide Nadine, my sister, with the necessary help to overcome her mental health problem, schizoaffective disorder, even though this has not been an easy task. References Better Health Channel. (2012). Schizoaffective Disorder. http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Schizoaffective_disorder Gluck, S. (2007). Schizoaffective Disorder: Information for Families. http://www.healthyplace.com/thought-disorders/schizophrenia-articles/schizoaffective-disorder-information-for-families/ Mayo Clinic. (2014). Schizoaffective Disorder. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoaffective-disorder/basics/definition/con-20029221 Mental Illness Fellowship Victoria. (2013). Understanding Schizoaffective Disorder. http://www.mifellowship.org/sites/default/files/styles/Fact%20Sheets/UnderstandingSchizoaffectiveDisorder.pdf NAMI. (2015). Schizoaffective Disorder. https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Conditions/Schizoaffective-Disorder Psych Central. (2014). Schizoaffective Disorder Symptoms. http://psychcentral.com/disorders/schizoaffective-disorder-symptoms/ Queensland Mental Health. (2014). Caring For Someone With Schizoaffective Disorder. http://www.queenslandmentalhealth.com/caring-for-someone-with-schizoaffective-disorder/ Royal College of Psychiatry. (2013). Schizoaffective Disorder. http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/schizoaffectivedisorder.aspx Trigoboff, E. (2009). Contemporary Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Van Os, J., Kapur, S. (2009). Schizophrenia. Lancet, 374, 635-645. Read More