Introduction
Medical science is showing a great progress and there are new and improved solutions that are coming in the market to fight with the diseases, however still there are few diseases which remain a concern and despite the availability of medication the probability of effectiveness remains a challenge.
Schizophrenia is a chronic disease which is really severe and may end up disabling the brain; it is true that almost one percent population will develop Schizophrenia during their life time and there are millions of new cases that are appearing every year. The problem actually lies in the kind of effects posed by this disease and the patients tend to hear voices or sounds coming from nowhere, or may be they will think that there is someone trying to read their mind and controlling their thoughts, which leads them afraid and withdrawn. [ CITATION Spe02 \l 1033 ]
This is a kind of disease which leads to serious mental disorder and can affect the life of the patient so adversely that even the daily routine work will seem difficult. Hence, the medication involves a treatment of the agitated mind and needs a lot of care along however this disease is highly subjective and there may be a case to case difference as well hence the effectiveness of the medication cannot be proactively calculated. In this paper we will study about this disease, its treatment and will consider the book “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness" by Elyn R. Saks’s. to deduce the best treatment as a conclusion.
Schizophrenia Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatments
Schizophrenia has many but difficult to understand symptoms, it is very important to ensure that if any of these symptoms are visible a diagnosis should be done immediately to avoid further damage. Let’s find out about a few of the important symptoms. [ CITATION The99 \l 1033 ]
Delusions – These are basically strange beliefs, where the patients expects that he has been watched secretly or is being followed by someone and such beliefs are very difficult to handle as the patient is completely convinced by his mind that such things are happening with him.
Hallucinations – This is a set of different kind of experiences that happen to the patient where there are hypothetical experiences of hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling or feeling things which are not present.
Disordered Thinking – This is a distorted though process or flow of idea in the patient, and under this circumstance the patient is unable to manage the flow of information and its connection in his mind.
Catatonic movements – this is actually a deformed activity position in which the patient might freeze as if he was a statue, or may become restless, agitated and excited.
The diagnosis of this disease as discussed earlier is very difficult as the symptoms discussed are common for many other mental disorders as well and therefore a very detailed analysis of the history and the symptoms is required before announcing the disease as, all the effects might be caused due to other factors like maniac-depressive disorder or an extreme of depressed mood. [ CITATION Wat03 \l 1033 ]
The treatment approach is not direct however it is experimental, situational and research based. The most common medication for this disease is the use of Antipsychotic Drugs which we will discuss as we move further in these discussions.[ CITATION Spe02 \l 1033 ]
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness" by Elyn R. Saks – More of a Schizophrenia Case Study then an autobiography . . .
The above mentioned book is written by Elyn R. Saks who is today one of the professor’s at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and a research clinical associate for psychoanalysis at the School of Medicine San Diego. She herself has been a serious patient of Schizophrenia however she has recovered from the disease and her journey to fight the sufferings from the disease and excel in life is almost a legendary tale. [ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
It is important to understand here that this book is more of a case study than simply being an autobiography, and the reason behind this is the presence of Schizophrenia in Elyn since the age of eight and the way her diseased progressed, making her realize this no sooner than a couple of attacks that took place during her teenage but it was too late by then, however still she went though a lot of sufferings during her entire treatment cycle, she never lost hope and finally won the battle against Schizophrenia.[ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Wat03 \l 1033 ]
There is a very detailed account of the treatment that Elyn went through, the medications that were prescribed and taken, including her encounters with the various people that she met both for the treatment and for general purposes. The best part is that from a patient’s point of view, there are a lot of details captured which tell us about the mindset of a patient who is going through a severe mental torture while dealing with Schizophrenia and the impact of the treatment methodologies which are used and how they impact the patients. [ CITATION Wat03 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
There is another interesting aspect of the details mentioned by Elyn and that is about the details given by her, that tell us that how she used to manage her brain and the reactions that used to take place due to the disease as that is a key factor for any patient to handle while dealing with a disease like this.
Though medication is something that is the primary approach of the doctors in this case but elyn has given maximum importance to the psychoanalysis which is done in order to make the patient feel better and she says "Medication kept me alive; psychoanalysis...helped me find a life worth living". As we are considering Elyn’s work as a case study we must analyze her entire treatment cycle to understand what went well and what could be better for patients.[ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Spe02 \l 1033 ]
An analysis of the treatment cycle of chronic paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation patient (Elyn R. Saks)
It was at the age of eight years that Saks started developing the symptoms like obsessions and night terrors, however these were pretty early to comment on and gradually developed with a first significant incidence at the Oxford University where she felt various strange voices in her head, suicidal fantasies etc. and was taken to a psychiatric hospital.
Similarly when se was at the Yale law school, she was found to be singing at the roof of her school library and this time she was immediately taken to a hospital where her antipsychotic medication was started. The primary battle with the disease actually started with this incident as she started getting a full time treatment with a pharmacopeia of drugs and a team of doctors and she landed in a hospital for many days. [ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
Now the analysis has to be done with three important aspects into place that actually worked for Elyn, the first one being her own determination and the desire to get well, the second one being the treatment strategy of the team of doctors and Dr. Jones and the last one is the effect of psychoanalysis on her condition, lets look at these in details.
Initially Elyn was against the idea of taking the anti-psychotic medicines prescribed to her and the primary reason behind the same was the feeling that those medicines will make her weak and would control her both mentally and physically, which this thought process she started opposing the antipsychotic medication however with time she realized that avoiding the medication is making her weak and the moment show would start feeling too ill she would start the medication as well. [ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
Once in a little stable state Elyn, again tried to minimize the dose of “thiothixene” which was the medicine that she used to take however with reduced dosage again she would fall into the effect of psychotic attacks and delusions. Despite her regular dilemma of taking and avoiding the medicines, she continued to try her best to maintain a balance between her mind and body and was threatened by the idea of getting rehospitalized again.[ CITATION Spe02 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
She mentioned that “The sheer physical effort of containing my body and my thoughts felt like trying to hold back a team of wild horses”, therefore this was one of the very important factors that more than the medicines that were working on her, there was a lot of personal effort which helped her to improve.
If there is any patient that improves in terms of health, the credit goes to the doctors definitely however in terms of mental patients there are a lot of controversies that take place due to the strategy implemented in order to obtain the results and a similar mixed reaction was seen by the account of treatment given by Elyn, considering the adverse mental-physical combination and dissipated mental state, there were few doctors and practitioners who were harsh with the patients however there were doctors like Dr. Jones who were taking a very calm approach which not only made patients like Elyn feel better but also helped them to convince about the positive impacts of medication and motivated them to believe that they will be doing well very soon. There is a very strong connection that she develops with the team of analysts, as she used to meet them for five days a week, and that really helped to release the pressure extended by the coldness between a psychiatrist and patient. [ CITATION Wat03 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Spe02 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Sak07 \l 1033 ]
“Medication kept me alive; psychoanalysis...helped me find a life worth living”, this line very clearly defines the importance of psychoanalysis in the treatment of Schizophrenia and as we know that Elyn later became a very big supporter of this methodology, today she is a research clinical associate at the New Center for Psychoanalysis at the University of San Diego.
Despite from the tranquilizing effects of the medicines that she used to take, there was too much of a need to boost her energy and make her feels fresh, Elyn mentioned that “psychosis sucks up energy like a black hole in the universe”, and therefore psychoanalysis helped her to control her senses and relax, it proved a great stress reliever for her and it will definitely not be wrong if we say that this is the key factor that has been again and again highlighted in Elyn’s book.
Conclusion
After looking at the details of the treatment cycle that Elyn has gone through and considering the fact that there is no direct treatment methodology available for Schizophrenia, we can easily correlate the fact that this disease is more about simple use of medicines and needs a constant three way approach. The three primary channels that must work simultaneously to fight this disease are Medication, Self Determination, support from Family and Doctors and psychoanalysis.
If these three methods are used effectively, it will be clear that any patient will be able to come out of the curse of Schizophrenia. The medication however may be different depending on case to case and the endurance capability but all the rest of the factors are primarily social and are applicable to each patient, hence per the inference drawn the above mentioned will be the best set of treatment methods for eradication of Schizophrenia.
Works Cited
Saks, Elyn R. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. New York: Hyperion, 2007.
Spearings, Melissa K. An Overview of Schizophrenia. Communication. Bethesda: Information from the National Institute of Mental Health, 2002.
The Royal Society of Medicine. "Drug treatments for schizophrenia." Effective Health Care, Vol 5, No.6 (1999): 1-12.
Waterman, Brian. "TREATMENTS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA." The Past, Present, and Future of Schizophrenia Treatment (2003): 1-22.
