Teen tries to quiet the voices caused by schizophrenia - CNN.com

"That's when he explained to me the reason he sleeps," Kanyuch said. "He doesn't hear the voices. He doesn't hear them telling him he's fat, stupid, there's a conspiracy. It's a break for him to sleep."
From a report on CNN.


My own daughter, 20, has been living this nightmare for the last five years. For us, her mother, brother, friends and myself, it's been five years of worry, frustration, denial, helplessness and occasionally even hope. For her it's been five years of pure Hell. Voices, self mutilation including cutting and burning and voices. Did I say voices? Lots and lots of evil, deviant and demanding voices.

Over the past five years she's been shuffled between three different hospitals, I've lost track of the number of psychiatrists and of course, each comes with his or her own idea of the appropriate psychotic drug cocktail (today's substitute for isolating the cause and instituting a cure).

I can't really put all the blame on the system but, they've seen it often enough to know that people with low IQ's don't get afflicted with this disorder very often. It's the intelligent ones. They seem to know what the psychiatrist want's to hear and have no problem spouting the appropriate rhetoric at the right time. The psychiatrist, being human first and professional second is all too willing to accept this as an indication of just what a good job he or she is doing, what a great psychiatrist they are. Meanwhile, the patient is released from the institution with a pat on the head, a pharmacy load of pills and told "now if you have any problems, don't hesitate to call". Ha! What a joke. To the schizophrenic teen, the doctors and nurses are all in on the "conspiracy".

Well, my daughter has been home for the last four and a half months. She's still fighting to maintain some semblance of normalcy (I almost said reality, whatever that is). She is now on a very light, by comparison, medication therapy and although we're not out of the woods yet, I have to believe that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

If any of you have any comments or wish to add an experience of your own, I'd love to hear from you. You don't have to identify yourself but I'm sure that mine isn't a small club.
Brightest blessings, Rev. Roger