There is still a large stigma surrounding mental illness even though it affects a fourth of the population every year (nami). “New Approach Advised to Treat Schizophrenia” by Benedict Carey, for the New York Times, talks about the importance of therapy in schizophrenia treatment. The article references a study that showed greater improvement in patients treated with talk therapy rather than those who received none. The study concludes that instead of heavily medicating patients, they should receive less medication, talk therapy, and learn skills to help them deal with episodes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story of a woman who has been diagnosed with “hysteria.” The narrator is ordered to be on bed rest and told by her husband and brother the she isn’t really sick. In the beginning of the story, the woman writes about feelings and symptoms that a person experiencing depression commonly feels; but, by the end of the story the narrator is exhibiting symptoms that are consistent with schizophrenia, like hallucinations. Both pieces show the mistreatment of people with mental illness over decades. This mistreatment causes the narrator to become schizophrenic, and the articles prove that talking therapy and integrating patients into society is the best way to treat mental illness.
In traditional treatment of schizophrenics the patients receive little to no talking therapy, this lack of talking therapy doesn’t improve symptoms or the frequency of episodes. Instead, patients are heavily medicated and, these medications cause unmanageable side effects. An anonymous woman said of her medications: “As for medications, I have had every side effect out there, from chills and shakes to lockjaw.” After receiving a combination of talk therapy and medication she has enrolled in nursing school and is leading a normal life.
The study proved that patients who received talk therapy were more successful, by testing both methods. The first method is traditional treatment, which includes heavily medicating patients to help with hallucinations and voices. The second method uses less medication in addition to talking therapy. While the less medicated treatment didn’t show improvement as quickly as the standard, over two years those who received talk therapy made greater progress which allowed them to lead normal lives and become more independent. Since schizophrenia is, in most cases, a lifelong illness the integrated treatment is a better alternative because it lessens the amount of side effects, by lessening medication. Integrated treatment also allowed for patients to develop skills to cope with episodes, which allows for independence from medication as well as independence from assisted living.
In today’s society people suffering from mental illness are often ostracized, like in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The narrator is forbidden from writing, working, or socializing. This isolation and restriction makes the narrator’s condition worse. The lack of interactions and stimulation gives her ample time to think about the negative things in her life. If she had been able to do things that she had loved, like writing, the narrator would have been able to distract herself from the bad things in her life and replaced them with thing that made her happy. Those happy things could potentially help alleviate the sadness the narrator felt, until it is gone all together.
The same can be said about people with schizophrenia. When someone with schizophrenia is diagnosed and being treated, they are often isolated. Some of this isolation is done intentionally with people choosing not to associate with someone because of their illness. Often, it is done unintentionally, with all the side effects of medications used to treat people. People who are suffering from side effects have a harder time going out in social situations and leading normal lives. This causes them to isolate themselves, which adds another layer of negativity to an illness already extremely hard to manage. This added layer of sadness, caused by the isolation, makes it much harder to cope with schizophrenia, as Gilman portrays in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
In the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is described as having “hysteria,” but the more time she spends in her bedroom her condition worsens, and she becomes schizophrenic. In her bedroom the walls are covered in old, yellow wallpaper. The paper has started peeling and there are many spots on the wall, where it is bare. The narrator becomes increasingly more obsessed with the wallpaper. The narrator believes that there is a women living inside the wallpaper. At first the narrator despises the women claiming she would “tie her up” if the women tried to escape. This evolves into the narrator helping the women escape, much to her husband's dismay. When the women escapes the narrator exclaims, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane” (Gilman). These hallucinations, anxiety, and voices that the narrator hears, prove that she is, in fact, schizophrenic by the end of the story. The narrator becomes schizophrenic because the isolation and restrictions placed on her allow for her to fixate on the wallpaper.
The narrator experiences a treatment that was essentially bed rest, schizophrenic patients receive more medication-focused treatment, the overall effect of the two treatments still remains the same. The narrator was forced into a treatment method that didn’t work and made her condition worse. While schizophrenic patients receive relief from schizophrenic symptoms in traditional treatment, the added side effects make their quality of life worse. In both cases, people were removed from society and unable to lead normal lives. Both ways of treatment, bed rest and traditional medication, do more harm than good to patients and shut people out of society. As a society, we should strive to include people with illness and give them an option so that patients are able to choose the best method of treatment for themselves.
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