Article 2 notes

Berenson, Alex. "Daring to think differently about schizophrenia." New your times Feb. 24, 2008, p. BU.1

• Until October 2006, most medicine for schizophrenia did little to none.
• The new drug was called ly2130023
• "The Lilly results have fueled a wave of pharmaceutical industry research into glutamate. Companies are searching for new treatments not just for schizophrenia but also for depression and Alzheimer's disease…" Page 2
• Affects 2.5 million Americans
• 1% of the world population
• First medicines developed accidentally

• Early medicines didn't help with negative symptoms

• " 'people say that there are drugs to treat schizophrenia,' says Dr. Carol A. Tamminga,…. 'In fact, the treatment for schizophrenia is at best partial and inadequate. You have a cadre of cognitively impaired people who can't fit in"

• Street drug "phencyclidine" helped doctors understand how schizophrenia worked since the side effects for said drug were symptoms of schizophrenia

Article 3 notes

The Quandary Over Mental Illness; USA Today (Farmingdale) Vol. 133 No. 2714, Vatz, Richard E.

Nov. 2004

• " for the vast majority of the untoward behaviors labeled as mental illness,…, that they are freely chosen behaviors for which the agent  must take responsibility," pg. 1

• In the Vietnam war time, physiatrists tortured their patents as a way to "cure" them

• There are millions who go to talk therapy.

• 20,000,000 used/use Prozac/ other anti depressants

• Doctor Thomas Szasz labeled as personified anti-psychiatry

• He says mental illnesses aren't real because the mind isn't an organ
• "Mental illness is a bogus disease"

• Szasz considers some cases of schizophrenia authentic disease

• He's afraid if he says some people are schizophrenic then that would mean other doctors would say more are too are too
• Changes in how someone behaves may be because of a structural brain disease
• Scientists say 50% of all Americans will be mentally ill at least once in their life 

Schizophrenia questions

(http://socialmediaforsmartpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/schizophrenic-300x296.jpg)

These are my shizophrenia questions.

How many different Shizophrenia types are there?

What are the differences between each shizophrenia type?

Why is it so common for someone to think they have shizophrenia, but infact, they don't?

Schizophrenia

        

I will be researching a mental illness called schizophrenia. Seven search terms are,  "What is schizophrenia, symptoms, causes, effects, number of children that are diagnosed, number of actual cases of it,"  and "number of adults diagnosed,"  this topic related to my book because the mother has what I believe to be schizophrenia and because of the symptoms and It's effects, she becomes a horrible mother, and a threat to society. The image that best represents my topic is above. It depicts a girl with multiples of herself around her, yelling at her.( I got this picture from http://blogs.monografias.com/sistema-limbico-neurociencias/2010/06/27/want-to-know-about-paranoid-schizophrenia/) These are, what I’d assume to be hallucinations. I believe she’s black and white because she’s being drained of all her energy. I'm quite happy I've gotten this topic. I've aspired to b a physiatrist for a few years now. I want to help the sickest people, study them, and get into their brain to see why exactly these things happen. I've found psychology very interesting for a while and I can't wait until senior year so I can take it.

   schizophrenia has many different symptoms such as, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized thoughts, and depression. These are only a few of the most common symptoms. There are three different types of schizophrenia, disorganized schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia, and cationic schizophrenia. Most causes of schizophrenia is unknown but scientists believe it's due to different kinds of trauma. Though I don’t know as much about schizophrenia as the specialists, I have to wonder, why is it so hard to find out the causes of this mental illness? What makes it so different than the others? I do not have an ‘opinion’ per say, simply questions.

Novel pen pals

(http://www.wahooschools.org/pages/uploaded_images/RULES%20OF%20SURVIVAL.jpg)

Dear Matthew,




My name is Olivia LoPresti, I'm a freshmen in high school now and I read your Diary turned book. Over the summer I also went to Otakon and also Italy. The way you handled your mom with your Siblings around is amazing. You made your little sister come first no matter what and most of the time you knew what you had to do. I would never have been able to do what you did.

This story, your story, was quite realistic aside a few parts. The way everything was unfolded was quite neat with no plot holes or other such things. Also the way the author turned your story into a Diary or a letter to your younger sister for when she got older Was quite interesting. It made me almost want to keep reading to see what happened. Also the story flowed, it wasn't choppy and the chapters didn't seem to chop it up. Same with time skips, since there weren't many, the Story flowed more evenly and nicely.

When I read the scene with your mother holding a knife to you while you were in bed and giggling, I was quite surprised. But I do have a question about that, what happened afterwards, how did you escape from your mother's insane 'rage'? Also, it amazes me how you could go through all that then write this letter to your younger sister, almost like reliving all the traumatic events all over again.

While there may be no real way to get people to understand exactly what you're going through and how that effected how you lived, your personality, loved ones, and all around people around you, more books could be written about this situation, or have people talk to children at schools about how a mental disorder such as bipolarity or schizophrenia has harmed or changed their life. Children tend to listen more if there's a person actually telling them first hand what happened, which is why I think this book could reach out to quite a few children or teenagers, maybe even adults.

I picked this book because I want to be a psychiatrist, so I like reading about mental illnesses such as this. It does spread a bit of new light on the subject though. Before I thought of the mental illnesses more of a self harming thing than harming those around you, but here, in this situation, The mother obviously harms others around her. Though in doing so she's ruining her life and ultimately ruining herself, she directly harms those around her. When reading or hearing about more mental illnesses I'll be sure to keep this one in mind. Good bye for now Matthew, and have a good future with your younger sister.



From,

Olivia LoPresti

Summer reading questions

1. Who was the main character and what was that character's personality?: the main character was named Matthew. Because of his situation his personality is very wary of everything and slightly paranoid.


2. Most good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Type a complete sentence for each of these three parts that summarizes what happens. : In the beginning you learn about the characters and how the mother treats her children. In the middle, Murdoch started dating their mother but soon dumped her when he found out a bit of how crazy she was. The last part was when Murdoch saved the children from their mother.

3. Explain how one of the issues effected the characters: Due to the insane and horrible things their mother did to them, The children became paranoid and scared.

4. Describe two specific events that make the book's social issues seem real and important. Near the beginning when Matthew was describing how his mother came into his room, giggling with a knife made the fact that she wasn't just a bad mother, but had a serious mental illness. Meaning she had no sense of wrong and right which added a bigger sense of fear in the book. Many people suffer from such mental illnesses and it's important to get to them before they do any harm to a loved one. Also when they were at the lake and the mother was jumping from rock to rock with her daughter in tow enhanced the feeling that she had no idea that what she was doing was wrong.

My profile

My name is Olivia LoPresti, I'm 14 years old and a freshmen. Most of my middle school years were spent at Harford day. In fact, most of my whole life was spent at that school. We grew up together but I needed a new surrounding. So for my last year of Middle School I went to Havre de grace Middle. There I met a couple people with the same passion as me. I love anime. Anime is basically a Japanese, Chinese, or Korean Animated series. All of the series were first a manga, A Japanese, Chinese, or Korean comic book. Within this fandom, a good portion of the fans like to dress up as their favorite character. This is known as cosplaying. Because of this fandom I have met a bunch of people with the same interests as I and I've made a few extremely close friends. My goals for this year are simple to write down but quite hard (For me) To achieve. I'd like to get A's and B's in all my classes. Due to my aspiration to be a Psychiatrist and a foreign exchange student, I need to have the best grades I can get.