Schizophrenia in society
The general public have the fear of the ‘crazies’ breaking out of the psychiatric hospital, or the fear of encountering one of these mentally ill humans on the street. Is this fear justified? No. Due to the media portraying these human beings as mindless animals there is a view on them as ‘violent psycho’s who all need to be locked up’. Although there have been a number of high profile cases where people diagnosed with schizophrenia have committed serious crimes, the media manage to inflate these stories to make them into a front page headline full of stereotypes. This rallies up the public - that is striving for the acceptance of everyone- against the group of individuals with mental health conditions. All this does is imprint a constant brand on the forehead of these damaged humans that they are not welcome in our ‘progressed society’. It comes up a lot in the news when they are displayed to us as crazy. These people are mentally ill. Ill is the key word to bring out of that. They are diagnosed with an illness that hinders their quality of life. So the reaction of the public to that is to make them feel unsafe in their own skin? So this brings up the point that shouldn’t people with poor mental health be treated like people with poor physical health, and deem them as ill and not insane. One point that keeps coming to the front stage is one that shows these people as harmful to the people around them, is this true? Yes to an extent, but what is also true is a human suffering from schizophrenia is much more likely to do harm to their selves than others. In fact violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia, what is found is that a mass majority number of homicides committed by those suffering from schizophrenia are committed while the patient is also suffering from some for of substance abuse and/or they are going un-medicated at the time of the incident. According to a recent study people with Schizophrenia are “3 to 5 times more likely to commit a crime” but the same doctor that studied this and produced the figures also brought to attention that these people aren’t being integrated into society and aren’t being allowed to get jobs. He says that moulding these people into society would knock the crime rate down by “5 to 10 percent”. What the doctor done was study a large number of people with and without schizophrenia and the results conveyed that 8.2% of the schizophrenic group committed a violent crime while 1.8% of the general population committed a similar crime, again the study leads back to the point that a lot could be done to minimalize this problem. Examples of things that could affect how violence is come about such as “disturbed backgrounds, substance abuse, unemployment and poor social conditions” all of which might influence the person more due to the illness Another thing that is brought into light is the impact they have on their family member, another unjustified fear from the general public. …show more content…
This is evident when you see the unfairness in the spread of funding for mental health compared to general health. The hospitals are known to be very uncared for and the comparison on the amount they are understaffed is immense. Often there are only 2 nurses on a ward filled mentally ill people that need constant care. It seems that society is geared towards helping all people but helping those for whom there is a massive outcry for. A large percentage of people with schizophrenia don’t even look ill so society automatically turns off the need to care for these people even though their illness hinders their life in a way that no other illness does. It feels to me that society try and grade how they help ill people on how ill they look. You’ll often see massive media outcries for a young child with a temporary wound, people will share it outraged at how this could happen. Why never for a mentally ill person? Surely having a burden on your mind for the rest of your life is worse than something you can hop down to A&E for. So why isn’t it treated that
The general public have the fear of the ‘crazies’ breaking out of the psychiatric hospital, or the fear of encountering one of these mentally ill humans on the street. Is this fear justified? No. Due to the media portraying these human beings as mindless animals there is a view on them as ‘violent psycho’s who all need to be locked up’. Although there have been a number of high profile cases where people diagnosed with schizophrenia have committed serious crimes, the media manage to inflate these stories to make them into a front page headline full of stereotypes. This rallies up the public - that is striving for the acceptance of everyone- against the group of individuals with mental health conditions. All this does is imprint a constant brand on the forehead of these damaged humans that they are not welcome in our ‘progressed society’. It comes up a lot in the news when they are displayed to us as crazy. These people are mentally ill. Ill is the key word to bring out of that. They are diagnosed with an illness that hinders their quality of life. So the reaction of the public to that is to make them feel unsafe in their own skin? So this brings up the point that shouldn’t people with poor mental health be treated like people with poor physical health, and deem them as ill and not insane. One point that keeps coming to the front stage is one that shows these people as harmful to the people around them, is this true? Yes to an extent, but what is also true is a human suffering from schizophrenia is much more likely to do harm to their selves than others. In fact violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia, what is found is that a mass majority number of homicides committed by those suffering from schizophrenia are committed while the patient is also suffering from some for of substance abuse and/or they are going un-medicated at the time of the incident. According to a recent study people with Schizophrenia are “3 to 5 times more likely to commit a crime” but the same doctor that studied this and produced the figures also brought to attention that these people aren’t being integrated into society and aren’t being allowed to get jobs. He says that moulding these people into society would knock the crime rate down by “5 to 10 percent”. What the doctor done was study a large number of people with and without schizophrenia and the results conveyed that 8.2% of the schizophrenic group committed a violent crime while 1.8% of the general population committed a similar crime, again the study leads back to the point that a lot could be done to minimalize this problem. Examples of things that could affect how violence is come about such as “disturbed backgrounds, substance abuse, unemployment and poor social conditions” all of which might influence the person more due to the illness Another thing that is brought into light is the impact they have on their family member, another unjustified fear from the general public. …show more content…
This is evident when you see the unfairness in the spread of funding for mental health compared to general health. The hospitals are known to be very uncared for and the comparison on the amount they are understaffed is immense. Often there are only 2 nurses on a ward filled mentally ill people that need constant care. It seems that society is geared towards helping all people but helping those for whom there is a massive outcry for. A large percentage of people with schizophrenia don’t even look ill so society automatically turns off the need to care for these people even though their illness hinders their life in a way that no other illness does. It feels to me that society try and grade how they help ill people on how ill they look. You’ll often see massive media outcries for a young child with a temporary wound, people will share it outraged at how this could happen. Why never for a mentally ill person? Surely having a burden on your mind for the rest of your life is worse than something you can hop down to A&E for. So why isn’t it treated that