Mental Illness: Schizophrenia
Brookelyn Hazelwood 3/18
Schizophrenia: A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
I recently discovered that my half-brother, Brandon, has the mental illness schizophrenia. During his 31 years of living on this earth, he never got the help that he needed. He developed this mental disorder over time when he went through the death of our dad a week before his 8th grade graduation.
I feel bad because I’m not that nice to him. I don’t have patience for the kinds of things that he says or does. One minute he’s talking about God on Facebook, the next he says how he is going to beat someone up. For the longest time, I tried to convince myself that he is not related to me in any way, that I do not love him. I blamed him for how he acted and held that against him. In reality, it is not his fault. Brandon suffered from trauma. My biggest excuse was that I could not help someone when I couldn’t even help myself.
I can’t keep treating my brother some kind of way for something that was never his fault. Instead, we will help each other, along with my other half-brother, Bentley, who is expecting a son in a few months.
Learning about my brother’s diagnosis inspired me to go to therapy. Not because anything is wrong with me, or I am crazy, but because I do not want my emotions from the loss of my dad to get in the way of my success. I do not want to hide my feelings anymore. I can’t keep walking around pretending like everything is fine. The emotions I feel related to losing my father may never go away, but I want to be able to control them and not let them get out of hand.
Brookelyn Hazelwood 3/18
Schizophrenia: A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
I recently discovered that my half-brother, Brandon, has the mental illness schizophrenia. During his 31 years of living on this earth, he never got the help that he needed. He developed this mental disorder over time when he went through the death of our dad a week before his 8th grade graduation.
I feel bad because I’m not that nice to him. I don’t have patience for the kinds of things that he says or does. One minute he’s talking about God on Facebook, the next he says how he is going to beat someone up. For the longest time, I tried to convince myself that he is not related to me in any way, that I do not love him. I blamed him for how he acted and held that against him. In reality, it is not his fault. Brandon suffered from trauma. My biggest excuse was that I could not help someone when I couldn’t even help myself.
I can’t keep treating my brother some kind of way for something that was never his fault. Instead, we will help each other, along with my other half-brother, Bentley, who is expecting a son in a few months.
Learning about my brother’s diagnosis inspired me to go to therapy. Not because anything is wrong with me, or I am crazy, but because I do not want my emotions from the loss of my dad to get in the way of my success. I do not want to hide my feelings anymore. I can’t keep walking around pretending like everything is fine. The emotions I feel related to losing my father may never go away, but I want to be able to control them and not let them get out of hand.
