This is the story of one of my best friends

I copy here the definition of schizoaffective disorder from the English Wikipedia:

Don Quixote
(1605, first edition)

"Schizoaffective disorder (SZA, SZD, or SAD) is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal thought processes and an unstable mood. The diagnosis is made when the person has symptoms of both schizophrenia (usually psychosis) and a mood disorder-either bipolar disorder or depression. The main criterion for the schizoaffective disorder diagnosis is the presence of psychotic symptoms for at least two weeks without any mood symptoms present. Schizoaffective disorder can often be misdiagnosed when the correct diagnosis may be psychotic depression, psychotic bipolar disorder, schizophreniform disorder, or schizophrenia. It is imperative for providers to accurately diagnose patients, as treatment and prognosis differ greatly for each of these diagnoses.

There are two types of schizoaffective disorder: the bipolar type, which is distinguished by symptoms of mania, hypomania, or mixed episode; and the depressive type, which is distinguished by symptoms of depression only. Common symptoms of the disorder include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech and thinking. Auditory hallucinations, or "hearing voices," are most common. The onset of symptoms usually begins in young adulthood."

I have chosen this disorder because is the mental illness one of my best friends suffers from and maybe is the one I know best. I will try to describe her experience before the diagnosis, and the process she is following facing this disease.

One Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest
(1975)

This person was raised in a medium-class family. Her parents are from a rural environment. She is the second child of three. Her family moved from the village to the capital when my friend was only a child. Her father had to work under very high pressure and extra hours. He was almost never available to help his family in an emotional sense. Her mother tried to raise the three children by herself, but she has never been a very sensitive woman. Thus, she gave her children everything material, but quite a very little amount of caring love. My friend has always been a very sensitive person, and she adopted an emotional support role in the family from a very early age. Hence, she was almost always the one who carried much of the blame when things were not going as expected in the family.

These circumstances led my friend to develop a very mature sense of preservation and to create atmospheres of stability in every environment she was immersed in. On the contrary, she could not develop almost any other social ability. When she reached her teens, this role in her family stayed growing more and more regarding pressure and responsibilities, and she realized that she was starting to get out of energy. Thus, to manage to face satisfactorily her own life and his studies, she began to drink alcohol in high amounts, as she found herself unable to get energy from any other source.

Then, her social network grew in drunks, and as she has always been a very sensitive person, many of those drunks started to abuse emotionally from her, too. By her twenties, my friend began to realize that she was going deeper and deeper into a dead end, and when she began to be near exploding, she tried to tell the whole thing to her family. But as she was under the effects of alcohol, she lost her temper, she behaved verbally aggressive, and she didn’t manage to explain sufficiently well what she was experiencing. The result was that her parents and brothers believed that she had lost his mind. Due to being accused of madness by her own family, my friend had a psychotic attack, and consequently, she was hospitalized and diagnosed.

The Sixth Sense
(1999)

My friend has been under treatment since then, that is almost 18 years ago. There are many things that have helped her, and others that haven’t helped her at all. I would say that the real effect of some psychotherapies is that they modify the memories of the patients, and sometimes this can lead to an exaggeration of some traumas. And about the chemical medication, I would say that my friend has only been well-medicated since 9 years ago, and after that, she has been recovering much better. Then, 9 long years passed by until she was correctly medicated. Today this is half of the time since the diagnosis.

I completely agree that we could avoid much of these people's suffering if psychiatry and mental illness had a better reception by society. Maybe we all could help to reduce many of these problems by just sharing a little bit of love :-)

In the loving memory of all the suffering people who face mental health issues.

Many times leading them to death.