Tag: mental illness
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Mental illness hits the headlines – again
Those suffering from mental illness – for the most part – live quietly on the fringe of society, unnoticed by any other than their own families. Unfortunately, a few lash out and grab the headlines as Cho Seung-Hui did last week ago at Virginia Tech. Afterwards, individuals who knew him compiled a latent picture of…
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Yates, post-partum psychosis is a brain disorder
Severe mental illness overwhelms its victims, astonishing everyone with the drastic personality changes until the right medication can be found to stabilize the brain’s chemical imbalance. Last month, Andrea Yates crossed the fine line between a severe post-partum depression into a psychosis in which she is reported to have killed her five children. In a…
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laws do not protect the mentally ill
For six long years my friend’s son refused any and all help, embarking instead into the tumultuous, incoherent world of severe mental illness. Haunted by a host of fears, he became a hermit in the forests of their family farm. Fearful of even the food his sister left in boxes on the trails he traveled,…
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mental illness comes to family
Mental illness leaves the best of homes bewildered by its presence. We were caught off guard when it visited us. Our usually placid, calm family member was agitated, fell easily into tears and experienced things out of our realm of understanding. At the hospital’s locked ward, we sat in a family circle and listened to…