Recourse for a shattered mind

In the winter of 2013, during a week of subfreezing temperatures uncharacteristic to the area, four homeless men died of hypothermia in the streets of San Jose, California. When I first heard the story, I found the news disturbing—that in wealthy Silicon Valley, the needy had been ignored, denied even the most basic resources. As I continued to follow the news reports, however, I learned some important details. It turns out, the victims had been offered shelter; the problem was that none of them had accepted it. When approached by volunteers from a local charity organization, they had turned down the help, refusing to abandon their makeshift encampments on the street.

We know that people with schizophrenia see the world differently, but questions remain as to what exactly they see. What threat, imperceptible to the passerby, makes freezing to death on the street seem more bearable than a night in a county shelter? Even when we understand that schizophrenia exists in a third of the world’s homeless, a diagnosis of schizophrenia in itself will not allow us to empathize with people who are suffering.

Though it might seem counterintuitive, my family’s battle with schizophrenia made me hesitant to embrace the idea of empathy. While the bodies of the homeless men were identified and removed from the city streets, my thoughts turned to a small house in rural Hawaii, hundreds of miles away, where voices in the wall had irreversibly fractured my aunt’s sense of reality. Dependent on ineffective medication and the care of my aging grandparents, my aunt has been fighting severe schizophrenia for decades. I have never seen more than a glimpse of her at a time, yet when I visit my grandparents, I can hear her muttering from the room where she hides: “I don’t know if you’re a man or a woman. I just want you to leave me alone.”

Rather than empowered to reach out, I felt scared to imagine an illness that had caused so much devastation. I found it difficult to acknowledge the millions of people whose lives had been shattered by hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking. Equally difficult, for me, was the reminder of the years and opportunities my own family had lost to the illness. Listening to my aunt’s disoriented conversations with the ceiling, I had come to understand schizophrenia as one of the most heartbreaking things that could happen to a person.

Surprisingly, it was a classroom discussion that shattered my artificial peace. During a lecture about gender-based violence, I watched in growing discomfort as my classmates—a group of fifteen of my peers, male and female—agreed that schizophrenia was a lie that rapists would perpetuate in order to reduce their prison sentences.

I had been sheltered in the past, I realized, because I had never encountered a situation where academics had clashed so profoundly with my personal views. I began to understand something important about my position: If I had witnessed even a fraction of the suffering caused by schizophrenia, then I had a responsibility to approach it on a human level. As one of the many people fortunate to live without the illness, I could do my part to advocate for a widespread unification of resources and, with the help of others, attempt to make the world a kinder place for those who are misunderstood.

Though initially scared to approach a problem I could not solve on my own, I started investing myself in personal ways. I talked to my family about the challenges they faced. I took an auditory hallucination simulation, as a way to appreciate how far we have come in understanding a human experience. (Through its limitations, it simultaneously reminded me how far we have yet to go.) I reached out to my local homeless shelter, in hopes that, together, we could find new ways of reaching out to others. Even though it made me nervous, I talked to my classmates. It turns out, not everyone saw schizophrenia in such simplistic terms, and I made friends who taught me more about mental illness than I could have imagined.

I was encouraged to find that my efforts fit into a larger network of advocates, mental health professionals, and lawmakers. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, author of Surviving Schizophrenia, became one of my personal heroes. Like my mother, he grew up with a sister who suffered from severe schizophrenia, and, like thousands of people around the world, he has dedicated his life to mental health reform. Through the Treatment Advocacy Center, Dr. Torrey has connected people who want to bring intensive, personalized care to those who are underserved by our medical system. Many people with severe mental illness are not aware they are ill, and the Treatment Advocacy Center pushes for laws that will ensure they get the resources they need. By supporting this program, I stay current on the legislation in my state and the stories of individuals, like my aunt, who will benefit from a social movement that addresses the complexities of a debilitating psychiatric illness.

Piece by piece, we can work to build a better understanding of those most in need of our help. Schizophrenia already creates enough division—between hallucinations and reality, between the ill and the healthy, between resources and those who need them. When schizophrenia in one person is painful to accept, it can seem overwhelming to think about schizophrenia in millions of people, scattered throughout the world, who cycle through hospitals, jails, and homeless encampments. Yet these numbers also indicate to me that there are millions of friends and families who share the same hope for their loved ones. For every mind that has been shattered by schizophrenia, there is another that can help unify our efforts and, through human compassion, work toward a peace we can all share.