DUE TO MY SECOND HAND EXPERIENCE WITH PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA I NOT ONLY BECAME INTERESTED IN MENTAL HEALTH, BUT ALSO GREW AS A PERSON.
I fell asleep next to my best friend as usual. However, this time it wasn't so peaceful. My brother kept tossing and turning. He kept changing positions from lying down to sitting up, again and again. My sleep was disturbed as I became worried. What’s the matter with him? This is unusual. The pit in my stomach matched my confused thoughts. I believe I asked him what was wrong, too, but he said nothing. Ok. I thought, he’ll go back to sleep, but he didn’t. Little did I know this was the day that my brother was possessed by paranoid schizophrenia.
I was 12 and he was 16 during the time of his first episode. Danny was spitting out gibberish and although I had no idea what mental illness was at the time, I knew my brother was sick. He forgot we were in Connecticut spending the weekend at my uncle’s house and believed we were still at our home back in Boston. “I don’t even know how old my little sisters are man!” He screamed in between chopped up sentences. At that moment that’s when it clicked in my mind that his cognition were abnormal. My heart accelerated and I could hear it pounding in my ears, I was shaking. What is going to happen to Danny? What does this all mean?
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I had no choice but to learn how to deal with conflicting thoughts and feelings about the person I once admired. I developed healthy ways to manage my stress and one of those ways was therapy; I begged my mother to let me take it. I also learned to focus all the negativity into something positive. My academics. Although my freshman year wasn't perfect I managed to keep at 3.0 average that year, while having to adjust to what it felt to me at the time, a new