I have to be greatful for this course in some ways, despite my opposition to psychology as a subject. I frequently was sick of reading about one study to the next only to read in the following paragraph that it really, probably, wasn't actually that correct and I really don't buy into a lot of the theories. In a lot of ways, I don't consider it a science (sorry) and this only fueled my distaste. However, I was interested once we got to the chapter including schizophrenia. This is one of the few psychological disorders that I can really validate in my head and relate to, it has more scientific evidence supporting it and it also affected my family. My grandmother died young, and my dad dealt with her illness for most of his adolescence. Since I never knew her, or anything about the disease other than that it meant she was the definition of "crazy" , it was interesting to learn more about what she went through and to talk to my dad about the things that he noticed about her condition. I was surprised at how much I didn't know about her. Having read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest like so many others I had always assumed that shock therapy had been a hardship for her, or that it made her worse and was just another sad case of medicinal mistreatment. To my surprise, shock therapy actually helped her condition. But unfortunately, there were no medications like Thorazine available to treat her so she still struggled quite a bit. I had also been pretty concerned about my personal risk of developing schizophrenia later on in life. My mom has always been concerned about a severe fever or something of that nature causing that gene to get expressed in my brother or me and I think her own paranoia sparked a little nervousness in me as well. Thankfully, my risk as a grandchild is only 5% for ever developing the illness and I figure there are a whole lot of awful things out there that I have a much higher chance of experiencing to be worried about. So all in all, I'm glad I got a little more insight into schizophrenia. It's taught me more about my grandmother, my dad's life, and my own future.
(But don't think I like psychology)
I can understand the initial thought that people with schizophrenia are "crazy". Schizophrenia is one of the few mental disorders that can legally be defined as insane, or crazy. Sadly, few actually understand the symptoms of schizophrenia such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and ignorantly throw around the word crazy. That's where I believe this class can help in that category. Although there are many grey areas in psychology, it also does well to explain the topics to the most current views of understanding.