Micah's Mighty Blog 👍

Imagine this, you are lying in bed on your phone, and you start hearing voices, someone talking. You hear them telling you to do things, terrible things. They will not stop. You finally get someone to help you, and to your surprise they tell you that no one is there.

Schizophrenia is a long-term brain disorder that changes how someone views reality, sees the world, and gets along with others around them.

 

Schizophrenia affects about 24 million people around the world, which is around the population of Texas. It is not an unpopular disorder. In fact, anyone can be diagnosed with it, no matter their gender, race, culture, or religion. However, there are some main risk factors like family, having a parent who is diagnosed with schizophrenia makes it so you have a higher chance by 10% of having this disorder. If you have two parents with schizophrenia, you will have a higher chance of 40% of being diagnosed. If you have a twin who is diagnosed with schizophrenia you will have a higher chance by 40-65% of being diagnosed with this disorder. Another risk factor is how your birth went, being exposed to viruses at birth or even surviving a difficult childbirth can higher your chances of having schizophrenia. Even the age of your father can affect your chances of having this disorder. If you have a father who was 40 or over during your childbirth, you may have a higher chance of having schizophrenia. Even though this disorder’s general name is schizophrenia, there is more than one type.

 

There are four different types of schizophrenia symptoms, positive, negative, cognitive, and disorganization symptoms. Positive symptoms are symptoms that only appear for the people with the disorder. Some positive symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, movement disorders, and thought disorders. Another type of symptom is negative symptoms. Negative symptoms are functions that people normally have but are absent whenever a person has the disorder. Some negative symptoms are extreme lack of motivation, loss of emotion, loss of pleasure, and reduced physical movement. The third type of symptom is cognitive symptoms. These symptoms are a problem with someone’s thinking process. Some examples of these symptoms are trouble focusing, memory issues, making bad decisions, as well as bad functioning at work or school. The last type of symptoms are disorganization symptoms. These symptoms are a feeling of unreasonable thoughts, speech, and behavior. Some examples of disorganization symptoms include child-like behavior, impuslive thoughts, exaggerated movements, anxiety, and their speech may seem meaningless. Many of these symptoms will be used in a doctor’s diagnosis.

Doctors use DSM-5-TR whenever diagnosing a patient with schizophrenia. DSM-5-TR is a guideline for how many and/or how severe the symptoms must be to be diagnosed. Doctors use the DSM-5-TR whenever someone continues to show two or more major symptoms. The patient’s symptoms must also be present for 6 months. They also must have one month of active symptoms in order to be diagnosed. Being diagnosed is always super helpful because you will need it to get treatment.

 

The main treatment for schizophrenia is antipsychotic medication. A few types of antipsychotic medications are Thorazine, Clozapine, and Halod. 70% of schizophrenic patients improve with medication. The next step of treatment is psychosocial therapy. After a patient’s symptoms start to calm down, they will get therapy to help cope and deal with their symptoms. Sometimes medication and psychosocial do not help much, so the next step would be electroconvulsive therapy. Doctors use electroconvulsive therapy whenever medications the psychosocial do not seem to work much. This type of therapy is when a patient gets put to sleep by a doctor and gets a series of electric shocks sent to the brain. Each of these treatments lasts around 5-10 minutes. A patient would usally have an appointment 2-3 times a week for 2-6 weeks. Sometimes none of these treatment methods help and a patient may even have to be hospitalized. Patients with symptoms too severe for one to handle may need to stay at a hospital. Schizophrenic patients sometimes are violent, but they could be more at risk of harming themselves rather than harming others. Suicide is always a huge risk for individuals with schizophrenia, so sometimes going to the hospital is the best option.

 

Imagine how confusing and scary it must be to have the symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing voices, losing control of how you view reality, having impulsive thoughts. Thankfully, no matter what type of schizophrenia you have or what symptoms you experience, you can always find someone to help you out. Make sure if you have symptoms like these you get help because most people try to hide.

Pandas. My second favourite animal are panda’s. They are SO CUTE. Sadly pandas are endangered animals with an estimate  of 1000 left in the wild. Did you know that pandas spend most of their day eating, they eat for around 10-16 hours daily. They have to eat 20-85 pounds of bamboo everyday! Pandas live in forests in southwest China, there’s also tons of different animals that live in the same habitat as pandas like red pandas, leopards, golden pheasant, takins, tufted deers, and asiatic black bear. But pandas don’t interact with many species because they prefer to be alone. There are brown and black pandas and their both adorable.

There’s definitely tons of things I couldn’t live without, like food, water, air, my family, because I actually cannot live without it. So I’m not gonna say stuff like that. Here we go, top 5 lives I couldn’t live without.

1. My cats. First I love my cats, I’m almost 100% sure I’d die without them. Second, they could keep me busy for DAYS, like cats are just so funny and I could just sit and watch them forever.

2.  My phone. My phone has everything, music, tiktok, google, calculator. It has like everything.

3. BOOKS. Books are my whole life. Take away books from me, you’re basically talking away a fraction of me. The only reason my phone beats it is because I can read online if i had to.

3. Blankets. I NEED blankets, like their warm, and comfy. Plus who doesn’t feel safe under a blanket. There could be a whole zombie apocalypse and I would be fine with a blanket.

5. A pen. Okay this one is very random but I love just doodling and I draw on my hands all the time, it’s just what I do when I’m bored. So I need a pen.

That’s my top 5 things I couldn’t live without.

I have four cats, I’ll talk about them in the order I got them. The first cat I got is Kookie Dough, we named her that because her fur is the same colour as the food cookie dough. I think her breed is Calico. Also her tail is like a bunny’s tail (we still don’t know why). We got her a couple days after one of my birthday party’s when I was younger, (it was a long time ago so I don’t remember which one) she just showed up as her house, she did have a collar but it only had her name and no info about the owner, and her original name was ‘baby’. We did not like that name. So after my parents put food outside for her because she wasn’t leaving our deck and after awhile my parents FINALLY said we could keep her. My second cat I got is Loki, we named him that because Loki is a god of mischief. Loki’s breed is a Bengal. Bengals basically look like leopards. So we got him because my parents were talking about getting another cat for awhile and then my dad went and bought Loki. When we got him he was a kitten and it was really funny because the size of his ears were like the size of his face. After that Kookie dough and Loki had three kittens, sadly I don’t have them anymore. I named my Sangha, which is one of the tigers from the tiger brothers movie, I don’t really remember what it was about because I watched it a long time ago. Since there were three kittens and there’s three kids in my family we each got to name one and the one you named you would just say it was yours. One of them was named Max and the other was named Oreo (I think). So Oreo had to be put down I think a week after it was born. Then my kitten, Sangha, was given away to someone. They renamed it so I’m sorta hurt. My family gets updates with how it’s going and stuff, so I’m happy about that. Then max, the last one, was given to my aunt, uncle, and cousins. One of my cousins really wanted a cat so my family soooooo kindly gave him ours. Now to the last two. Dewey and Panda. They are a little older than 2 years old now. We named Panda that because she is a tuxedo cat, and tuxedo cats and black and white, like pandas. Then we named Dewey that because of Dewey the library cat, which is a pretty sad story honestly. In that story (it is a real story) a cat got abandoned in a library’s drop box in January 1988, he was adopted by the library. The library named him Dewey Readmore Books. There is a book about him called “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World”. We got the cats when they were 3 weeks old. Their mom was a farm cat and about 2 weeks after they were born, their mom got killed by an owl, and the owner of the farm didn’t think that she could keep them alive. So she asked us to foster them for a bit, but we were told they was a high chance they would die, but we said yes. We got them like the next day. Dewey and Panda, since they were so little, had to stay in my parents room. They needed stuff like, a stuffed animal to act as their mom. We also needed to feed them with bottles, like a bottle you would use to feed an actual baby. They were SO CUTE. But we weren’t supposed to keep them, BUT our whole family got very attached and my parents asked if we could keep them. They said yes. But me and my siblings didn’t know that, and my parents said they were going home in ONE WEEK! My parents obviously saw how upset we were so they told us the next day that we were now keeping them. Now I have four cats, Kookie dough, Loki, Dewey, and Panda.

My favourite flower is a black rose. I really like roses and I think the black one is pretty and unique. Some black roses have littles bits of red on them too, while others are fully black. There are tons of different colours of roses as well. Ex. Orange, pink, yellow, red, white, purple. Honestly, there’s pretty much every colour. Different kinds of roses have different meanings, which I find interesting. My top three colours of roses would be, 1. Black, 2. Dark red, and 3. Light pink.

What’s your favourite kind of flower?

My perfect winter day would probably start off with waking up on a Friday, looking outside and seeing snow falling from the sky and getting told its a snow day, I would go downstairs and get some hot chocolate and a cinnamon bun, I’m a huge hot chocolate fan especially in the winter. While I’m drinking my hot chocolate and eating my cinnamon bun, I would watch a Christmas movie (probably home alone). Later in the day I would go sledding and skating, they are my two favourite winter activities. On my way home from sledding and skating, I would go to Tim Hortens and get hot chocolate and a donut (or a muffin). Once I get home, I will read a book and then have a nap. At dinner I would have poutine and iced tea and watch some more Christmas movie. After that I would go to my room and just go on my phone or play some video games till i go to bed. What would your perfect winter day be like?

Halloween, I love Halloween so much, it’s not my favourite holiday or anything but its 100% in second place. Halloween is just so fun, dressing up, trick or treating, eating a bunch of candy, horror movies, scaring people, and more and you can do it with friends, family, or just by yourself if you wanted. I love trick or treating like, walking around your neighbourhood, getting candy, hearing the leaves on the ground while you walk, talking and laughing with your friends, its just so much fun. Halloween at school is also pretty fun, like Halloween dances, dressing up school, bringing candy to share with your friends.