A psychological disorder is an ongoing pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are deviant, distressful, and/or dysfunctional (594). We also discussed in class that a psychological problem often becomes classified as a psychological disorder when the problem greatly affects one's lifestyle. Although almost everybody experiences psychological problems throughout their lifetime, they do not always reach the severity of a psychological disorder. For example, Major Depression is often diagonoised after one experiences the symptoms for more than three weeks, as we discussed in class. Many people jump to conclusions when stating sad people are "depressed", two faced people are "bipolar", and people that act strange are "schizo". This is very wrong to jump to conclusions, and because of the first hand situations I've witnessed, I am sensitive to those who jump to these conclusions.
Both myself and many people close to me have experienced Major Depression. I truly believe that no one completely understand the disesase unless they have experienced it first hand. Many people think it would be very easy to overcome. However, it is a disease, and with any disease, it doesnt go away over night. My depression was mainly influenced by my low self esteem. I was very, very dissatisfied with myself. Another thing that I believe really triggered my depression was my inability to talk about my problems with others. I kept everything bottled inside until I snapped. Although I would rather not go into too much detail, I can say that when I hit rock bottom, I literally rolled out of bed, went to school (barely talking to anyone), come home and go to bed, and do it all over again the next day. I have cried myself nearly every night for months. I refused to let anybody care for me because I didnt want to let them down. It got ugly. Fortunately, after I was diagnoised and slowing came out and became comfortable talking about it, I discovered I had many people close to me that suffered from the same illness, which made it easier to talk about. Throughout my depression, I recieved no psychological therapy, although I blieve it would of been helpful. I was put on medication to get me throught, but a lot of my therapy was self healing. I slowly started boosting my self esteem on my own--and people noticed. My parents also played a big role by eliminated many negative influences from my lifestyle.
Also, one of my best friend's dad suffers from schizophrenia. This disease is horrible, and i wouldnt wish it upon anybody. It completely tore their family apart and her and her brother suffered the brunt of it. My friend is now a lot more accepting of her father's condition, but I often become very scarred that she may eventually suffer from the disease as well. I choose not to explain further, for the privacy of her family.
The most interesting thing I learned in this section is simply when I asked a question in class. Mrs. Olson explained that people have a 1% chance of developing schizophrenia. I then asked what are the chances of inheriting it from a parent. That number jumped to 10%. Because of my friend, this is a question I have had for a long time--I feel as if I have noticed symptoms, but maybe I was just being paranoid. However, it really scares that me that she's put at a much higher risk than me, and there really isnt any prevention to the horrible disease. I am glad I now have a better understanding of the disease in order to hopefully help her.
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