June 19, 2014 admin

Managing emotions

Mood is a persistent state of your emotion. It is something personally felt by you, the ‘feeler’ and is observable to others too. Some moods could be positive; like happiness, excitement, exhilaration, exaltation, while others are characteristically negative like sadness, disappointment, gloom, frustration, despondency or depression; to name a few. Everyone goes through different emotions in their lifetime, over years, months, weeks, sometimes even several times a day. Life cannot be positive all the time. However, when a negative emotional state is persistent, and it causes longstanding trouble to the person feeling it, it qualifies as a problem and we need to do something about it. The truth about negative emotions is that they have become common. Sadness is a ‘customary’ reaction to loss, fear is a normal reaction to danger and frustration may be one to rejection; all of which are inevitable in everyone’s everyday routine existence. All such situations involve pain and the blues they cause are warranted. But staying negative for too long, letting the pain and anger engulf you, and inability to snap out of it is not justifiable. That’s the difference between a negative mindset as a passing emotion; and a disorder that needs attention. The first step to correcting a problem is getting aware of them…

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Case Study: Schizophrenia

BackgroundAnupama (name changed for anonymity) 27 year old unmarried female, working as a helper in an office was brought to the clinic by her family members for evaluation of abnormal behavior that they had been noticing in her over the past few months.

Symptoms

Off late Anupama had stopped talking much to her family (parents and sister) and seemed to be lost in her own world. She stayed awake in the night because she believed the neighbors were plotting against her family and were keeping a watch on their moves so she stayed up at night in the fear that they’d break into the house. She kept windows locked and always suspected that she was being watched and reacted with tremendous fear and apprehension.

Loss of reality

Anupama could constantly hear the voices of neighbors as a running commentary 24 hours a day. (This was not real, the neighbors were not talking to her; it was imagined.) She also believed there were invisible video cameras installed in her house with which they kept constant vigilance over her family. At one instance she also tried to hammer the wall to break the imaginary camera that had been installed within it by the neighbors (so she suspected)

Effect on her life overall

She refused to eat food, as she believed these persecutors (neighbors) had poisoned it. She survived on biscuit and wafer packs which she would open by herself, to make sure that it was not tampered with, or poisoned by her perceived tormentors, of whom she was extremely fearful. Anupama received a memo from her workplace since she couldn’t take orders or instructions well. She was always sitting by herself and gesticulating as if she was talking continuously to some unknown invisible person around her. When questioned by someone, she would invariably look away and pretend as if nothing had happened.

Management

Anupama had frank delusions and hallucinations. Her suspiciousness was coloring her functioning and performance in all areas. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and started on medication. Cognitive techniques were used a while after some suspiciousness had gone down. This was targeted at breaking her false belief about the neighbors. The family and friends were getting very worked up, hence they were given psycho-education that this was not pretense or a supernatural force; it was a mental illness which could be treated.

Progress and recovery

Anupama took her medication regularly. She showed some improvement within a month’s time and the hallucinatory behavior stopped. She stopped suspecting the neighbors although the thought crossed her mind sometimes. She resumed work and is now on regular medication. She does get stressed at times but it is within her logical control and she is in touch with reality now.

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