Battling
Obstacles: Anosognosia
Families of people with severe mental illness are all too familiar
with the struggle involved in caring for a person who very well may not
even realize they are sick. It is a medical condition known as anosognosia.
News this week brought this little known medical term home. Blogs
and news
stories covered the struggle that Theresa Rockwood faced.
Her 54-year-old brother, Joseph F. Rockwood, suffers from
schizophrenia. He is now charged with her murder.
Theresa's fight to help her brother is not unlike the plight of others
who care for someone with a severe mental illness, only to find that
the state's laws act as a barrier to treatment.
Anosognosia is a major problem because it is the single largest reason
why individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not take
their medications. It is caused by damage to specific parts of
the brain, especially the right hemisphere. It affects
approximately 50 percent of individuals with schizophrenia and 40
percent of individuals with bipolar disorder. When taking medications,
awareness of illness improves in some patients.
Impaired awareness of illness is a strange thing. It is difficult
to understand how a person who is sick would not know it.
Impaired awareness of illness is very difficult for other people to
comprehend. To other people, a person's psychiatric symptoms seem
so obvious that it's hard to believe the person is not aware he/she is
ill. Oliver Sacks, in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife
for a Hat, noted this problem:
It is not only difficult, it is
impossible for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know
their own problems ...And it is singularly difficult, for even the most
sensitive observer, to picture the inner state, the 'situation' of such
patients, for this is almost unimaginably remote from anything he
himself has ever known.
"It's not uncommon for family members to struggle with trying
to get care for their loved ones," says Chris Bouneff, director of
marketing and development for DePaul Treatment Centers and president of
the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Oregon.
"It doesn't work to say to them, 'Why don't you just get help?'
Their frame of reference will never be that they need help,"
Bouneff told the Oregonian newspaper.
What happened to Joseph and Theresa is a reminder that states must
create and use treatment laws designed to prevent situations like this.
Send a
Postcard to a Friend
You can help raise awareness the importance of improving timely and
effective treatment for people with severe mental illnesses. Take
a few mintues to spread
the word to some friends.
|
