The Ripple Effects on the Immediate Surroundings of Patients with Untreatable Mental Health Disorders

Abstract

The paper aims onto understanding the ripple effects on the immediate surroundings of patients with untreatable mental health disorders. This paper focuses on the lingering effects in society because of untreatable mental health disorders on the patient as well as on their immediate surroundings narrowing it down to patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. There has been a lot of awareness regarding mental health issues, but there are still undiagnosed and untreatable mental health disorders that affect the patient and their surroundings. My research focuses on the ripple effect they have on society as a whole. Starting from the first circle of the ripple. The patient, his family, their social beings, relatives and friends, and then the extended society. The abnormal psychology that deals with psychological disorders in humans can be divided into three parts: the disorders that are diagnosable and treatable for example General Anxiety Disorder and Depression, and the disorders that are diagnosable but untreatable for example Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder and the disorders of that are neither diagnosable nor treatable hence remain unknown to us at this point of time. The present research is nearly negligible in the last category but abundant in the first two. In today’s time, there have been several suggested cures for untreatable disorders but none seem sufficient or completely successful for now. Although there is a lot of research on other aspects of these disorders the emotional aspect or the notion of expressed emotions seems to be fairly low. There is not much talk about the sufferings of those who take care of these patients and more importantly their suppressed emotions due to the expectation of always being sympathetic towards the ones with disorders. Exists a treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder yet? Most likely not. But even if there is no known cure for many diseases, people can nevertheless live normal lives without being constrained by their symptoms. To begin with, first I would like to explain what schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are and then move forward to their effect on the patient and his/her family and social beings, and then move forward to the main objective of understanding the effect on society. The methodology that was adopted for the research was the interview method with open-ended questions with the family and social circle of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The questions were focused on an emotional approach that was specifically formed keeping in mind the empathetic angle of the interviewees.