Routinely Nature

Today was a good day because I had my favourite pancakes for lunch! I mentioned this to R and he said it’s weird because people don’t usually eat such food for lunch. Waddaya know, I could live on bread forever, so what’s pancakes for lunch compared to that!

I’ve just started on a new book, ‘My Mother’s Keeper’. It’s a really personal story of an arduous journey a daughter had to take, because her mother was unfortunately suffering from chronic schizophrenia. To all of us who know of no one close who is beleaguered by this inveterate mental illness, we think it’s pretty far from home. But the truth is, those who suffer from this mental condition does not actually come in minute numbers-1 in 100 people are actually diagnosed with it. In Singapore, there are over 16 000 people living a relatively normal life, coping with schizophrenia, and everyday, a child born here will suffer from this condition; yet not much is known about it.

ENTER the world of schizophrenia. A world of mental anguish and darkness, where one hears voices others cannot hear, sees things invisible to others, thinks thoughts others do not understand, and starts to be suspicious of everyone, even one's closest family. Schizophrenia remains one of the most feared and least understood of mental illnesses. Because it is a syndrome, that is no one knows its exact cause and so defines it by a collection of symptoms, no two patients behave the same way. In its mild form, this mental illness that causes people to lose touch with reality is called psychosis. One in 40 people here will suffer from a psychotic episode some time in their lives. If a psychosis persists for six months or longer, or is a recurring problem, it is called schizophrenia.

The brain does not mature fully till about 25; therefore schizophrenia occurs when something goes wrong during the period when the brain is still developing - late teens to 20s. Doctors consider the teen years 'the most mentally unhealthy' time in a person's life because that's when a lot of mental disorders appear - depression, anorexia, substance abuse, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. These are the years when the brain's frontal lobe is developing. This part of the brain deals with how a person plans, organises and strategises - in other words, all the high-level processing. The temporal lobe, which deals with emotions, is also changing during these years, causing the emotional see-saws of adolescent years.

Schizophrenia spares no one and has a wide spectrum of victims - from brilliant students and sports enthusiasts to the less successful. It affects the rich and poor alike. Many anti-psychotic drugs are able to suppress the symptoms of schizophrenia but unfortunately, this may affect the development of a person's cognitive behaviour and sometimes also cause his intelligence level to go down. People with schizophrenia may lose touch with reality but they retain enough self-awareness to know their mental faculties are impaired. Some attempt suicide when they realise they can no longer reach the intellectual and performance levels they used to take for granted. In Singapore, as with the rest of the developed world, one in three schizophrenia patients attempts suicide. In spite of all that the doctors, case managers and their families can do, one in three attempts succeed.

With greater awareness of this condition, each person can help create a climate that is accepting of people with this condition, so they are not more isolated than the illness already makes them.

(Adapted from Salma Khalik, The Straits Times-Breaking out of the mental prison, http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20070922-26469.html, Saturday September 22 2007)

There is seemingly so little we know about the nature, although we’ve been around long enough to know how to make things work for us. It’s amazing don’t you think, that 70% of the world’s surface is covered by ocean but to date, we’ve only been able to explore less than 5% of it. Such is why the world is so fascinating. And because we think we know so much when we actually understand only so little, we like to pontificate and more often than not, at a certain point in our lives, we are inclined to impose our thoughts onto others. That brings me to think about God.

Theists and atheists, extremes on the farthest ends on the spectrum of religion, polar opposites. The question ‘Does God exist?’ has gotta be one of the one controversial topics to date. This is so because it affects every single one of us and no one can really shy away from it. True, we could shy away from discussion but being such a raw and sensitive issue, it’s no wonder we have zealots all over the world wanting to be heard. The other day, I was watching a couple of videos on Richard Dawkins (which M sent to me, although he only vaguely recalled who I was, funny). In case you don’t already know, he is one who probably is (and who would like to think) that he is the world’s greatest atheist, one who doesn’t believe in the existence of God, or any other higher being. He has written quite a number of books on this topic, his most famous one would probably be ‘The God Delusion’. It’s funny how something so abstruse, so close to the heart as religion has become a world-wide debate. The world just gets more incomprehensible each day.

But some things don’t ever change. Like the breaking of dawn and the onset of dusk, the sun rise and the sun set, the ebbing of the tide, day and night, the moon and the stars in the sky. The way Mother Nature works is seemingly so routine, so simple, yet so elegant. It is what keeps every single living creature alive. Shouldn’t we all then, once in a while, just stop, and marvel at the beauty of nature?

If you have 4 minutes 18 seconds to spare, take a look at this link:http://www.theskyinmotion.com/ and under playlist, look for The Sky in Motion. Enjoy!