The latest news on the tragic death of Rob Reimer and his wife (not neccessarily accurate- so many untruths!) is that their son had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia and been prescribed a new medication.

The news has hit home pretty hard for me. In August 1993 my kind, gentle son’s journey with the baffling symptoms of schizophrenia hit rock bottom as a direct result of his having been put on the wrong medication.

My family’s heart wrenching story is in my book “The Ghosts Behind Him”  Caitlin Press 1999.

After mourning the tragic death of Rob Reiner, who’d been one of my favourite entertainers, I wondered if schizophrenia had been the rest of the story. My heart is bleeding, to use an analogy that has haunted me in the past.

Violence does happen. Not often. But violence has been in the News many times over the years, although suicide is more likely when it comes to severe ongoing psychosis.

There is often no link whatever to the victim – except possibly proximity -whether friend, loved one, or stranger. Anyone could be a victim when a fear-filled, jumbled, improperly or nonmedicated mind reacts to a drama inadvertantly concocted by his own diseased mind.

I wonder what prescribed medication Nick Reimer was on….

My son had been put on the anti-psychotic Risperidone which I learned later- much later – was a drug that could cause “agitation.” One mother noted that the side effect had been listed oh her son’s prescription label. Her son had also been adversely affected by Risperidone.

But the drug does work well for many psychiatric  patients.

Spirituality has nothing whatever to do with the disease. But because they hear voices that appear to come from outside their own thought processes, patients may believe that they are being “possessed”

In actuality the voices are similar to an echoing of their own thoughts- those little ideas and inspirations that we all have every moment of the day. Our conscious minds are continously active, except when we sleep. People with schizophrenia have an overload of dopamine in their brain which may possibly stimulate the processing.

At one point I did wonder if my son was “possessed” by evil and/or helpful spirits. That notion almost sucked me into what he himself believed. It was a very unhealthy interpretation of a biological dysfunction in his brain.

Perhaps if more people understood the state of mind of those suffering from extreme psychosis , more money would be focused on a cure for this devastating disease that strikes at least one in every hundred young people in all parts of the world.