17
Worker or Patient:
Patient
Affliction:
Severe Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder
Information about Afflictions:
Schizophrenia - Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn. Their speech and behavior can be so disorganized that they may be incomprehensible or frightening to others. Available treatments can relieve many symptoms, but most people with schizophrenia continue to suffer some symptoms throughout their lives.
Bipolar Disorder - Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.
Onsets of this Affliction:
When Aria was thirteen years old, she began to see people who weren't really there. She talked to them as if they were there, which confused her parents; who was she talking to? But they all had names, and to her, they were real people. At first, her parents believed that maybe she had come up with imaginary friends later in her life, but this theory was disproved when she began to accuse her friends of reading her mind. She then turned on her parents, convinced that they were out to get her. The voices confirmed her thoughts; they told her how terrible her parents were (though, this was not true). But to Aria, this was reality.
Her bipolar disorder came crashing down on her after she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Not only was she convinced that the world was out to get her by people no one else could see, but she had terrible mood swings to go with it. Her parents then decided that she needed some serious help; they couldn't deal with this on their own.
Appearance:
Aria stands at a small 5'1'' (157 cm). She is rather skinny, weighing only 103 pounds, but had a relatively "okay" figure. Her hair is long and black, cut in a curtain fringe across her forehead. She does not do anything with it, other than brush it. She tends to not really care about how she looks, though she usually ends up looking okay with out really trying to. To the right, you shall see a picture; remove the snakebites, and that's Aria down to a T.
