beta
Loved the story, hated the portrayal of schizophrenia here. Like I’m kinda mad that the narrative fed into the stereotype of schizophrenic people being violent and dangerous. Like only about 10% of schizophrenic patients are violent (and even then that’s usually associated with other risk factors like drug use, or being in frequently violent living situations) in fact: schizophrenic people are 14 times more likely to be the VICTIMS of domestic violence than your average person.
They are an incredibly vulnerable population, who are more at risk for mistreatment and often not believed due to their condition. Often times the abuse comes from the very people that are supposed to be their caregivers or support network. These negative stereotypes that schizophrenic are dangerous rapey lunatics incredibly damaging and create attitudes of fear and mistrust in the public that leads to higher instances of mistreatment. As a healthcare worker it breaks my heart to see these negative stereotypes perpetuated in fiction, especially when I see how these biases against schizophrenic patients are present even in my co-workers who are charged with taking care of them.
I work in an ER and we frequently have patients coming in in crisis, with very altered thinking. I have babysat hundreds of people who were suicidal, homicidal, drunk, high, dimentia patients, schizophrenic, or otherwise experiencing psychosis. I have never once felt in danger around a schizophrenic patient. While they may have been upset and behaving unpredictably, or spent a lot of time telling me their paranoid delusions, I have never been attacked or felt in any danger of being attacked.
If there was one group of people that I’d be worried about being grabbed, hit, threatening, screamed at, groped or otherwise sexually harassed by, it’s the fucking alcoholic old men. Every. Single. Time. I cannot count the number of bad/scary/incredibly sexually inappropriate experiences I have had at work taking care of these patients. No thank you