If you already stitched our Always stitch-a-long project earlier this month, you’ll be happy to know that this month in our stitch-a-long on Facebook we are stitching a second design, this one commemorating Schizophrenia Awareness Day on May 24th. A link to download the project is available below.
Here’s more about this month’s project from stitch-a-long admin Stephanie Murphy:
Schizophrenia Awareness Day is May 24th. Mental Health Awareness is truly important and it is very sad that it is highly stigmatized throughout the world. During the pandemic, isolation became the norm causing mental health issues to magnify. It doesn’t help that mental illness is considered something to be hidden or to be ashamed about. Remember TAUT Tolerance And Understanding and being There! Many people do not want to admit that they have a mental health issue because of the way that others will treat or view them or believe it is a sign of weakness. Because of this they refuse what little treatment is available for them. They need YOU to be there for them.
Several disorders usually start around puberty, which makes some doctors believe the pituitary hormone changes in the body during puberty react with brain chemistry generating what people call mental health issues. Bipolar disorder (also called manic/depression due the cycles that victims deal with) varies widely. There’s a chemical imbalance in the brain. There are medications that can be prescribed for the various levels of cycling that occur. Some are antidepressants. Others cut down the manic phases. Sometimes the medications even out the swings so much that all happiness and depressive states are wiped out causing its own unhappiness. One study stated that brainwave patterns of people with schizophrenia differ from “normal people”. The brainwaves of a sleeping schizophrenic are equivalent to the brainwaves of a “normal” person when awake. Ergo, the brainwaves of a schizophrenic during the day are the brainwaves of a “normal” person when sleeping. I can only imagine with the nightmares I’ve had, what a person with schizophrenia has to deal with while awake every single day. And wouldn’t it be a great advancement if that switch in the brain circuitry could be reversed so that dream-states and wake-states were reversed for the schizophrenic?
Many people, due to the pandemic, have been impacted by depression alone or anxiety about the present and the future. They internalize the problems and won’t ask for help. They need their friends and relatives to take the step of acknowledging that they have a problem and be there for them, whatever that takes. There are medical advances happening, some purely by accident. Keep reading, keep active, keep aware.
Increasing awareness of how mental illness impacts so many families, friends, and veterans will, hopefully, increase acceptance and treatment of the illness and lead to increased studies on brain chemistry and brain circuitry to provide a better future for all of us.
If you are the person who needs a friend, please reach out. Please take that step.
Please spread the word to be TAUT Tolerance And Understanding and being There! If you would like to stitch a design supporting this effort, you can download it on the link below.
Please post pictures in the EGA Stitch-A-Long Facebook group when you’re done!
Get the PDF: Be There May 2022 Stitch-a-long Project
Come join us on Facebook!
On February’s Stitch-a-long post we shared introductions by our new Stitch-a-long admins. If you haven’t met them yet, you can learn more about them here.
