Student slideshow for Mr. Stennett's Human Development class, Fall 2014

1. MAD HOUSE: GROWING UP
IN THE SHADOW OF
MENTALLY ILL SIBLINGS by: Clea simon
Sandra Eguia

3. MAD HOUSE
•Clea was the youngest of three.
•Her oldest sibling is Daniel and
Katherine was the middle child.
•Her family was an Upper-middle
class family.
•Baby boom
•They had everything they could
possibly want also had a nice
home and a boat.
•Her life was normal until her
brother and sister were both
diagnosed with schizophrenia.
From that point on her life was
not ‘normal.’

4. SO HAPPY
TOGETHER
•Schizophrenia is a long-term mental
disorder of a type involving a
breakdown in the relation between
thought, emotion, and behavior,
leading to faulty perception,
inappropriate actions and feelings,
withdrawal from reality and personal
relationships into fantasy and
delusion, and a sense of mental
fragmentation term mental disorder.
• Clea first pet was a turtle and had
several turtles after.
• Clea always went into her sisters room
to listen to music with her.
• They both use to listen to pop music
together, this was 1964 and The
Beatles just came out with “A Hard
Day’s Night.”
• She then started noticing changes in
her brother.
• Daniel was diagnosed with
schizophrenia.

5. EVERYTHING FALLS APART
•Clea seen a change in her family and
noted them as being weird.
•She then started separating herself
at home by making herself caves in
different places:
• In her mothers studio
• Back of her closet
• Alcove base of stairwell
•At the age of 7 or 8 she began
having nightmares.
•Cleas mother always tried to blame
herself for what was going on with
her family.
•Clea wanted someone to suggest her
mother a type of family therapy that
included lea, to help her cope with
things if it was possible.
•At one point her mother began to
hid all the knives.
•Her parents then decided Daniel
shouldn’t be living in the house.
•At the age of eleven Clea noticed
Katherine was also had a sickness
(schizophrenia).

6. INVENTING MYSELF
•For Cleas twelve birthday she
received many presents but her
diary was the one she loved the
most. She also loved the fact that
she could lock it and keep it private.
•She than made her an imaginary
friend she named her sue because
she thought that name was normal.
•She approached her teen years with
no sense of them being fun.
•Every example Cleas siblings left her
were dangerous and all she
remembered is wanting to not crazy
as her siblings did.
•Which Clea defined crazy as losing
the ability to tell fantasy from
reality.
•She than started to think she would
never be normal.
•In her diary entries she began to be
paranoid of being diagnosed with
schizophrenia.

7. OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND
•Once Katherine was out of the
house permanently and into a
halfway house the house was
quieter and became more
peaceful.
•Then Cleas brothers comes back
into her life, the last time she
seen him was when she was nine.
•When they agreed to see him she
didn’t know what to expect or
say.
•He was doing good because of
his medication he was given.
•Daniel also had a family.
•After a while he stopped going to
his appointments and the
paranoia came back.
•Ellen his girlfriend started to fear
for her life.
•She than left Daniel for the safety
of her daughter.

8. OUT OF SIGHT
•She had a sweet 16 like every ‘normal’ girl would and was so happy
about it.
•After a while Clea decided to write a letter to Katherine, her mother
warned her she might not respond to her letter.
•After the second letter Clea did not respond because Katherine's
letter was full of warning and damnation.

9. GETTING PAST DANIEL
•After achieving what her siblings couldn’t she went to Harvard.
•Her parents were both trilled about her achievement and didn’t want
scare her by introducing failures of Daniel.
•Clea seen Daniels breakdown as a reality event and made her feel like
every nightmare comes true.

10. DRAGGED DOWN BY GHOST
•Clea graduated from Harvard a
month before he twenty-second
birthday.
•She than felt free
•She than got her own place close
to school away from her home.
•After graduating she started
having dreams, she didn’t
consider them as nightmares
because they were to calm.
•She eventually confronted her
parents about hiding her
brothers death.
•Clea started talking to her school
therapist.
•Her new boyfriend did not
interest her sexually and she
didn’t know why and wanted to
know why.

11. SEEKING HELP
•Clea than began to seek for help and decided to start talking to a
therapist, while deciding to pick which therapist she wanted to go
through she looked and the first name had thought of him and picked
the second name.
•Clea was scheduled to go twice a week, and felt like she lived for
those appointment.
•Clea said she felt like every session was like a vine in the jungle, and
she swung from one vine to another always looking for another vine
as a lifeline to grab.
•Clea was still having dreams and many of them were of
transformation of something that might seem solid would melt away.
•Eventually Clea began taking medication.

12. LEARNING NORMAL
•Clea sometimes imagined how her family would be if her two siblings
weren’t diagnosed with schizophrenia.
•Also says her brother would also be a Harvard graduate, married,
with his three kids happier than ever.
•When her father was in the hospital for his last time it brought her a
lot of sadness more than she could bear.
•Her mother cried after every visit.

13. SCHIZOPHRENIA
• is public health issue that affects approximately one percent of the
U.S.
•This illness usually happens between the late teens and mid-thirties
•Schizophrenia is known to be a severe form of mental illness which is
broadly characterized by three domains of psychopathology,
including negative symptoms:
• social withdrawal
• lack of motivation
• lack of emotional reactivity

14. REFERENCES:
•Daniel C. Javitt, MD, PhD (2014) Balancing Therapeutic Safety and
Efficacy to Improve Clinical and Economic Outcomes in Schizophrenia:
A Clinical Overview, VOL. 20, NO. 8.
•D Goldberg, G Ivbijaro, L Kolkiewicz etal (2013) Schizophrenia in
primary care
•https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=define:+schizophrenia+
•Kathryn F, Kosuke I, Kathleen F. Villa (2014) Resource Utilization and
Cost in a Commercially Insured Population with Schizophrenia, Vol 7,
No 1.
•A Negota, S Mashegoane (2012) Mothering Children with
Schizophrenia in a Village Setting: A Multiple Case Study, Journal of
Psychology in Africa 2012, 22(2), 259–262.
•S Sarkar, S (2013) Grover Antipsychotics in children and adolescents
with schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Vol 45 |
Issue 5