Liz Warren | Storyteller

In Letting Stories Breathe, socio-narratologist Arthur Frank states that, “a good story – a story that people become caught up in because it holds them in suspense, engages their imagination, and calls for interpretation – is not necessarily a good story, in the sense of encouraging goodness among those who tell and retell it. Stories can be the most engaging companions but still make life dangerous precisely because they engage so thoroughly.”  I agree with the authors comment and find that it sheds light on a problem that I
have watched develop over several years. 

 

I’ve watched the suffering and difficulties of people who have schizophrenia and the families who love them or have to disengage from them because they can’t watch their loved one suffer.  The illness is devastating to the individual and often over several years drives a wedge between the patient and his family. People who are experiencing their first schizophrenic break often have families anxious to help or find new treatments.  But as the illness wears away the person they knew, the family begins to disengage and finally to ignore or actively avoid the once beloved family member.  Schizophrenia is not pretty and it’s not possible to really find a poster child that engages the community and bolsters support for people who appear odd or dangerous when ill, but functional when stable.

As research continues on children experiencing an illness on the autism spectrum it points to many commonalities in the location of the illness within the brain and some of the biochemistry of the brain in schizophrenia and autism.  Public support, however,  for services for children with autism and for research and support for those with autism and their families is forthcoming because their story has been told more effectively and received more sympathetically by the community at large. I don’t want to dissuade those who support these children but wish to broaden the definition to include young people with schizophrenia.  The surge in recognition and diagnosis of autism has made visible a wave of affected children who are now approaching adulthood and aging out of child supportive services.  Some of these young adults need assistance in housing, healthcare, employment, supportive services as do other young people with schizophrenia. 

 

Unfortunately stories that engage the community seem to be separating two groups of young people with similar needs rather than uniting them.  The competition for scarce resources and society’s view that young adults should care for themselves could result in difficult choices about which of these groups gets resources. The stories that have been created about children with autism have been very persuasive and I believe they will carry support over to the young adults. And even though the stories of children and young adults with Schizophrenia are equally compelling they have not been told as well and will not receive the same support.   As Frank states “stories put listeners in the position of hearing one perspective on one slice of reality… It excludes from consideration other slices seen from other perspectives.”