she lived at home and became a born-again Christian. She would lie on her bedroom floor and would scream, "Im damned to hell and my family is damned to hell." She would slam her sister against the wall. She tells them "Youre not my family." She left home and moved in with a cult leader in downtown Boston, collecting donations on the street and ate from open carts in the North End. (Goode pg. 64)At nineteen, she asked her parents to meet her outside a counseling center. She runs to the car, screaming, and she hit her father on the shoulder. She was taken to the emergency room where she was put on the psychiatric ward. This was Janets first hospitalization. (Goode pg. 65) Janet was shuffled to and from private and city hospitals. Some doctors told her parents its best if she was at home, yet others told them not to take her home. She was prescribed numerous drugs, alone and in combination. They make her muscles stiff and her hands tremble. They do nothing to help her. Sometimes, she would escape the hospitals and disappears for months. Sometimes, she was discharged and her parents were not told. One night, she was picked up for hitchhiking. Another time, she was arrested for shoplifting. She stayed in halfway houses or at home. In her last years, she lived in a halfway house for two and a half years. She occasionally broke the rules, but she otherwise was on her best behavior. On August 25, 1986, the painful news arrives to Janets parents. She has killed herself by drinking several bottles of nail polish remover and jumping from a second story window. (Goode pg. 58) This story, although sad and painful, is what many schizophrenics go through. Anyone who has seen up close the disintegration of a mind by schizophrenia can understand the pain of this horrible disease. Many schizophrenics experience far worse than what Janet has went through. Some lose total touch with reality and do not know what is real and what isnt. They experience things...
