Shazia says she feels bored, and hates her life. Her mind always remains preoccupied with new job opportunities. She wants to work, and feels she should be financially independent. Shazia is a graduate, and says that if she gets a job, it could help be a distraction from her problems. After exams in 10th, she wanted to become a doctor; so she went to ask a doctor for memory-enhancing medication to help her study. Unfortunately, she says, her memory only started fading away.
Shazia has been aggressive since her mother died while Shazia was still a child. Back then, if her father or siblings did not give her what she wanted, she would start banging her head against the walls. Shazia remembers, “Once, my father said no to my demand, and I started hitting my head against the wall. That day I got five or six stitches on my head.” But with time she realized that this behavior was dangerous, so she stopped.
“Sometimes, I feel like I should kill myself for all the mistakes I’ve made,” she says. “I know I used to irritate my father a lot and my siblings too. Last time I scratched our childhood photographs, and now I’m feeling sorry for that too,” says Shazia while she frowns and looks down.
Dr. Arshid Hussain, a psychiatrist of Kashmir says, “Insomnia is not a disease, it is the manifestation of something underlined—either physiological or pathological.” Sometimes physical illness or even environmental changes like room temperature changes can also cause insomnia. “It usually occurs in patients who are going through stress in life or are suffering from other health issues.”
Shazia is one such patient. She actually has epilepsy—a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain.
She also has a thyroid disorder which adds to her sleeplessness. “At night I feel cold one minute, and hot the next,” she says. “And I always feel restless.” When her family started noticing her gradual memory loss, they consulted a Unani doctor so she did not have to deal with the side effects of allopathic medications. When the herbal medicines did not help, she consulted a psychiatrist. Her family says they are seeing some improvement now, but there is still a long way to go; because Shazia still feels tired when she wakes up every morning. Shazia’s sister says, “She used to help me in the kitchen and with other day-to-day responsibilities, but now she prefers to stay in bed. All she says is that she doesn’t have the energy to do anything. I believe that all the medication that’s been given to her since childhood is responsible for her condition today. Her sister adds, “Yes, she had problems, but the medicines have only added to her problems.”
The human body works in a systematic pattern with coordination between various chemicals and hormones released from body organs in response to stimulus. The adaption of this response to stimuli is regulated by the brain in a circadian rhythm. To perform various functions, a body needs energy in the form of nutrition and adequate rest in the form of sleep. Anything which disturbs the balance between work and rest leads to an alteration in the sleep pattern. The human body usually requires 8 hours of sleep. more
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