Alex real Life is exactly, Beena, as your touching story unfolds, it just unfolds in front of your eyes. even if you are one of the real living characters in a real life story involving a mentally challenged person; the events just keep unfolding and you cannot control them. and soon you come to the last chapter, which is a foregone conclusion in many cases, but still one clings to hope, and the last page proclaims death, and you are in a state of shock. normal people of the family keep saying and doing normal things around the mentally afflicted person in the hope that normality rubs off on him, and he can cope with life better. often this is a vain hope. normal folks fear that worrying about keeping the house `suicide hazard free, like long strong ropes and the like, and mundane duties like, a normal family member taking rounds to check baths; bedroom; and never leaving the `candidate for suicide` alone for l o n g.............will drag them into depression and they will become victims of stress. as drug therapy has a no no thin line, as some drugs for depression must never be given to a diagnosed psychotic in big doses. accurate diagnosis supported by blood levels of d a n e, would be waited for. but one thing can be started immediately and without fear, (non-drug) psychotherapy. your patient` s good friend through thick and through thin.

God is a Metaphor Regarding your article God is a Metaphor, true, I too learnt metaphors in language class, English language to be exact. Not from psychiatry books, and never from psychology books. Though why should you make it seem as if ” concrete” was directly opposite to a “metaphor”! There could be variations of softer image in the “ concrete “reality . However a metaphor does take away the heavy weight from such words like “ faith” and’belief’! If you take away the ‘concrete’ way of looking at certain higher thought; faith and belief start flying around like mere clouds around a simple ‘metaphor’! Now I’m really interested in the use of “abstract Thinking” as a measure of mental and emotional maturity. Really now there otta be a proper psychological test to ascertain whether a patient can take it. I mean if a patient is really mature and Can take it when he is told the truth about say, a fatal disease! Just See how people blindly follow the demands of modernity. They all wear a certain “positive-ness” and as if it is a fashion they challenge the Doctor, “ C’mon Doc, tell me how long do I have to live!” and the doctor just as main stream, honestly tells the patient how short he is expected to live. Then the carefully cultivated veneer of being positive, collapses. The patient is a nervous wreck. Each sign and symptom is that of impending death. How many deaths will such anxious patients die! ? Such patients who we couldn’t see through behind their apparent maturity modernity and even responsibility, attitude? Imagine what-happens to the family who depend upon such personalities, life has such a flat effect when such charming personalities, crash and agonisingly go into oblivion....