February 26, 2020 at 7:36 am · kailashmantry · 0 comments

What is Schizophrenia Disorder?

Introduction:

    Schizophrenia is some kind of challenging brain disorder that is often put in difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is unreal. It is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. It is a combination of hallucinations and delusions. It is a psychiatric condition that includes the signs and symptoms of each schizophrenia and mood disease. According to the American Psychological Associations’ (APA), schizophrenia disorder consists of many diagnostic features of schizophrenia with mood component. 

Schizophrenia Disorder facts:

There are some facts about this order as follow;

• Schizophrenia affects only 1% of the population.
• Delusion, hallucinations are the symptoms of the schizophrenia disorder.
• This disease usually manifests when a person is 20 years in his age.
• 10% of people who are victim of this disorder, commit suicide or they got addicted of drugs or alcohol abuse problem. 

What is schizophrenia?

    Schizophrenia disorder strikes between the ages of 16 and 30. According to researcher males patients show the symptoms in younger age than females. On the other hand, it is also seen that this disorder develops so slowly that the affected person didn’t understand that he has been a patient of schizophrenia disorder for many years. But in some other cases, this disorder can attack suddenly and grow quickly. 

Symptoms of schizophrenia

Schizophrenic persons usually rely on them because they are unable to hold themselves. Many people weren’t even aware of this disorder and they believe that they didn’t have mental illness and nothing is wrong with them. Some of the patients present clear symptoms, but on the other occasions, they may seem fine until they start explaining what they are truly thinking. The symptoms of schizophrenia vary from person to person on the basis of different family and environmental background. 

• Positive symptoms

Positive symptoms are also known as psychotic symptoms. Hallucinations and delusion are the positive symptoms. 

• Negative symptoms

Negative symptoms are referring to elements which are taken away from the person who are in schizophrenia disorder.

• Cognitive symptoms

Cognitive symptoms refer to difficulties with concentration and memory. It can include disorganized things and difficulty understanding.

• Emotional symptoms

Schizophrenic people have a lack of emotion expression like, lack of eye contact blank or restricted facial expressions. 

Below is a list of the major symptoms:

• Hallucinations

People with schizophrenia experience a wide range of hallucinations like hearing voices in much more common than seeing. Even feeling, smelling and tasting things which are not there. Basically, these are all things in the schizophrenic person.

• Delusions

In this state of mind schizophrenic persons displays false beliefs which can take many forms, such as delusion of persecution or delusions of grandeur. Sometimes they feel that somebody else is controlling them remotely. Or the other people controlling his mind and actions. They may also think that they have some strange powers and capabilities through which they can do anything.

Some other symptoms may include:

• Lack of motivation – The patient loses their drive. Even everyday actions such as washing, cooking are neglected.

• Social withdrawal

The patients boycott the social activities and they start living in isolation. They start thinking that if they become social then maybe somebody will harm them. They isolated themselves from social happenings.  

• Unawareness of illness

As the visualizations and dreams appear to be so genuine for patients, they don’t believe that they are ill and things around them are unreal. They may decline to take prescription because of the fear of the reactions, or for dread that the medicine might be poison, for instance. 

• Cognitive difficulties

The patient’s ability to concentrate affected badly. They face difficulty to recall, plan ahead, and to organize their life. Communications becomes more difficult for affected person. 

What are the causes of schizophrenia?

Although researcher belived that the exact causes of schizophrenia are unknown. Having said that there are some environmental factors and psychological and physical genetic factors can make a person more likely to develop the condition. Exporters believe several factors are generally involved in contributing to the onset of schizophrenia.

Genetic inheritance

The chances of developing it are less than 1 percent if there is no history of schizophrenia in a family. But on the other hand this percentage goes to 10 percent if a single person diagnosed a patient of schizophrenia. 

Family Relationships

It is not found or proven or even indicated that family relationships cause schizophrenia. However some schizophrenic patients believe that family tensions are responsible to lead them to schizophrenia. 

Environmental factors

In spite of the fact that there is no clear evidence, many speculate injury before birth any viral contaminants may add to the development of the disease. Unpleasant encounters frequently proceed the emergence of schizophrenia. But people with schizophrenia become bad-tempered, nervous and unfocused. They may face relationships problems like sexual orientation or divorce breakups. These factors are blamed for the development of the diseases. It is extremely difficult to know whether schizophrenia caused certain stresses or occurred as a result of them. 

Drug Addiction

Some researchers believe that certain prescription drugs, such as steroids and stimulants, can cause schizophrenia. 

Treatments for schizophrenia

Study shows that with proper treatment and medication the schizophrenic patients can live productive lives. Treatment can help relieve many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. But it is a fact that the majority of the patients with this disorder have cope with the symptoms for life. According to the psychiatrists, the most fruitful treatment for schizophrenia patients is usually a combination of medication, psychological counseling and self-help resources.

The common schizophrenia medications are as follows:

Risperidone (Risperdal): Much less sedating than other atypical antipsychotics. Weight gain and diabetes are feasible facet effects, less probable to happen, in comparison with Clozapine or Olanzapine. 

Olanzapine (Zyprexa) – it can also improve the natgive symptoms. But in this medication the risk of serious weight gain and the development of diabetes are significant. 

Haloperidol – it is another medication which is used to treat schizophrenia. It has a long- lasting effect.

Clozapine (Clozaril)  – this kind of medication can reduce the suicidal behaviors in patients with schizophrenia.

Ziprasidone (Geodon) – the risk of weight gain and diabetes is lower than other atypical antipsychotics. However, it might contribute to cardiac arrhythmia. 

Types of Schizophrenia

There are several types of schizophrenia.

Paranoid schizophrenia

Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common type of schizophrenia disorder. It is developed later in life than other types of schizophrenia. The symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia are hallucinations and delusion. This type of disorder the person’s speech and emotions are not affected.

Hebephrenic Schizophrenia

It is also called ‘disorganized schizophrenia’, this type of schizophrenia usually develops in age 15 to 25. There are some certain symptoms of this order such as short-lasting hallucination, delusions, disorganized behaviors and thoughts. An affected person may have disorganized speech patterns that others may find it difficult to understand. People with disorganized schizophrenia often show little or no feelings in their facial expressions, voice tone, or mannerisms. At instances they have inappropriate emotional responses to the situation, such as giggling at something.

Catatonic Schizophrenia

Catatonic schizophrenia is the most rare disorder diagnosis so far. This is type of disorder people switch their behavior instantly. They can switch between being very active or very still. Sometimes affected people do not talk much but after a moment they mimic others speech and movement.

Undifferentiated schizophrenia

This is another type of schizophrenia where an affected person shows some signs of paranoid, hebephrenic or catatonic.

Residual schizophrenia

If a person has a history of psychosis, he may be victim of this residual schizophrenia disorder. In this type of disorder a person experiences negative symptoms like low movement, poor memory, concentration and a poor hygiene. 

Simple Schizophrenia

With simple schizophrenia, the negative symptoms like slow movements and poor memory are more prominent and become worse even. In this disorder it is very rare to experience positive symptoms.

Cenesthopathic Schizophrenia

In this type of disorder a person experiences body sensations.

Unspecified schizophrenia

Some patients feel multiple symptoms of schizophrenia and do not fit in to any of the above categories. 

Schizophrenia diagnosis and tests

Usually schizophrenia disorder diagnosis by the observing and actions of the person. If a doctor doubts the schizophrenia in a person, they will need to know about the patient’s medical and psychiatric history. 

There are certain types of test which are needed to identify whether a person has schizophrenia disorder or not, such as:

Blood tests – blood tests are necessarily to identify that if a person has been taking drugs or not. Blood tests are also done to exclude physical causes of illness.

Imaging studies – imaging studies are necessarily to take to identify that a person has tumors or any kind of problems in the structure of brain. 

Psychological evaluation – in this process doctors will assess the patient’s mental state by asking questions about his moods, thoughts about the things, moods, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts. A person’s ideologies tells more to the specialist to identify if a person has this order or not. 

Early Signs of Schizophrenia

There are several cases where is observed that schizophrenia appears suddenly with any warning or symptoms. But usually it comes on slowly with warning signs. Family members or friends will know early that something is wrong with the person but they didn’t identify lack of knowledge that he is becoming the victim of schizophrenia disorder. 

In the early symptoms of the schizophrenia disorder is that person becomes unmotivated, emotionless to others. He starts living in isolation and begins neglecting the appearances.

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