preview

Characteristics Of Paranoid Schizophrenia

Decent Essays

All popular media programs share an unrealistic depiction of making the viewers believe that people with schizophrenia are murderers, rapists, pedophiles,or people with multiple personalities. The television shows inaccurately portray mental disorders, especially schizophrenia. Many people are scared of the behaviors people with this disorder experiences. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder or group of disorders marked by disturbances in thinking, emotional responsiveness, and behavior(Ford-Martin). The term schizophrenia comes from two greek words that mean “split mind.” Eugen Bleuler, used this to describe the splitting apart of mental functions that he regarded as the central characteristics of schizophrenia(Ford-Martin). Schizophrenia …show more content…

Paranoid schizophrenia is the combination of false beliefs and hearing voices, with relatively unaffected mood and cognitive functions like reasoning, judgement, and memory. Catatonic schizophrenia is characterized by disturbances of movements that may include rigidity, agitation, bizarre posturing, and repetitive imitations of movements of speech from other people. These patients are at risk for malnutrition, exhaustion, or self-injury(Ford-Martin). Residual schizophrenia is when the patient in this category has had at least one acute schizophrenic episode, and continue to have some negative symptoms of schizophrenia, but do not have current psychotic symptoms, such as delusions, and hallucinations. They could experience some negative symptoms, such as withdrawal from others, or mild forms of positive symptoms, which indicated that the disorder has no completely been resolved(Ford-Martin). Undifferentiated is when the patient has characteristics of positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, but do not meet the full criteria for paranoid, catatonic …show more content…

Disorganized schizophrenia is one of the five subtypes of Schizophrenia. This is also known as Hebephrenic schizophrenia, this particular subtype has a poor prognosis(Lane). Cheryl Lane suggests that it is characterized by disorganized behavior and speech, as well as disturbances in emotional expression. Unlike paranoid schizophrenia, in which hallucinations and delusions are primary symptoms, people with disorganized schizophrenia may not have hallucinations or delusions(Lane). If they do, they aren’t prominent, nor do they revolve around a specific theme. In order to meet the criteria for a diagnosis of disorganized schizophrenia, the patient must exhibit symptoms that meet the criteria for catatonic schizophrenia(Lane). Most patients in this category have weak personality structures prior to their initial acute psychotic

Get Access