Cognitive Dysfunction Relating to Schizophrenia Essay

Schizophrenia is a serious debilitating mental illness in which the victim is afflicted with bizarre delusions and prominent hallucinations. The delusions are profoundly invalid beliefs, and the hallucinations are equally invalid perceptions. There is also a disordering of the reasoning process, disordered emotional expression, and loss of motivation for work and social living. Typically, the illness starts in adolescence or early adulthood and, if untreated, usually worsens with age. (Lickey, Gordon, 1991)

Schizophrenia is a disorder that is characterized by a broken thought process and poor emotional responses. Typical symptoms of this disorder include delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, social dysfunctions,

Today, the hallmark symptom of schizophrenia is psychosis, meaning a patient experiences hallucination and delusions. The hallucinations usually manifest as the patient hearing voices inside their head. With delusions, patients think that a person in trying to read their mind, control their thoughts, or that someone is trying to hurt them (“Schizophrenia,” n.d.). With these types of symptoms, it makes it very difficult for a patients to manage their emotions, make decisions, think clearly, as well as live successfully independently (“Schizophrenia – Fact Sheet,” n.d.). For example, often times patients with schizophrenia do not make sense when they talk or just sit for a very long time without talking at all (“Schizophrenia,” n.d.). This

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behaviour and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and inactivity. A person with schizophrenia often hears voices, experiences delusions and hallucinations and may believe thoughts, feelings and actions are controlled or shared by someone else.

Schizophrenia is a complex psychotic disorder evident by impaired thinking, emotions, judgment and behaviors. The person’s grasp of reality may be so disordered that they are unable to filter sensory stimuli and may have intense perceptions of sounds, colors, and other features of their environment. Although there are different levels of severity in symptoms, the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine (Fundukian, Ed., 2014) states that schizophrenia may typically interfere with a person 's ability to think clearly and to know the difference between reality and fantasy. People with schizophrenic symptoms have hallucinations and delusions, and often have difficulty with everyday life. It is a complicated disease that is not well understood and carries significant stigma for its sufferers.

SCHIZOPHRENIA Schizophrenia, from the Greek word meaning “split mind”, is a mental disorder that causes complete fragmentation in the processes of the mind. Contrary to common belief, schizophrenia does not refer to a person with a split personality or multiple personalities, but rather to a condition which affects the person’s movement, language, and thinking skills. The question of whether schizophrenia is a disease or collection of socially learned actions is still a question in people’ mind. People who are suffering from schizophrenia think and act in their own the world and put themselves in a way that is totally different from the rest of society. In other words, they have lost in touch with the reality. Most schizophrenics accept

According to NAMI (), schizophrenia is a long term mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, make decisions, and relate to others, impairing a person from functioning to their full potential when left untreated. For these persons affected, it is many times difficult to distinguish what is real from what is not. “Unfortunately, no single simple course of treatment exists.” Research has linked schizophrenia to a multitude of possible causes” (NAMI).

The symptoms exhibited by those who have schizophrenia are hallucinations, delusions, lack of emotion, racing thoughts, incoherent thoughts, odd behaviors, and psychotic manifestations. Many who experience this disorder may hear voices or

Additional, inferences about the disorder are provided by Whitcomb and Merrell (2013). The authors characterize the symptoms of schizophrenia as delusions that are “typically bizarre and implausible” and pronounced hallucinations such as hearing voices for long periods of time (p. 363). Additional, impairments noted by the authors include “severe disturbances in perception, thought and affect, a severe decline in personal and social functioning, poor personal hygiene, inability to function effectively at school or work, and a severe impairment in social relationships” (Whitcomb and Merrell, 2013 p.363).

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects more than one percent of the population. When schizophrenia is active, symptoms can include delusions, hallucinations, trouble with thinking and concentration, and lack of motivation. However, when these symptoms are treated properly, a large portion of those diagnosed will greatly improve over time.

Schizophrenia is not yet fully understood, but it is known that it is characterized by extreme disturbances in many vital areas, including behavior, emotions, speech, perception and thinking. The term schizophrenia means

Delusions are viewpoint that are not true. There are several dissimilar kinds of delusions. If you believe that people are trying to injury you even though this is not the case, you are suffering from a paranoid delusion. This can be a frighten experience because it seems so real. Delusions of reference occur when things in the environment seem to be directly related to you even though they are not. For example, it may seem as if people are talking about you or special personal messages are being communicated to you through the TV, radio, or other media. Somatic

Schizophrenia is a disease that ebbs and flows, which means that the people with the disease have acute periods called relapses. This is when a person with schizophrenia experiences a number of sensations that are an addition to their usual feelings, and because they are additions, they are called "positive symptoms." The term "positive symptoms" does not mean it is positive in the sense that it is wanted or a positive thing to have. They are hallucinations, and delusions and they are believed to

2011). Varcarolis et al. 2006 describe positive symptoms of schizophrenia as ‘florid psychotic symptoms’ ‘as they capture attention’. Cognitive deficits lay primarily within the domains of memory and language affecting mood and behaviour (Elder et al. 2009). Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, hallucinations and sever thought process disturbances and have an acute onset (Elder et al. 2009).Varcarolis, Carson and Shoemaker (2006) state that a patient experiencing a delusion is convinced that what they perceive is real and consequently the patients thinking often reflects feelings of great fear, isolation and trust issues. Additionally Elder et al. (2009) state that cognitive deficits are considered psychotic symptoms and that behaviours, perceptions and beliefs shown in a person having an exacerbation of schizophrenia are not consistent with normal human experience.

Schizophrenia has many criteria that is associated with it and it involves many different types of symptoms such as: First, Delusion which involves a disturbance in the content of thought, it occurs in more than 90% of patients at some time during their illness (Cutting,1995). They are numerous types of delusion which associates with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.