Describe Two or More Psychological Explanations of Schizophrenia

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.

Outline and evaluate one or more biological explanations of schizophrenia (8 marks AO1/16 marks AO1)

In my lifetime, I have spent months with my Grandmother, Florence Ernstead, who is a diagnosed paranoid delusional schizophrenic. During this time I have realized that schizophrenics have difficulty realizing the seriousness of their disorders. This inability to acknowledge a problem is known by psychiatrists as lack of insight.

Schizophrenia is a disease that has plagued societies around the world for centuries, although it was not given its formal name until 1911. It is characterized by the presence of positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are so named because of the presence of altered behaviors, such as delusions, hallucinations (usually auditory), extreme emotions, excited motor activity, and incoherent thoughts and speech. (1,2) In contrast, negative symptoms are described as a lack of behaviors, such as emotion, speech, social interaction, and action. (1,2) These symptoms are by no means concrete. Not all schizophrenic patients will exhibit all or even a majority of these symptoms, and there is some

This paper defines schizophrenia from a biological and psychological perspective and also provides treatment to help combat symptoms of schizophrenia. This paper has three important contributions. First, by defining and expanding on schizophrenia from a biological perspective, I can identify the nature related predispositions. After expanding from a biological approach, secondly, I will analyze schizophrenia from a psychological aspect by determining if there is any environment or nurturing externals that can result to schizophrenia. Lastly, I will provide treatment details and also reveal early signs to schizophrenia. This paper is important because schizophrenia is an epic mental disease and it is crucially important to bring awareness to the public of how we can limit the illness. It is unclear whether schizophrenia have only a biological background or psychological background, but what was discovered is that both contribute to schizophrenia. Positive and negative treatment can be combatted undergoing pharmaceutical and psychotherapy,

Schizophrenia is a chronic, lifetime mental disorder that cannot be cured, but can be effectively treated and managed. Research conducted in developed countries revealed that about 20 to 35 percent of patients undergo a rapid improvement when treated. Approximately, 70 percent of the patients suffer a relapse of acute symptoms within the next 2 to 5 years after being discharged from hospital. The risk of relapse usually decreases 10 years after the initial onset.

Imagine having to always be in fear that your child is trying to commit suicide and self-harm, or hearing voices and seeing things that tell them to kill their own family. Schizophrenic people often have a loss of contact with reality, in turn effecting the person as well as the family. The disorder affects a person’s ability to distinguish between what is reality and what is fantasy, people diagnosed with the disorder are affected by delusions, hallucinations, social withdrawal, disturbed thoughts and unusual behavior. It interferes with a person 's ability to think clearly, express emotions, make decisions and relate to others. They may see or hear things that are not there, speak in odd or confusing ways, believe that others are trying to harm them, or feel as though they are constantly being watched. Unfortunately, a single, simple way of schizophrenia treatment does not exist. Schizophrenia is a challenging brain disorder that affects the way a person thinks, acts and sees the world. Research has connected schizophrenia to many possible causes, including aspects of brain structure, environmental, and genetic causes.

In the 1950’s cognitive psychology was thought of and created. This form of psychology assisted psychologists in the research field of understanding how certain factors affect and alter one’s memory, language, learning abilities, and behaviors (McLeod , 2015). This also gave researchers in the field of psychology an opportunity to try other experiments that were not as life threatening as lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy. Instead researchers were able to look at the behaviors of the person they were testing and see how their daily routines differed from others. Researchers were able to get a better understanding of how certain behaviors in a child’s life can affect them as an adult, such as childhood abuse, alcoholism, drug use, and neglect. In the 1970’s a young girl by the name of Shirley Adrell Mason was diagnosed by a psychologist named Herbert Spiegel. During that time, Shirley admitted to experiencing horrific childhood abuse at the hands of her mother who was diagnosed with having schizophrenia (Nathan, 2011). Prior to the discovery of her several alters, Shirley was receiving psychological treatment for someone who has schizophrenia. Though the two psychological disorders are similar, both are treated completely different due to the fact that schizophrenia is not brought on by abuse, but rather a genetic mutation in the brain and Dissociative Identity

Many hear voices or see things that don’t exist in reality and the effect of the outcome usually means that schizophrenics are unable to cope with their social surroundings failing in social well-being.

Schizophrenia is a very serious, long-term disorder that affects about 1% of the world’s population. It affects people anywhere from twenty years old, to forty-five years old. It is known to be one of the most disabling diseases in this age group. Schizophrenia can break down a person’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. People who suffer from schizophrenia usually show very inappropriate displays of their actions and feelings. Sufferers have been known to hear voices, even when there is nobody around them. They have problems controlling their thoughts, and sometimes blurt out things that are very inappropriate. This paper will outline the biological, social, and psychological

Psychiatrists recognize a variety of personality disorders based on different patterns of behavior and cognition. While all such conditions are distinguished by general negative influence on a person’s life, each of them is characterized by a specific set of symptoms. The purpose of this paper is to describe schizoid personality disorder.

Persistent hallucinations cause extreme detriment to those suffering with schizophrenia. Hallucinations disrupt the ability of a patient’s ability to function socially and professionally due to constant disruption and distraction of the patient’s focus. Unfortunately, 25% of those suffering from hallucinations, drug treatment remains virtually useless throughout their life (Thomas, 2011). Patients with schizophrenia that suffer from auditory hallucinations are often found to have reduced gray matter in the superior area of their temporal gyrus (Boska, 2009). The temporal lobe being the area responsible for processing sensory input. Auditory hallucinations often are characterized by voices within the patient’s head. These voices are known to convince the patient that they are being watched or that they are being told to do something. For patients experiencing persistent negative voices, it is important to reinforce the self-esteem of the patient and reduce the power of those voices.

Schizophrenia is a brain illness which causes abnormal and disordered thinking, feelings and acting. A schizophrenic person may also experience delusions, and hallucinations. A schizophrenic patient may have difficulties distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary. Scientist has unclear answer to what causes schizophrenia.Yet some have different theories about the cause of the mental disorder such as: genetics (heredity), biology and/or possible viral infections and immune disorders.

The delusions that all schizophrenics encounter are false or inane beliefs that are believed by the schizophrenic and noone else. The delisions of schoizophrenics go well beyond thinking that their being watched or something. They often are convinced that someone is controlling them by radio, microchip, hypnosis, and so on. For instance a patient of Torrey, named Josh, believes that the FBI planted a small radio into his skull and is controlling him through it, he even went as far as to cut his own scalp with a knife trying to get it out (44). Schizophrenic persons also have severe disturbances in emotion and behavior.

Schizophrenia is one of the most common and most severe psychological disorders. Schizophrenic symptoms are complex and are often mixed up with other psychological disorder often changing throughout the progression of the disorder. Research has not yet confirmed what exactly causes this psychological disorder. Schizophrenia involves distortions of thought, perception and emotion such as unusual behaviour and social withdrawal. (Carlson et al., 2007).Symptoms normally occurs in late teens into the early thirties. The word schizophrenia literally means ‘split mind’ but does not signify a split personality. Often humans say they experience and feel schizophrenic about a situation when they really mean they have mixed emotions about it. For example, a person might want to build a house on an island and live of the land. Then at other times, they