Schizophrenia: A Chronic Mental Illness

I chose to write my research paper over Schizophrenia. It is a psychological disorder that I have always found fascinating. It is a serious disorder that consumes a person's life and is nearly impossible to control. In this paper, I will talk about the definition of Schizophrenia, the diagnosis of Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia in children, suicide, sexually related characteristics of the disease, sleep disorders caused by the disease, differences in the disease on different ethnicities, and insensitivity to pain.

Resilience, when asked to define and explain the act of being resilient, can be a hard thing to describe. It is something everyone must be at one point in their lives, and what some people must be every day. There are different levels to it, depending on what the person is going through at the time. However, resilience is commonly described as just staying strong in a tough situation or time in a person’s life. When something goes wrong, or something bad happens, the person affected doesn’t let it break them. They stand strong against whatever is being thrown at them, but they bend when they need to. Someone who is resilient is flexible, making sure they don’t crack under pressure. As Robert Jordan said in The Fires of Heaven, “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”

Paranoia, hallucinations, emotional withdrawal - . fFor victims of schizophrenia everyday life is a strange and terrifying journey. Schizophrenia shatters people’s ability to feel, to communicate, to understand or interact with the everyday world. The symptoms represent what we know best about the disease however no one knows exactly why it strikes, who the next victim will be and how to reverse its life ruining effects.

Resilience is about being independent, standing on your own two feet or taking back the power.

Resilience is defined as, “the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens” (Merriam Webster par 1). Resilience is shown when people use their strength when dealing with adversity. When people are experiencing negative circumstances resilience may lead to positive outcomes (PBS Par 1).

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from life’s daily challenges it’s about being strong and having the ability to respond positively to what life throws at us. We may find ourselves in many challenging and stressful situations throughout life however having the skills needed to cope and deal with them helps us have an effective response to all negative situations.

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).

(Salinger 173). Holden has molded his life around this fantasy and fails to realize that

The symptoms of schizophrenia vary, however, they have been categorized as positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Positive symptoms may include hallucinations, delusions, and / or thought disorder. Hallucinations normally give a false perception of touch, smell, taste, and / or visit, those with this particular mental disorder often experience auditory hallucinations. Delusions are also a sign of schizophrenia. Open quotations delusions are beliefs that are not part of the person's culture and do not change. Quotation parentheses u.s. Department, print the seas, 2010. These may cause a person that has this disorder, to think or feel as if they are victims in imagine conspiracy. It is also shown that they believe they are being controlled

Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain and is known as one of the most disabling

Schizophrenia as a Biological Disorder As well as the biological approaches there are physiological, psychological and environmental explanations. New theories of schizophrenia are constantly being developed each having their own advantages and disadvantages. How do we know however, which one is correct? The biological explanation suggests that schizophrenia is produced by an unfortunate combination of genes or is due to physical problems in the brain.

The more we learn about stress, the more we understand how great a role it plays in a wide range of diseases and conditions. Not surprisingly, this is especially true of psychiatric problems such as psychosis, affective illness (a category that includes manic-depression and major depression)and alcoholism (Harkness, Monroe, Simmons, & Thase 1999). Stress is one major factor to a wide range of mental illnesses one being schizophrenia. Many health officials are currently finding ways to reduce stress levels in different individuals. Stress seems to be a harmful trigger for a person suffering with schizophrenia often causing their symptoms to be more prominent during high times of stress. For a patient with schizophrenia different stressors can affect ones psychosis such as divorce of parents, death of a loved one, tests in school, grades, weight, relationships, moving from place to place, or change of therapist. These stressors are all risks for a person in becoming schizophrenic in turn leading them to becoming

The major roots that are reflected in all definitions of schizophrenia are “volition, chronicity, dissociative pathology is fundamental on negative symptoms and stress on reality distortion” (Tondon et al., 2013). Schizophrenia is a “serious mental illness that causes major disability and psychosocial impairment” (Bener & Dafeeah, 2014). Bhati defines schizophrenia is “splitting and dissociation of the mind, a disorder of thought, emotion, and behavior” (2014). In addition, he described that “to recognizing the chronic course of the illness punctuated by episodes of symptom exacerbation” (2013, p. 409). According to the textbook and other articles, the illness is characterized by two types of symptoms” positive and negative” (Regehr, 2014, p. 149). The positive symptoms are those that are “adding to the person include hallucinations, disorganized thoughts, delusions, and paranoia and

Schizophrenia, like many other mental illnesses effects thought processes,behavior, and emotions. The cause of this illness is currently unknown, but is widely researched and studied. Effects caused by this disorder are tremendous. The symptoms include, but are not limited to :Social isolation, Behavioral issues,hallucinations, mood swings,slowness in activities,paranoia, and incoherent speech. Many who live with this disorder must be closely watched and taken care of to ensure their safety and those around them.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that is diagnosed in 0.5%-1% of the population in their lifetime (van Os et al, 2010). Its literal translation is ‘split-brain’, though it does not refer to multiple personality disorder, but rather a split from reality characterized by its disturbed perceptions, disorganized thinking and inappropriate emotions (Myers, 2010). Much research has been carried out to gain a better understanding of the causes of this serious disorder. A popular theory is the diathesis-stress model. This theory of schizophrenia proposes that stress can elicit a pre-existing vulnerability to the disorder (Jones & Fernyhough, 2007). This model focuses on the interaction between genetic heritability of the disorder, and the environments interaction