Schizophrenia Case Studies

Amy Standen wrote an article on multiple people dealing with schizophrenia, as well as doctors’ opinions on treatments. In her article, “Halting Schizophrenia Before It Starts,” Standen underlined Dr. McFarlane’s low tech interventions help reduce symptoms. He believes stress can increase the problems of schizophrenia, so he created a multifamily group therapy to resolve problems at home, and find solutions to make a stress free environment. Many times doctors prescribe antipsychotic drugs, but do not recommend them for younger individuals because of negative side effects. Instead, doctors would rather see them being outside and getting support from friend and family. It can be hard to diagnose schizophrenia as the developing symptoms can resemble depression (Standen np). This makes it harder for doctors to make a diagnosis and decide what treatments they should prescribe. There are many other treatments to help the brain with schizophrenia. Amy Standen wrote another article where she describes a new therapy they use at the Citywide Mental Health Center in San Francisco. In her article, “Brain Training May Help Calm The Storms Of Schizophrenia,” Standen states how doctor Vinogradov is doing an experiment to see if the brain can be retaught. He uses computer games to train his patients to tune out distractions and focus on one thing at a time. The hallucinations and voices being heard can be

After that, the clinician must coach the individual through the use of frequent prompts and engage them in role-playing or behavioral rehearsal. All while doing this, the clinicians must continuously provide positive feedback and reinforcements for small improvements (Liberman & Martin, n.d.). This will give the patient motivation to keep going through the treatment and the confidence that they are getting better.

A little over 1 percent of the world’s population has the acute mental disorder of Schizophrenia (World). It is one of the most common mental disorders in the world (World). Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by disordered thinking, delusions, hallucinations, emotional disturbance, withdrawing from reality (Gale), and thinking illogical, confused patterns (World). The disease causes impaired thinking, emotions, and behaviors in patients (Gale). The word Schizophrenia is a Greek meaning for a “splitting of the mind”, although it does not mean the patient has more than one personality (World). The disease is more common to start in people in their late teens to mid twenties, but men tend to develop the disease earlier and more severe than women. Schizophrenia has been proven to be incurable, but patients can be treated by being hospitalized, and can start therapy or treatment when their symptoms have come under control in reaction to the medications and drugs the patient was put on (World).

The client is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder F33.2 severe, with anxious distress moderate level (American Psychiatric Association[APA], 2013). This diagnosis is evidenced by meeting the criteria in the DSM-5 of depressed mood, diminished interest in most activities, psychomotor agitation which is observable by others, loss of energy, and indecisiveness (APA, 2013). These symptoms cause impairment in daily areas of function and are not attributed to a medical condition. The history does not represent manic-like or hypomanic episodes.

The subject of my case study is a 27-year old man named Dan Wilks, self-described as an “unintentional survivor” Dan suffered with drug addiction and mental health issues throughout most of his life. At the age of 19 he was diagnosed as schizoaffective, a terrifying disorder that combines the hallucinations of schizophrenia and the mood disorders of bipolar disorder. His mental health diagnosis was later changed when he entered rehab for his alcohol and drug dependencies in 2010 when he was reclassified as bipolar affective mixed. His new diagnosis was now a lifelong illness that combined the mania and depression of bipolar disorder at the same time, creating uncontrollable thoughts of suicide and chronic intense insomnia. Having spent most of his teenage years unaware of his condition Dan had a relatively normal (but still tumultuous) childhood with a loving two parent family. When he was 17 his parents separated and later divorced pushing his own mental health issues into focus in the wake of the

Schizophrenia is often a chronic relapsing psychotic disorder that disrupts normal thought, speech, and behavior. It is a cluster of severe prolonged mental disturbances that “...is by far the most chronic and disabling of the major mental disorders. This disease may be one disorder, or it may be many disorders, with different causes” (Andreasen & Schutlz, 1999). It is a disease that makes it difficult for a person to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences. In addition, “it enables the person to think logically, to have normal emotional responses to others, and to behave normally in social situations” (Andreasen, 1999). People with schizophrenia may have

Mel is a caucasian male of 19 years from a small countryside community who grew up in a disordered atmosphere where sexual abuse seem to be the norm. Through scholarly research of Mel’s behavior and social functioning history, it appears that Mel could be potentially suffering from a Major Depressive Episode. First and foremost, to ensure that this individual receive the proper care and treament, the medical professional should conduct background research pertaining to the demographic and cultural barriers that could potentially henderd the therapuetic process. All assessments should intergrate and include race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and cultural beliefs. Multicultural considerations significantly influences the

Vito was in a major car accident eight months ago. Vito’s friend was intoxicated and driving a car with Vito as well as three other passengers whom were Vito’s friends. Prior to the accident, Vito was a scholar-athlete who was constantly on the honor roll, and well liked by his peers. He was always on the invite list for all of the parties hosted by his peers. Vito was thrown through the windshield of the vehicle that he was a passenger of, thus now he requires a wheelchair to stay mobile. In addition, it is now hard for him to learn new abstract content and requires speech therapy. Vito no longer feels comfortable around his once close friends, is easily tired, embarrassed, treated differently, and cannot play sports and stay active the way that he did prior to the accident. His behavior and outlook on life has drastically decreased and he is now suffering from depression

Mr L is an 58 year old taxi driver with a long history of abdominal discomfort and dyspepsia. He is consulting for progressive tiredness and fatigue which has troubled him over the past 8 months. He has a 6-month history of unintentional weight loss of a total of 4 kg body weight, which initially started with depression due to the death of two of this brothers. His bowel motions has recently changed from once daily to constipation for 3-4 days, followed by one or two loose bowel motions a day. He has also recently lost his appetite which has contributed to further weight loss. Due to his job he describes himself as being ‘always on the go’, with a habit of eating unhealthy take away food. He used to consider himself as being relatively fit but is now experiencing shortness of breath on little exercise. A colonoscopy was done 8 years ago which was normal.

Schizophrenia is also commonly known as psychoses. The core symptoms of schizophrenia is a severing from reality which includes disturbed thinking and speaking and many times consists of seeing tormenting images and hearing frightening voices. The symptoms of schizophrenia severely interfere with the individuals functioning at work, home, and in social situations (Halgin & Whitbourne, 2010).

This is a 40-year-old female with a 6/18/2010 date of injury, when an agitated patient picked-up a heart monitor machine and slammed it into claimant's head and ribs.

A person with schizoaffective disorder has severe changes in mood and some of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking. Psychotic symptoms in schizoaffective disorder occur even when mood symptoms are no longer present, and reflect the person's inability to tell what is real from what is imagined. Symptoms of schizoaffective disorder may vary greatly from one person to the next and may be mild or severe.

The article proposes that psychosocial treatments in conjunction with pharmacotherapy offer those suffering from Schizophrenia better functional recovery and reduced relapse rates than treatment plans exclusively involving medication. Benefits of psychosocial treatments, as the article suggests, are the addressing of issues outside of the condition’s symptoms. Based on recent research in the fields of psychosocial interventions, these types of treatments help to mitigate issues such as damage to social and work relationships; increased risk of substance abuse, aggression, and self-harm; depression and demoralization; and experiences with psychosis. (Addington, Piskulic, & Marshall, 2010)

Schizophrenia is a type of psychiatric disorder which people have out of touch with reality and disorganized behaviors. People experiencing schizophrenia need to be continuously treated for a long period. However, several reports found that the rates of recurrence and hospital readmission among schizophrenia patients are higher than other types of psychiatric patients. In Thailand, patients with schizophrenia have a large number of readmission rates, accounting for 70% of all of patients with psychiatric illnesses. Thus, these may reduce self-care behaviors of patients, and effect the worse quality of life in not only patients, but also their families. Moreover, the readmission also largely increases the expenditures on their families and

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a chronic and disabling mental disorder, involving a complex set of disturbances, associated with abnormalities of brain structure and function, disorganised speech and behaviour, delusions, and hallucinations1. The initial stage in treatment involves assessing the patient’s risk. A comprehensive biopsychosocial model of assessment should be embedded in all suicide risk assessment2. Due to the complex interplay of factors in each case, NICE has advised that standardised questionnaires and tools are of limited use and ‘can be harmful2. Tailoring the risk assessment to the diagnosis, stage of illness, and individual risk/protective factors is the gold standard for assessment2. Therefore, this process is a multistage continuum, examining ideation, intent and plan as initial indicators of risk, and suicide attempt as a long term measure of risk3. This is particularly complex in SCZ because suicide attempts often occur without warning or any verbal expression of intent, therefore predictive factors are limited4. In Mrs X’s case, it was an impulsive act, resulting in greater difficulty