Schizophrenia Fallacies

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 Mathers et al., (1996) “Schizophrenia ranks among the top ten causes of disability worldwide and affects one in one hundred people at some point in their lives.” (Cardwell and Flanagan, 2012). Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder which is commonly diagnosed in 15-30 year old individuals. It disrupts a person’s cognition, perceptions and emotions, making it extremely difficult to diagnose. Bleuler (1911) introduced the term schizophrenia, which translates as ‘split-mind’ or ‘divided self’ and accounts for the earlier interpretations of the disease. These misunderstandings and the ongoing misrepresentations, especially within the media, has stigmatised the illness. This raises the need for better understanding and

Generally speaking, Americans tend to believe that disassociative identity disorder (formally known as multiple personality disorder) and schizophrenia are synonymous with one another; they are completely separate mental disorders with different symptoms. People struggling with schizophrenia experience symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and impaired motor function; none of these symptoms are mimicked in D.I.D. Psychologists believe that the confusion stems from the title “schizophrenia” which translates literally to

It is true that many people still confuse Schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder. But the truth is schizophrenia is not the same as multiple personality disorder. Both these disorder are poles apart. Schizophrenia is a kind of mental disorder, whereas MPD is a dissociative identity disorder. These two disorder exhibit completely different symptoms and also their diagnosis and treatment vary a lot. The NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) does admit that people experiencing dissociative identity disorder may hear voices in their heads; however schizophrenia is still a clearly different disease from dissociative identity disorder. Schizophrenia is a lifelong disorder that has no cure mainly caused by hereditary and environmental

The sociodevelopmental-cognitive model displays the interaction between the dopamine system and environmental risk factors (Howes & Murray, 2014). Individuals who develop schizophrenia tend to show excessive increases in dopamine levels during psychosis. The link between dopaminergic alterations and neurodevelopment damage has become more evident and underlies psychosis (Howes & Murray, 2014). The model insinuates interventions to interrupt dysregulations in dopamine by alleviating stressors and incorporating cognitive

Schizophrenia, also known as multiple personality disorder is a chronic psychological disorder characterized by agitations in cognition, delusion, hallucination, thought, and behavior disorder. Approximately one percent of the population develops this disorder during their lifetime, and it is more commonly seen throughout the teen years and early twenties in men than in women. This lifelong disorder is rarely cured, but in some cases, it is considered treated. This disorder was first recognized by John Haslam (1809) in his book “Observations on Madness and Melancholy.” He noticed the same form of disorder in people and called it “a form of insanity.” Schizophrenia, a long-term mental disorder of a type, involving a breakdown in the relation

Schizophrenia is the disorder that most closely corresponds to popular concepts of insanity, madness, or lunacy (Nevid, 2006). Nevid (2006) also states that schizophrenia comes from Greek roots meaning “split brain”. There are quite a few people in the United States that have schizophrenia. According to the National Institute of Mental Health approximately 2.4 million American adults or about 1.1 percent of the population age eighteen and older in a given year have schizophrenia (2013). Schizophrenia is found in men more than women. Men also tend to develop the disorder earlier than women and experience more severe cases of the disorder (Nevid, 2006). When being diagnosed with schizophrenia there are phases the doctor will test. These stages are prodromal, active or acute, remission, and relapse (Frese, 2012).

Data collected over the years has begun to show more and more evidence as to why researchers consider schizophrenia a brain disorder. First of all, schizophrenia is genetically inherited shares a lot of similarities with Alzheimer's and Bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia has also demonstrated severe structural difference when compared to a normal human brain and often shows severe gray tissue deterioration. The final reason researchers consider schizophrenia a brain disorder is due to the dopamine hypothesis. This hypothesis states that schizophrenia is caused due to high amounts of dopamine in the brain. Something

Studies have also proved that “having a first-degree relative with schizophrenia increases the risk developing schizophrenia to almost 10%” (Varcarolis & Halter, 2014). The pathophysiology of schizophrenia is complicated, including inherited gene abnormalities in combination with environmental factors. Interactions between specific genes on different chromosomes result in malfunctioning dopaminergic, glutamatergic and GABAergic communication pathways in the brain – making one vulnerable to this disorder (Deng & Dean, 2014). “Deficits in acetylcholine muscarinic receptors… and inflammation has also been found to play a major role in the development and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia” (Deng & Dean, 2014, p.3). Environmental factors possibly promoting brain inflammation and adding to the advancement of the disease in susceptible persons are pregnancy or birth complications, increased cortisol levels, childhood sexual abuse, exposure to adversity or psychological trauma, toxins – specifically tetrachloroethylene (Varcarolis & Halter,

According to biological studies, schizophrenia has been defined as a severe long-lasting psychotic disorder in which people have abnormal perceptions of reality. The severe break from reality is often exhibited in disturbances in emotions, thinking, perception and behavior and may result in a combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extreme patterns of disordered thinking and behavior. Although it is often incorrectly used interchangeably with split personality or multiple personality, “schizophrenia” means “split mind” and more accurately describes the disturbance of the usual balance of thinking and emotions causing an inability to make a clear distinction between reality and fantasy. Researchers have not been able to definitively

When people think of schizophrenia, they mix it with multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia is one person with a split mind that has complicated rational behavior and thinking. Multiple personality disorder is when a person has two or more whole and distant personalities inhabiting the same body. Multiple personality disorder is a treatable disorder that can go away with treatment and therapy. Schizophrenia is treatable, however there is not a cure.

Schizophrenia patients away from their reality and dissociative identity disorder meanwhile not affect the relationship with her. The split personality in Dissociative Identity Disorder occurs internally, the sufferer creates his alters from conflicting interactions in his own mind, in schizophrenia this phenomenon is seen externally as the voices coming from abroad to manifest and is therefore not hallucinations and personality

Even with the advancements in science and the new technologies available, the causes of schizophrenia are still unknown. In 1911 a Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, developed the term schizophrenia. “This word comes from the Greek roots schizo (split) and phrene (mind) to describe the fragmented thinking of people with the disorder” (Johns Hopkins Medicine). By developing the term schizophrenia, it allowed others to better understanding the disorder and move away from linking it to the common misunderstanding of having multiple or split personalities. Although this does not give us an understanding of the causes of the disorder, it does help to clarify and assist with classifying people with the symptoms associated with the

The diathesis-stress model of schizophrenia describes how genetic and environmental factors work together to cause the onset of schizophrenia. An inherited vulnerability is a major factor in a person being diagnosed as having schizophrenia. A person’s risk of having schizophrenia increases with genetic relatedness. There are even studies that have been done that shows that most identical schizophrenic twins end up having offspring who develop schizophrenia later on in life. There is also numerous brain abnormalities found in schizophrenia. For example, people with schizophrenia tend to have enlarged cranial ventricles, a decreased cerebral size, and reduced tissue volume. The abnormalities found in the different parts of the brain correlate with

The word “schizophrenia comes from the Greek roots schizo (split) and phrene (mental) to address the behavior changes and fragmented thinking of the people suffering from the sickness (Karolinska Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience) . But what exactly is schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is a form of psychiatric disorder which endangers and alters a person’s ability of thinking clearly, making good judgments, responding emotionally, communicating effectively, understanding reality, behaving appropriately, and event in some extreme cases, recognizing others. People suffering from this illness have changes in mood and behavior and other sorts of symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations which implement ethical issues by preventing the patients from working, going to school and social functioning. But nevertheless, recent studies have shown that schizophrenia is not only a psychotic illness, but also considered as neurodegenerative