Schizophrenia Over 2 million Americans suffer with schizophrenia each day. A vast majority of people diagnosed with schizophrenia suffer from hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disorganized speech. Hallucinations are sensory experiences in the absence of external stimulation; therefore, people with schizophrenia may see people or things that are not really there and may even hold conversions or have relationships with these “people”. Delusions are false beliefs about reality. Someone with schizophrenia may think that he/she is living with a totally different family, or even a different era. Unfortunately, people with schizophrenia can also suffer from a lack of emotional expression, lack of interest in their environment, social withdrawal, and they may not keep up with their personal hygiene. People with schizophrenia are considered psychotic, because they are out of touch with reality. In 1887, German physician, Emile Kraepelin was one of the first to classify the mental disorders into different categories. The two categories were called, dementia praecox and manic depression. Individuals with symptoms of schizophrenia were put into the dementia praecox category. At this time schizophrenia was not known as a word. Dementia Praecox was known as a disease of the brain, a form of dementia. Kraepelin named the disorder dementia praecox because of its definition, early dementia, and his studies were focused on young adults with dementia. In 1911, Swiss
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.
Dr. Emile Krapelin, a German physician, was one of the first to separate mental disorders into different categories. “Dementia praecox” was the term Krapelin used for those patients who had some of the same symptoms that we now use to describe schizophrenia. Many people had described the basic concept of “madness” for hundreds, even thousands of years, however, Krapelin was the first to distinguish Schizophrenia as a distinguished mental disorder in the year 1887. He also was the first to distinguish between mental disorders such as Schizophrenia and depression. “Dementia praecox” was believed to be a “disease of the brain” meaning literally “early dementia.”
Blealer coined the term "Schizophrenia", which means split mindedness, in reference to the theoretical schism between thought, emotion, and behavior. Unfortunately, this term historically has caused confusion with split personality (also called multiple personality), a completely different disorder from schizophrenia. Blealer?s definition of schizophrenia differed from Kraeplin?s dementia praecox in-two major ways: first, Blealer did not feel that deterioration was a necessary symptom of the disorder; Second, Bleuler divided the symptoms into fundamental (primary) and accessory (secondary) symptoms. The most important fundamental syndrome was a thought disorder characterized by associational disturbances, particularly looseness. The other fundamental symptoms were affective disturbances, autism, and ambivalence. Accessory disorders included hallucinations and delusions. Both Kraepelin and Bleuler assumed that there was an underlying biological basis for this disorder.
The disease was identified as a discrete mental illness by Dr. Emile Kraepelin in 1887. Dr. Emile Kraepelin was a German physician. Dr. Kraepelin used the term “dementia praecox” for individuals who had symptoms that we now associate with schizophrenia. Kraepelin was the first to make a distinction in the psychotic disorders between what he called dementia praecox and manic depression. He believed that dementia praecox was primarily a disease of the brain, and particular for of dementia. Dr. Kraepelin named the disorder dementia praecox to distinguish it from other form of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Schizophrenia is a severe brain disorder that affects one’s perception of reality. It may cause hallucinations, delusions, psychotic episodes, disorganized speech,
Although there is controversy in regards to which type of treatment is most successful in regards to initial episodes of schizophrenia disorder, there are also studies looking into whether or not there are issues associated with receiving no treatment at all. Ho et al. (2003) created a study to determine the effect of a first episode of schizophrenia remaining undetected and untreated for more than one year. It was hypothesized by Ho et al. (2003) that if psychosis has toxicity to the human body, psychosis could have detrimental effects on cognitive functioning and the structure of the brain if left untreated. This study included 156 subjects, all who had not had more than three months of previous antipsychotic treatment and all of which were in the midst of their first episode of schizophrenia. The mean amount of time in which the participants went untreated for psychotic symptoms at the beginning of the experiment was 74.3 weeks. Ho et al. (2003) stated that participants were put through a battery of thirty six cognitive tests in which their scores were scored against other standardized scores. The participants were divided into two groups around the median amount of time in which they were untreated since the onset of their symptoms, which was thirteen weeks (Ho et al., 2003). Neurocognitive tests included tests of verbal, memory and motor skills. Ho et al. (2003) stated that in comparison to each other, the two groups did not differ in any of the cognitive categories
Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. Schizophrenia is not as common as other mental illnesses in fact only about 1% of all people worldwide are diagnosed with it. The symptoms of this disorder can be quiet disabling. Signs of schizophrenia usually appear in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is relatively rare for older adults and children to start developing signs of schizophrenia, but it does happen. The symptoms of schizophrenia can be categorized in three groups: positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors not typically seen in healthy people. People with positive symptoms tend to lose touch with some aspects of reality. These symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, thought disorders, and movement disorders. The most common symptoms are hallucinations and delusions. Hallucinations are sensory experiences that occur in the absence of a stimulus and they can occur in any of the five senses (visual, hearing, smell, taste and touch). The most common type of hallucination found in people with
Schizophrenia is a disorder of mental illness. Another way to describe this disorder is to lost the touch with reality. Schizophrenia is less common than any other mental disorder; therefore, treatments can be different. This disease is likely to occur between age of 16 to 30, or may develops in children if problem occurs during the birth. In that regard, a person with the schizophrenia suffers six months or a month or less, if proper treatments given. One of the main reason to identify the schizophrenia type is to observe specific behavior of the person. If the person has a sense of feeling, touching, and smelling without any physical source is called Hallucination. However, Delusions are the result of
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder creating a split from reality. Furthermore, the Schizophrenics cannot decipher reality from fantasy. Just as depression is the common cold of psychology; Schizophrenia is like the cancer of psychology. Sufferers from this disease have often been shunned, neglected, and locked up in mental institutions. Humans tend to fear what they do not understand in each other whether an uncle or some stranger on the bus.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (2013) defines Schizophrenia as one of the most common serious mental health conditions affecting men and women equally. It is a chronic condition that causes a range of different psychological symptoms including hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that do not exist) and delusions (believing in things that are untrue). These symptoms are often referred to as ‘symptoms of psychosis’, when an individual cannot distinguish between reality and their imagination (DSM, 2013). Wahashi et al. (2007) suggest that patients with schizophrenia often have difficulty in coping with everyday stressors and suffer emotional withdrawal and poor social functioning this can be particularly pronounced in patients living in an institutionalised setting (Wahashi et al. 2007).
Mental illness is seen throughout society as a negative subject, many suffer through not only with the disorders but, also the shame that comes along. In this article we will look at one of the most severe mental disorders in hopes of achieving a better knowledge of the disorder and to debunk some of the misconceptions of having a mental disorder.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder and it is defined by the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorder (DSM-IV) as a term introduced by Bleuler, which refers to a persistent, often chronic and usually serious mental disorder affecting a variety of aspects of behavior, thinking, and emotion. Patients with delusions or hallucinations may be described as psychotic. Thinking may be disconnected and illogical. Peculiar behaviors may be associated with social withdrawal and disinterest. According to the DSM-IV, schizophrenia is divided into positive and negative clusters of mental symptoms. The positive may be considered as symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. Unlike the positive symptoms, the negative cluster of symptoms for
Symptoms vary between three different diagnoses including Bipolar 1, Bipolar 2, and cyclothymic disorder. Each diagnosis has similarities but different time lengths between depressive and manic episodes. Bipolar 1 being more severe, can lead to hospitalization opposed to mild symptoms of Bipolar 2 and cyclothymic, causing more depressive episodes rather than experiencing extreme manic episodes.
Schizophrenia is defined as a brain disorder that creates a distorted reality in the minds of those affected. This brain disorder is the most common psychosis disorder, affecting people all around the world. There is no knowledge of where this brain disease originated, therefore there is no cure as of today. There are several sympotoms that come along with this disorder, many that affect the perception and sense of reality of the individual. Hallucinations, delusions and other uncommon behavior are all common symptoms. These hallucinations are usually auditory which affect the individual's thoughts and self-idenity; many schizophernic individuals sometimes even identify as someone else wether this may be a famous person or a friend. In 1911, a Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Blueler created the term schizophrenia and also was the first to determine that there are both positive and negative traits of this disordrer.
Schizophrenia is a complex disorder of the brain, which is incurable but treatable to live a close to a normal life. There are different types of schizophrenia and they each have different symptoms and affect a person's life in different ways.