Taking a Look at Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe, disabling and chronic disorder that affects people. Schizophrenia is diagnosed as a psychotic disorder. This is because a person suffering from schizophrenia cannot tell their own thoughts, perceptions, ideas, and imaginations from the reality. There is continuing debate and research as to whether schizophrenia is one condition or a combination of more than one syndrome that have related features. People suffering from schizophrenia may seem perfectly fine until the time they talk actually talk about they are thinking. People with schizophrenia rely on others for help since they cannot care for themselves of hold a job. There is no cure for schizophrenia, but there is treatment that relieves some of the symptoms. People having the disorder will cope with the symptoms all their lives. There have been cases of people suffering from schizophrenia leading meaningful and rewarding lives. There are five types of schizophrenia namely paranoid, disorganized, residual, undifferentiated, and catatonic schizophrenia. This paper will discuss paranoid schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a mental health condition that is the base of several psychological symptoms. There are many people out there who suffer from this disorder and have no idea on how to cure it. Some people tend to spend their whole life with this disorder; whilst others get it treated as soon as they see first sign or symptom of it. Schizophrenia is not a disorder that cannot be treated; with the right kind of treatment, the disorder can be controlled and the individual suffering from it can be cured. The paper will discuss the schizophrenia disorder in detail, causes, risk, signs & symptoms, and treatments of it.

The term ‘schizophrenia' covers a group of serious psychotic disorders characterised by a loss of contact with reality. It comes from two Greek words: schiz meaning ‘split' and phren meaning ‘mind'. DSM IV (1994) estimate that the occurrence rate of schizophrenia ranges from 0.2%-2.0% worldwide. There are two main explanations of schizophrenia: the biological explanations and the psychological explanations. In this essay I will critically consider the biological explanations. These include genetics, neurochemistry, brain structure and evolution.

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

Schizophrenia is a psychological disease with an unknown treatment. Its onset starts in early adult hood on average. There are many studies showing links to genetics and environmental causes. In this paper I will discuss many of the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia along with how it is diagnosed, imaged with MRI, and the difficulty in treating this disease. More treatments for schizophrenia may be revealed with the further advancement of imaging technology. Schizophrenia is a disease that affects the most complex structure in the human body, the human brain. The more research that is continued on the smaller segments of the different areas of the brain with imaging modalities the closer we get to

Patients with schizophrenia resulted to having antibodies in their systems while the other group did not. (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga, 2015, p. 521). Other researchers have presented arguments of their being abnormalities in the neural transmitters. (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga, 2015, p. 521). Dopamine is one neural transmitter researchers have taken a major interest in because medication given to schizophrenics blocking the dopamine transmitters seem to help calm the severity of the symptoms of a wide number of patients. Although doctors are not yet certain of the cause of schizophrenia they are certain of the fact that people with schizophrenia have less brain tissue due to having large ventricles.

Schizophrenia, a thought process that has affected many lives, is characterized by disruptions to the thinking processes, emotions, as well as one's sensory perception. Schizophrenia is a multi-faceted affliction in that individuals suffer audio and visual hallucinations and often deal with financial burdens as well. Many individuals fail to realize that they suffer from this mental disease until symptoms and effects begin to manifest themselves. Treatment for this illness consists of a combination of drug therapy with changes to diet, lasting an entire lifetime. Living with schizophrenia is difficult for

Schizophrenia is a disorder that has an effect on about 25 million people around the world (Myers, 2010). Schizophrenia is a brain damage, naturally created by the human body, that is caused by the genetically determined vulnerability of the blood-brain barrier (Voronov, 2013). This psychiatric disorder, like most others, is characterized by changes in behavior, thinking, reduced ability to feel normal emotions, and mood (Abad et al., 2011). The unique thing about schizophrenia is that the symptoms are split into two different sections: positive symptoms (the presences of behaviors and or feelings that are not usually present in humans) and negative symptoms (the lack of behaviors and or feelings that are usually present in humans). Positive symptoms are characterized by the patient having delusions and or hallucinations while negative symptoms are characterized by the patient having affective flattening, alogia, avolition, anhedonia, and asociality (Nasrollahi et al., 2012). Although these are general symptoms for schizophrenia, the symptoms differ between genders.

Schizophrenia is a complex mental illness which has several differing theories exploring the underlining neurological causes. This paper will focus on giving insight into aspects of schizophrenia as well as discussing the following leading theories on the topic: neurodevelopment, dopamine, glutamate, and brain abnormalities. Methods of research focus on studying twins, adopted family members as well as genetics. As it is such a complex illness it presents many different symptoms that have been categorized as positive, negative, and cognitive. Treatment is crucial to managing a life with this illness which includes a combination of therapy and antipsychotic drugs. Since a wide array of the symptoms

Biological, psychological, and sociocultural viewpoints have been developed in an attempt to explain schizophrenia. All three viewpoints point out various factors that may contribute to the development of the disorder.

The causes of Schizophrenia have been a controversy for years many say its genetics where many also say its environment. It can run in families according to the article Schizophrenia, “The children of a parent with schizophrenia have about a 10% risk of developing the illness, which is more than 10 times the risk of developing schizophrenia among those who have no relatives with the illness” (Keefe). There is no exact predisposed gene for schizophrenia just rare genetic defects and

A common mistaken belief is that people with schizophrenia have multiple personalities. Many people confuse schizophrenia with 'split personality' or 'multiple personality disorder' (Lilienfeld et al, 2010). The misunderstanding stems from the meaning of the word schizophrenia, as in Greek it means 'split mind' (Boruck, 2008). In 1990, Carlson proposed “schizophrenia is probably the most misused psychological term in existence” . Vaughan (1977), performed a study which found that 77% of students who registered for introductory psychology classes supported the myth about schizophrenics having a split personality. Although, more recent studies have suggested lower support for the myth as 50% of college students, 40% of police officers and almost 50% of those in the community agreed with the myth (Stuart & Arboleda-Florez, 2001; Wahl, 1987). Not only does this belief occur among the general population but it is also present in scientific journals. For example, Drummer's (2003) medical journal subtitled "The dermatologist's schizophrenic attitude towards pigmented lesions". As well as this, Shastry (1999) wrote in a journal schizophrenia is also known as split personality. Therefore terminological confusion seems to be one reason for this myth being common.

This disorder only affects the brain and scientists have been unable to determine what causes it develop within a person’s brain. Experts believe that chemical imbalances in the brain combined with genetics and even the environment possibly are what causes Schizophrenia. Genetics has always been pointed out as a root cause for this disorder to develop because historically people that have family members that have already been diagnosed with the disorder are more likely to develop the disorder themselves. The risk for developing schizophrenia has always been higher in people who have a family history of this mind consuming disorder and other types of mental illnesses. The

Schizophrenia can be caused by a variety of things stress, abnormal brain structure and genetics being some of them. How ever many of these are theories by scientists as there is no definite cause of schizophrenia.

The meaning of schizophrenia is a severe disorder in which the person suffers from disordered thinking, bizarre behavior, hallucinations, and inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Researchers consider schizophrenia a brain disorder due to the evidence present in MRI scans of the brain. In comparison to healthy controlled participants, participants with schizophrenia showed structural differences in two particular areas of the brain. The Cingulum bundle that lies under the cingulate gyrus and links part of the limbic system, and another that links the frontal lobe to temporal lobe, were found to have significantly less myelin coating on axons of the neurons within the bundle.