Taking a Look at Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that affects one out of 100 people and presents with both positive and negative symptoms. Misconceptions of people with schizophrenia may include a belief that they are violent however they are more likely to be the victims of violence as of result of their abnormal behaviors. Positive symptoms may include the presence of symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and abnormal behavior whereas negative symptoms indicate a lack of a particular behavior. A positive symptom of schizophrenia may include hallucinations which are typically auditory hallucinations although may also be visual hallucinations in which clients experience some event despite a lack of stimuli. A negative symptom

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.

Schizophrenia is a disease that has plagued societies around the world for centuries, although it was not given its formal name until 1911. It is characterized by the presence of positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are so named because of the presence of altered behaviors, such as delusions, hallucinations (usually auditory), extreme emotions, excited motor activity, and incoherent thoughts and speech. (1,2) In contrast, negative symptoms are described as a lack of behaviors, such as emotion, speech, social interaction, and action. (1,2) These symptoms are by no means concrete. Not all schizophrenic patients will exhibit all or even a majority of these symptoms, and there is some

Schizophrenia is a very complex disorder and people who suffer from this disorder suffer in different ways. Schizophrenia is a psychological

Over the last few decades Schizophrenia has become embedded in mainstream vernacular as any behavior or emotional response that is out of touch with reality. However even with its popularity heightened through movies and headline news stories, schizophrenia is still one of the most enigmatic and least understood disorders of the brain. With current research focused on the role of neurobiology and functioning on a cellular level, investigative analysis has merited new innovations towards its source, however a single organic cause for the disorder still eludes scientists. Although the foundation of the affliction is still unknown, its effects are well documented and over the next few pages will show the changes in the brain as the disease

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

The debate of whether schizophrenia is a brain disorder has been a controversial issue for decades. Most researchers consider schizophrenia a brain disorder for numerous reasons. The evidence revolves around the symptoms that can impact a patient biologically, psychologically, and socially. Some speculations suggest that schizophrenia begins in the womb which also contributes to the evidence towards schizophrenia being a brain disorder.

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by a variety of symptoms and the disorganization of feeling and thought. It is an incurable disease whose causes are unknown, yet whose effects are mind and body crippling. (Young, 1988, p.13-14) This topic was chosen because it is interesting to study a disorder that worldwide, is viewed as a classic example of madness and insanity. Another reason of interest is because unlike many illnesses, schizophrenia doesn't have a noticeable pattern and its difficulty to be diagnosed as a disease makes the collection of statistics difficult. It is important to learn more about schizophrenia because a significant numbr of people are affected everyday

Schizophrenia is the most commonly diagnosed psychotic disorder (Steel, 2012), affecting 1 out of every 100 hundred people on average (Taurier & Wykes, 2004). Symptoms of the disorder include positive symptoms, which are auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as disordered patterns of thought such as delusions (Taurier & Wykes, 2004). Auditory hallucinations are the most common positive symptom, and often come in the form of voices (Steel, 2012). Delusions, which are the most common symptom of schizophrenia, involve a false belief that exists despite evidence being available that suggests otherwise (Steel, 2012).

Schizophrenia – a term that has many negative connotations. Many people consider those who suffer from schizophrenia to be “crazy” or “psychos”. Far beyond the thoughts regulating about schizophrenia, it is a very serious mental disorder that is often misunderstood. Schizophrenia is “a group of disorders characterized by severely impaired disintegration, affective disturbances, and social withdrawal,” (Sue, D., Sue, D.W., Sue, D., Sue, S., 2013, p. 348). Comparatively to the idea that people with schizophrenia have at least some control over their disorder, schizophrenia is extremely painful to endure, and it potentially only goes into partial remission with the help of medication.

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.

Mental disorders have enormous effects on the way individuals function and live on a day-to-day basis. Of the many mental disorders, schizophrenia is one of the most disabling disorders that an individual can have. Schizophrenia has a very rare prevalence rate and only affects about 1% of the entire population worldwide. However, it is one of the most incapacitating disorders and individuals with schizophrenia suffer from a variety of symptoms. There are two categories of symptoms that a person with schizophrenia can have: positive symptoms (incomprehensible speech, hallucinations, and delusions) and negative symptoms (affective flattening, alogia, and anhedonia) (Gregory, 2010).

As can be seen in the picture from Häfner’s journal, there were more males than females that are found with schizophrenia (Häfner, fig.5). Men have a higher percentage of onsets from about twelve years old to about twenty- five years old. While the peak for the highest percentage of onsets for both men and women is found between the ages twenty and twenty-four years old men have a higher percentage than women. Women are discovered with the illness from their mid-twenties to their mid-thirties. They have also found that “males … have significantly higher levels of negative symptoms and marginally lower levels of functioning and females reported higher levels of social support at baseline” (Ochoa et al).

Schizophrenia, unlike most disorders, is a standout amongst the most genuine of the mental disorders. It is known that one in a hundred individuals are affected by it, and starts in either youth or early adulthood. Schizophrenia brings social interruption, anguish and hardship to the individuals who experience the ill effects of it, as well as to their family. Under those circumstances, it is known to be the most devastating of all disorders. There are both negative and positive symptoms when it comes to dealing with schizophrenia. Despite the fact that there are various negative indications, the most present one is limitations or absence in thoughts and behaviours that are characteristics in normal functioning. For this

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