Schizophrenia Essay

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There are many different diagnoses for mental problems these days from anxiety disorders to eating disorders and from mood disorders to obsessive-compulsive disorders. However, I am choosing to write about schizophrenia disorder because I believe that this type of disorder is one of the most dangerous of all mental problems. Throughout this paper I will describe the criteria doctors use to diagnose somebody with schizophrenia as well as the specific DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. This will include the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia such as the positive, negative, and disorganized symptoms. Also I will talk about the etiology and the medical and psychological treatments for schizophrenia. Lastly I will write about the impact this disorder has on the person and the people around them in the real world.
“Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by disturbances in thought, emotion, and behavior−disordered thinking, in which ideas are not logically related; faulty perception and attention; lack of emotional expressiveness or, at times, inappropriate expressions; and disturbances in movement and behavior, such as a dishelved appearance.”() As you can see there is a wide range of symptoms used to diagnose schizophrenia but most of the time someone with schizophrenia only has a few of the symptoms. This makes schizophrenia a difficult disorder to stereotype because there is not one main symptom that must be present to diagnose. The DSM-5 criteria for a diagnoses of schizophrenia is defined as having two or more symptoms for at least one month. The symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms such as reduced motivation or emotional expression. Delusions, ha...

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...y is the severe impairments in social relationships. Schizophrenics with asociality have few friends and may not desire close relationships with other people. They also have poor social skills and a general disinterest in being around other people. The third negative symptom is anhedonia. This is the loss or lessening of pleasure. There are two types of pleasure but the main one is anticipatory pleasure that is diminished in schizophrenics. “Thus, the anhedonia deficit in schizophrenia appears to be in anticipatory pleasure.”() Blunted affect is the fourth negative symptom of schizophrenia. It refers to the lack of outward expression of emotion. This symptom is characterized by the person vacantly staring, the muscles in the face being motionless or the eyes lifeless. Finally the fifth negative symptom is alogia. People with alogia have a severe reduction in speech.

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