Schizophrenia is a psychosis, in which a person cannot tell the imagined and reality apart, so they might begin hearing voices, or things besides humans talking. Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe brain disorder, which can be inherited in families with mental illnesses. It can also be caused by an imbalance between chemical reactions in the brain, dopamine and serotonin. This causes a person to experience delusions, disorganized speech and/or hallucinations, which affects how the person functions or thinks. Schizophrenia is divided into five subtypes, catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated and is looked upon as a spectrum. It is not a split or multi-personality disorder.
Schizophrenia is diagnosed when a person meets the standards of the
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About 10% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia die by suicide and abuse alcohol or drugs.
About 1% of the world have schizophrenia which is about 51 million people (about 1 in every 200 people). Through my reading and research, I have learnt that schizophrenia is not a split personality disorder, which is completely different from schizophrenia. A multi-personality disorder (known as split personalities) is more common than schizophrenia. I have also learnt it is inherited and not developed overtime in a person’s life. However, a person shows symptoms of schizophrenia gradually in life, and begins a change in personality, which causes the confusion of a ‘split personality.’ Schizophrenia means split from reality or split from mental functions.
In my reading, I leant that not only do people with schizophrenia stop taking care of their well being, they are attracted to messy or things that smell like garbage. Henry disliked wearing underclothes and refused to use the toilet, performing excretion
(Kanahara, et al., p. 1)” Conclusion Schizophrenia is the most severe of all the psychotic disorders. Sak’s states “.it’s not ‘split personality,’ although the two are often confused by the public; the schizophrenic mind is not split, but shattered. (Saks, p. 328)”
This comment made by the “ Big Nurse” in the story implies that she is telling the patients that the reason they have this disease is that they want to receive punishment when they did wrong or to attract attention to themselves. In no way is this the case with schizophrenia. The patients did not develop this illness because of lack of discipline from their parents or because the wanted attention. This dreaded disease is one that is unexplained and a cure is has yet to be found, although there are ways to treat the illness at the present time.
According to the DSM-IV, schizophrenia is classified under the section of “Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders”. Schizophrenia is one of the most serious major chronic brain disorders in the field of mental health; it is a neurological disorder that affects the cognitive functions of the human brain. People living with this incapacitating illness can experience multiple symptoms that will cause extreme strain in their own and their families and friends life. The individual can lose reality, unable to work, have delusions and hallucinations, may have disorganized speech and thought processes, will withdraw from people and activities, they may become suspicious and paranoid, may behave inappropriately in every day social situations. They may neglect personal hygiene and dress improperly, use excessive make-up; every day life is becoming chaotic for everyone involved.
For many years schizophrenia was thought to be caused by bad parenting, the so-called "refrigerator mother" was to blame. Today there exists much more information on the disorder and the evidence points to the commonly accepted notion of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Unfortunately, many people still confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder when, in fact, the two are separate. Schizophrenia however, deals more with people who simply don't have a firm grip on reality.
Mental illness have been part of humans for many years. Some mental illness can be hidden, while others can be seen a mile away. Schizophrenia for example, is a mental illness that can be easy to conceal. "Schizophrenia is a chronic, disabling mental illness whose symptoms can include hallucinations, delusions and cognitive problems, the illness afflicts about 1 percent of the human population...." (Shnabel). It means that there are people around the world that hear things and see things that not many people can, not knowing what the difference between real and fake is. "Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders are among the most debilitating mental illnesses because multiple facets of functioning are impaired"(Compton). Seeing and hearing
Schizophrenia is considered a disease of the brain, a physical disorder that, thanks to modern technology, is able to be visualized. Schizophrenia, along with other diseases of the brain, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis, are all brain diseases which alter both functionality and structure of the brain. Schizophrenia has been called a cruel disease, one that impairs life greatly in a degenerative fashion, altering emotions and various abilities greatly. This unfortunate disease is quite common, effecting about one to two percent of the World's population. About two to four percent of the population suffer from less severe yet still debilitating and disturbing schizophrenic-like symptoms. An estimated sixty five billion a dollars per year is spent on this disorder in the United States.(2) It is estimated that over two million Americans suffer from schizophrenia in their lifetime..
As an overview, schizophrenia is a disease to the brain. It is one of the most disabling and emotionally devastating illnesses known to man. It has been misunderstood for a long time. It has a biological basis, so it is like other diseases. It is a very common disease; one percent to one and a half percent of the U.S. has been diagnosed within some point in their life. There is no cure for this disease, although there is treatable medicine. Schizophrenia is not a multiple personality disorder. People who take medicine for it are able to lead normal fulfilling lives.
There are several people every year that are diagnosed with a mental disorder. In the world’s entire population, more than one percent of people have been diagnosed with schizophrenia (Brain and Behavior Research Foundation). When thinking of the billions of people in the world, it might not seem like that many people but once the number of those diagnosed is calculated it seems much larger. Currently there are more than seventy million people in the world that have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, only diagnosed. There are probably several more people who have this disorder and have not been diagnosed or are unable to obtain the resources to be diagnosed.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (2009) (as cited in Regier et al, 1993), “Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disorder that has affected people throughout history and about 1 percent of Americans have this illness” (p. 85-94).
Schizophrenia is a serious, chronic mental disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality and disturbances of thought, mood, and perception. Schizophrenia is the most common and the most potentially sever and disabling of the psychosis, a term encompassing several severe mental disorders that result in the loss of contact with reality along with major personality derangements. Schizophrenia patients experience delusions, hallucinations and often lose thought process. Schizophrenia affects an estimated one percent of the population in every country of the world. Victims share a range of symptoms that can be devastating to themselves as well as to families and friends. They may have trouble dealing with the most minor everyday stresses and insignificant changes in their surroundings. They may avoid social contact, ignore personal hygiene and behave oddly (Kass, 194). Many people outside the mental health profession believe that schizophrenia refers to a “split personality”. The word “schizophrenia” comes from the Greek schizo, meaning split and phrenia refers to the diaphragm once thought to be the location of a person’s mind and soul. When the word “schizophrenia” was established by European psychiatrists, they meant to describe a shattering, or breakdown, of basic psychological functions. Eugene Bleuler is one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time. He is best known today for his introduction of the term “schizophrenia” to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox and for his studies of schizophrenics. The illness can best be described as a collection of particular symptoms that usually fall into four basic categories: formal thought disorder, perception disorder, feeling/emotional disturbance, and behavior disorders (Young, 23). People with schizophrenia describe strange of unrealistic thoughts. Their speech is sometimes hard to follow because of disordered thinking. Phrases seem disconnected, and ideas move from topic to topic with no logical pattern in what is being said. In some cases, individuals with schizophrenia say that they have no idea at all or that their heads seem “empty”. Many schizophrenic patients think they possess extraordinary powers such as x-ray vision or super strength. They may believe that their thoughts are being controlled by others or that everyone knows what they are thinking. These beliefs ar...
There are many disorders throughout the world that affect people on a daily basis. They are life altering and life changing. They affect how a person can function on a normal level of life. This, in itself, is an interesting way of viewing the disorder, but it truly is the way that schizophrenia is viewed. The term normal is in its self a complex concept, but to understand that for the purpose of schizophrenia; normal is anything that deviates from the socially accepted way of conducting one’s self. The person affected by this disorder is drifting away from reality and, at the same time, drifting away from who they have been their whole life.
Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders with major impairments in thought, emotion, and behavior; there is a constant prevalence rate of one percent with the occurrence being slightly higher in men. Though different psychologists have various theories on whether the disorder is linked to genetics or social economic status, schizophrenia in all
“People with schizophrenia are far more likely to harm themselves than be violent toward the public. Violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia. News and entertainment media tend to link mental illnesses including schizophrenia to criminal violence. Most people with schizophrenia, however, are not violent toward others but are withdrawn and prefer to be left alone. Drug or alcohol abuse raises the risk of violence in people with schizophrenia, particularly if the illness is untreated, but also in people who have no mental illness. When violence does occur, it is most frequently targeted at family members and friends, and more often takes place at home.”
According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine Website , schizophrenia is “a mental illness that usually strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood, but can strike at any time in life” that is characterized by “delusions, hallucinations, bizarre behavior, [and] disorganized speech” among other symptoms. Schizophrenia is, at its core, the altering of a person’s perception of reality by some somatic means and when observed by a psychologically sound individual, can be quite unsettling. After all, seeing a person whose reality is fractured causes us to doubt our own reality, if only in a fleeting thought.
who wrote of a woman who had a case of amnesia, and who's “alternate personality”