Causes and Treatments of Schizophrenia

A large number of the homeless population consists of the mentally disabled. About one third of people that are homeless have a disease called schizophrenia or they have manic depressive disorder. Schizophrenia is a long term mental disorder that breaks down the connection between thought, emotion, and behavior. This leads to faulty perception, withdrawal from reality, delusions, inappropriate actions and feelings, and the sense of mentally being broken into pieces. Schizophrenia actually means split mind. My great grandmother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and curiosity provoked me to find out the chances of me unfortunately inheriting this gene. This disease affects one percent of the population and has been called the cancer of the mind. There is a lot that we know about schizophrenia, yet a lot that we still need to find out. Learning more about this topic and the symptoms that arise from it will help me be able to detect any episodes or warning signs of my family members developing it. Since there are several factors that influence the causation of this disease, knowing the environmental protections needed to be taken in order to prevent it would help greatly. I would also like to learn about the treatment options available and the optimal choices that there are to choose from. Antipsychotics are widely used for patients with schizophrenia, but are there alternative forms of treatment that could help or even be better? Schizophrenia may only affect one percent of the population, but in the U.S. that is a total of about 2.4 million people. Since it influences so many peoples lives and there is not a cure for this disease yet, I believe that research on this psychological disorder is pivotal on helping the homeless find home...

... middle of paper ...

.... More people with schizophrenia are in need of help than are getting it. Since it is such an expensive disorder and not understood, people tend to not help them and just point fingers and call them crazy. I have learned some of what is known about how schizophrenia is caused but there is no real cure for it. I would love to dig deeper into the brain structure part of the causation of schizophrenia. There is no easy way to go about a psychological disorder, but having them out in the streets is definitely not the right way.

Works Cited

Suzuki, Hidenobu, et al. "Study Of The Efficacy And Safety Of Switching From Risperidone To Paliperidone In Elderly Patients With Schizophrenia." Psychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences 67.2 (2013): 76-82. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 May 2014.

"The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America." NIMH RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.