I am writing this paper to clear up any misunderstandings about this disease. I want everyone to know what it is truly about. Because of the wide spread misunderstanding of this disease, I feel that it is not getting the true attention it deserves. People do not understand how frustrating, disappointing, and seemingly hopeless this illness can become.
During my research I found out that many more people have Schizophrenia than most would like to admit. In fact, one percent of our entire population suffers from this disease. That is over 2 million people. The only good news is that this disease has a low rate of genetic inheritance. If one of your parents has this disease you would only have a 10 percent chance of getting it yourself. And only a one percent chance if you have no known sufferers in your family.
Schizophrenia is a disease that takes over your brain. It distorts your reality and turns life into a confusing daily journey. The newest theory is that children are born with it. During their childhood and early teen years schizophrenics go through a latency stage where the disease is not apparent. The first occurrence of this disease may transpire in their late teens or early twenties. This may be as simple as any shocking change in behavior. Schizophrenia emerges at different times in men and women. It can become visible as early as 17 in males, while it appears in their late twenties and early thirties for females.
The classic symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, false reality experiences, social isolation, unusual speech or behavior, and disorganization of thoughts of speech. They may become preoccupied with their fictitious world. The hallucinations deal with your taste, smell, sight, sound, and visual senses. During these hallucinations they hare voices in their head. These voices may be telling them to perform certain activities, talk to the person they are hearing, or even may be warning them of a future dangerous situation. There can be seven different voices all talking at once, thus causing the patient to become confused.
Because people with Schizophrenia cannot grasp the cause of what is affecting them, they do not believe they are sick. This causes problems with doctors who are trying to give them treatment. Because the patient is oblivious to the disease, they are unwilling to so much as accept treatment. Surprisingly there is not a sure fire way of curing schizophrenia at the moment, but doctors are working hard to find one.
The most typical symptoms of schizophrenia are things such as, hearing things that others cannot, such as voice of people whispering, having a feeling that someone is going out of their way to make sure they harm you, having visions of things that people around you cannot see, receiving special messages from the television, radio, and other appliances, felling that you posses special powers that ca...
Butcher, Mineka and Hooley (2003) define schizophrenia as a brain disorder in which there is a failure of the brain's chemical or electrical systems to function properly, resulting in a variety of unusual neural twists, such as disjointed ideas, confused or disconnected thoughts, and sounds or other sensations experienced as real when they exist only in the person's mind. The prevalence of the disorder is estimated to be about one percent of the population in most countries including the United States. Butcher, Mineka and Hooley also note that there are no sex-related difference for the prevalence of schizophrenia among men and women with the exception of a slight difference in the average age of onset with men showing symptoms a few years earlier than women.
There is nothing that can be measured to diagnose schizophrenia. Other diseases share many of its symptoms. What schizophrenia is or is not, cannot be decided on. However, German psychiatrist, Kurt Schneider, developed a list of symptoms, which occur very rarely in diseases other than schizophrenia. These symptoms include auditory hallucinations in which voices speak the schizophrenic's thoughts aloud. There are also two other forms of auditory hallucinations, in one the victim will hear two voices arguing, and the other a voice will be heard commenting the actions of the person. "Schizophrenics may also suffer from the felling that an external force, or the dilution that certain commonplace remarks have a secret meaning for themselves is controlling their actions", (Torrey, 1983).
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.
Schizophrenia has always been a disorder shrouded in mystery. The misconceptions combined with a lack of knowledge of the disorder lead to a stigma to be placed upon people with the disorder.
• 'Positive symptoms’ (abnormal experiences), such as hallucinations (seeing, hearing, feeling something that isn't actually there), delusions (false and usually strange beliefs) and paranoia (unrealistic fear)
I will first talk about the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. One of the most occurring positive symptoms is hallucinations. Hallucinations are false perceptions, inaccuracies that affect a person's senses and cause us to hear, see, taste, touch, or smell what others do not. Some people with schizophrenia will hear voices that can be reassuring and yet they can be very menacing. Allot of times these voices lead people to hurt themselves or just do abnormal things. Hallucinations, usually the same ones over and over, take control of a person and leave them feeling victimized.
“Schizophrenia is Greek and comes from the words ‘split’ (skhizein) and ‘mind’ (phren) which was introduced by Eugen Bleuler. Schizophrenia is a devastating psychotic disorder that may involve characteristic disturbances in thinking (delusions), perception (hallucinations), speech, emotions, and behavior” (Barlow and Durand, page G-17, 470). It is sometimes categorized as prophets, witches, and devils (Kaplan and Sadock, page 1432). “Schizophrenia is a serious and lifelong mental disorder that affects one percent of the population worldwide. The onset is occurs mainly in adolescence or early adulthood” (Minzengberg and Yoon, Chapter 10). Though it mainly occurs in adolescence and early adulthood, it is also common in late adulthood.
What is Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is brain disorder that makes it hard to see the difference between reality and imagination, have normal emotional responses, and act normal in social situations. Schizophrenia is relatively young, it has only been around for less than 100 years. It was first discovered by Dr. Emile Kraeplin in 1887. He believed it was a mental illness. A few documents take Schizophrenia’s origins back to Egypt during the Pharaoh’s rule around 1550 B.C. People originally thought schizophrenia was simply madness, and usually associated it with madness, even though it is quite different from madness. Symptoms of this disease include Positive symptoms, which are: hallucinations, or things that someone can see, feel, smell, or hear that do not really exist. Many people hear voices inside their heads, see people that are not there, or smell odors no one else smells. Delusions are another symptom, also known as bizarre beliefs, these may include paranoid delusions also, which are delusions that tell the person that others are trying to hurt them. Thought Disorders are a symptom in which the person thinks unusually or dysfunctionally. Movement disorders may be present in schizophrenic people, they may seem like twitches or small, sharp, and sudden movements. Schizophrenia’s “negative symptoms” are harder to recognize. These include the flat affect, in which the persons face doesn’t move and the voice is droning. The lack of pleasure in life is another once, along with the lack of ability to start and sustain activities, and little speech. These symptoms prevent or block the person from living a normal life because they cause social, physical, and emotional, and mental problems. This may lead to psychosis, insanity, or ...
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that alters a persons’ thinking ability as well as their actions, emotions, and their judgment of reality. Schizophrenics find a hard time to deal with society and even harder in their relationships with either their loved ones or their colleagues. Schizophrenia has no cure but it can be controlled with proper treatment and medication.
The symptoms of schizophrenia range in severity and consistency. The most common symptom that people with schizophrenia experience is the inability to distinguish between real events from hallucinations and dreams. Some other usual signs and symptoms occur are anger, tendency to argue, intensity when interacting with others and violent behavior. They may appear very suddenly, or they may gradually come over an extended period (Saha, et al., 2008). Symptoms vary between individuals, and for periods of time a person with schizophrenia may experience no symptoms before experiencing a psychotic epis...
Schizophrenia is a mental illness and disorder affecting a person’s ability to think, feel, and act. This disorder can cause a person difficulty in discerning the real from the imaginary. This adversely affects social skills and personal emotions. Schizophrenia is very different from bipolar disorder or split personality disorder.
According to recent research there are several things that can cause schizophrenia. Genetic makeup among individuals affected by the disorder seems to be a significant factor. The probability of an offspring with two unaffected parents developing schizophrenia is only one percent, yet this probability increases to thirteen percent among people with one affected parent. Offspring that have two schizophrenic parents have a 35 percent chance of developing the disorder. (1)