Schizophrenia: A Mind Divided

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As stated before, schizophrenia is a psychological disorder. The American Psychological Association (thru the Encyclopedia of Psychology) refers to schizophrenia as “a serious mental illness characterized by incoherent or illogical thoughts, bizarre behavior and speech, and delusions or hallucinations, such as hearing voices.” To be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, these symptoms must persist for at least a month and clearly interfere with social interactions, specifically on the job and in group situations. Schizophrenics are split from reality. They do not realize the consequences of their actions nor do they clearly understand what they themselves are doing. Schizophrenia is composed of a variety of symptoms, and as a result, the symptoms are separated into four categories: formal thought disorder, perception disorder, feeling/emotional disturbance, and behavior disorders. Formal thought disorder is when the speech of an individual (diagnosed with schizophrenia) is hard to follow. Sometimes it is hard to follow healthy individual’s speech, but this type of irregular speech includes talking about the same event or issue in different ways, similar to talking in a circle (circumstantiality.) Other instances of speech irregularity include jumping from one subject to the next with no logical connection (looseness of associations) and jumping from one topic to another with a slight connection, but with no relativity to the current issue (tangentiality.) Delusions also fall under this category. Perception disorder is when an individual is experiencing unusual senses, most often in the form of hearing voices. An individual may experience one or two voices, or even more, making comments on their behavior. They refer to the voices as unk... ... middle of paper ... ... even resort to a catatonic state. This disease has no cure as of now, but thanks to research such as MRIs and gene study, there may one day be a cure for this devastating disease. Works Cited American Psychological Association (2013). In Schizophrenia. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://www.apa.org/topics/schiz/index.aspx Baird, A. Think psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Ballas, C. (2005, May 11). Health Encyclopedia. Schizophrenia. Retrieved November 23, 2013 from http://www.healthcentral.com/encyclopedia/408/472.html?ic=506048 U.S Department of Health and Human Services. (2009). National Institutes of Health. Schizophrenia. Retrieved November 28, 2013 from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/schizophrenia/index.shtml#pub10 Zimbardo, P., Johnson, R., & McCann, V. Psychology: core concepts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education

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