Schizophrenia is a mental disorder the distorts someone’s thought and perception, paranoid schizophrenia is one of the five subtypes of schizophrenia which causes people to experience delusions and hear things that may not be real. Schizophrenia in general is incurable but may be treated to reduce its effects. Medication, psychotherapy and other supportive therapies are effective in reducing the severity of schizophrenia. The exact causes of this brain disorder is unknown, however, it may develop from a combination of genetics, brain chemistry, and environmental factors. Schizophrenia, like any other genetic illness, may run in the family bloodline and heighten the chances of getting it if both parents are associated with the brain disorder. Severe stress such as poverty or violence, and other similar external factors are possible causes of schizophrenia. Disorganized schizophrenia is another sub type that causes people to be unclear and unorganized with speech and behavior. The patient may repeat the same word or phrase over again. They may also make up words or phrases, change topic rapidly, or unnecessarily rhyme words. Catatonic schizophrenia is categorized as someone having trouble with moving, refusing to move, excessive movement, bizarre movements, and/or repetition of what others say or do. Residual schizophrenia is classified as when the patient suffered from symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, catatonic behavior, disorganized behavior, or disorganized speech, but the severity of these symptoms has diminished. Symptoms such as limited verbal expression, loss of initiative, or little to no expression of emotions are now prominent. Undifferentiated schizophrenia is known as when a patient encounters episodes wi...
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...bout this brain disorder can help the patient understand it better which helps them surpass their symptoms and understand how medication may be useful. Family therapy may also be effective. The patient may have an improvement in symptoms if his family understands the illness and is willing to cooperate to reach a solution. Family therapy can also help communicate better and resolve any family conflicts.
Paranoid schizophrenia is a devastating and incurable brain disorder that is lifelong. However, there is treatment that dwindles the intensity of this illness. The use of medication is useful, but all the hazardous side effects neutralizes how advantageous the drug is as a whole. Perhaps in the future, scientists will be capable of developing a drug that is effective in decreasing the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, and yet lessen the amount of side effects
Furthermore, antipsychotic medications do not cure schizophrenia, but they do reduce the symptoms. In addition, the dosage given to the patient varies from patients and according to their mental disorder. Some new antipsychotic medications since to be better than the first drugs invented. Drugs such as Zyprexa or genetic names olanzapine, Risperdal generic name risperidone or Clozapine, which is has been extensively used to treat the negative symptoms of patients with schizophrenia. Antipsychotic medication like many other medications has side effects which consist on: drowsiness, restlessness, muscle spasm, tremors, dry mouth, and blurring of vision (First M.B., Tasman, A.2006, p.265).
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.
However, Suzy is just one of many people who will develop schizophrenia. About 1.1% of the American adult population alone will develop schizophrenia at some point in their lives (NIMH, 2010). The ratio between men and women developing schizophrenia is the same, although there is a difference in the age of onset. Males tend to develop it early while females tend to develop it later in life (Robin, 2003). Although males and females tend to develop schizophrenia at the same rate. When it came to diagnosing schizophrenia in the past there used to be problems in part due to the lack of a good solid definition because of this it was hard to compare studies about schizophrenia because they were using different definitions (Robin, 2003). However, that changed when the DSM became narrower about t
“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.
Schizophrenia is not a new mental disorder. Through written documents, it can be traced to the Pharaoh days in Egypt and even further back to the second millennium before Christ. The disease was first identified as a mental illness by German psychiatrist Dr. Emile Kraepelin in 1887. Kraepelin, identified by H.J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric gene, was the first to make a distinction in the psychotic disorders between what he called dementia praecox and manic depression. He believed that dementia praecox was primarily a disease of the brain, and particularly a form of dementia. Kraepelin named the disorder 'dementia praecox' (early dementia) to distinguish it from other forms of dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) which typically occur late in life. It wasn’t until 1911 when Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler, coined the term "schizophrenia". Bleuler changed the name to schizophrenia because Kraepelin's name was misleading as the illness was not a dementia (it did not always lead to mental deterioration) and could occur late in life as well as early. Schizophrenia" comes from the Greek roots schizo (split) and phrene (mind) to describe the fragmented thinking of people with the disorder. He was also the first to describe the symptoms of schizophrenia as "positive" or "negative." Both Bleuler and Kraepelin subdivided schizophrenia into categories, based on symptoms and prognosis. There are five types described in the DSM-III: disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated. The first three categories were originally proposed by Kraepelin. The DSM- III stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders whic...
Misunderstood with the assistance of popular stigmas and stereotypes, schizophrenia and its severity is often degraded and overlooked by the public. Wrongly feared and shunned, individuals with schizophrenia have too commonly been judged throughout human history and even today. Many aspects of the disease are failed to be truly understood and represented, from the effects of the disease to the availability of treatment. Favored by the media, incorrect and misleading portrayals of schizophrenics frequently appear in popular culture and entertainment, influencing people’s perceptions of the mental illness. Not at all rare and incredibly destructive, schizophrenia as mental illness lacks a very apparent public empathy and knowledge, a clear disadvantage and deterrent for victims of the condition.
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 ...
...ected over another because it has less chance of damaging a diseased liver, worsening a heart condition, or affecting a patient’s high blood pressure. For all the benefits that anti-psychotic drugs provide, clearly they are far from ideal. Some patients will show marked improvement with drugs, while others might be helped only a little, if at all. Ideally, drugs soon will be developed to treat successfully the whole range os schizophrenia symptoms. Roughly one third of schizophrenic patients make a complete recovery and have no further recurrence, one third have recurrent episodes of the illness, and one third deteriorate into chronic schizophrenia with severe disability (Kass, 206).
African Americans have a unique relationship with the clinical disorder schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is more frequently diagnosed among African Americans than white Americans or any other racial or ethnic minority in the United States (Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford & Muroff 2003). The reasons for this are complex and not fully understood. Because of this there is a considerable suspicion and mistrust of psychological care within the black community. Clinicians should take particular precaution in the diagnosis and treatment of African Americans.
Schizophrenia is a common disease; it is a serious disorder of the mind and bran but is actually very treatable it actually ranks in the top 10 causes of disability in developed countries worldwide. Schizophrenia is a completely brain based disorder, that causes hallucinations, and affects multiple brain functions, like the thinking clearly, managing how you feel, making decisions and how to relate to other people. People with schizophrenia also have to face illusions daily, which are very vivid false beliefs, which might cause them to think that people are following them or looking directly at them. Schizophrenia is a horrible disorder for the majority of people who face it, and very can also be enormously costly for families and even society in general. Even though it is treatable there is no current cure for schizophrenia the only thing now is that it must be managed through therapy. There are over fifteen modern medications for that could treat schizophrenia that were developed by different biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses. The costs from schizophrenia was estimated to be in the range of $61.7 billion, and $22.6 billion direct health care costs in 2011. The most accepted theory of why people have schizophrenia is that it’s result of a simply genetics from the environmental exposures and stress during pregnancy or childhood are what generally causes the disorder to form. Researchers note several key strand genes that when damaged seem to create a pre problem or increase for the risk of schizophrenia. The genes, in mixture with known environmental exponentials are thought to be the reason that it is a result in schizophrenia. The genes that are projected to enhance the risk of obtaining schizophrenia are the Dysbin...
There are so many types of mental illnesses that affect people every day. When some people think of mental illnesses they think of the ones that would cause people to have physical symptoms as well, but that’s untrue, there are many more that you would never know anyone has if you were to see them on the street. As defined by the 2008 encyclopedia “a mental illness is any disease of the mind or brain that seriously affects a person’s ability or behavior. Symptoms of a mental illness may include extreme moods, such as excessive sadness or anxiety, or a decreased ability to think clearly or remember well.” A mentally ill person has severe symptoms that damage the person’s ability to function in everyday activities and situations. Every nation and every economic level can be affected by a mental illness. In the United States alone about 3% of the population has severe mental illness and to add to that number about 40% of people will experience a type of mental illness at least once in their lives. Some cases of mental illnesses can go away on their own, but some cases are so severe that they require professional treatment. There is so much more available to help people recover from their symptoms than in the past.
Paranoid schizophrenia is the reverse of happiness. Pleasure, elation, and satisfaction are elusive. It feels like you are the only one to whom this is happening (Moore 2001 pg. 2). This quote is from a person who suffers with schizophrenia and describes it better than anyone on the outside of the disorder ever could. Schizophrenia is a key mental illness that negatively affects a person life and their surrounding environments (DSM-IV-TR. 4th). This paper will shed some light into this horrible mental ailment. It will discuss the symptoms and treatment for the disorder in a non-scientific, more familiar way.
Mental illnesses are diseases that plague a being’s mind and corrupts one’s thoughts and feelings. Schizophrenia is one of the many disastrous illnesses that consume one’s life, is known as a real disease that deserves much attention. Experts believe that what causes the illness is a defect in the gene’s of the brain, and little signs of schizophrenia are shown until about one’s early adult years. Some effects of schizophrenia can either be negative or positive, but even if the effects could be either one, people should still be aware that there is something puzzling and alarming happening in the mind of a schizophrenic patient.
Since the 1800s, treatment methods for mental illness have developed significantly worldwide. From electrotherapy to modern practices like psychotherapy, treatment for mental disorders has greatly progressed as scientists and psychologists learn more information on the causes of mental illness and the best therapy for each particular disease. The past 200 years mark the most defined era since the beginning of humans for the progression of treatment for mental illness. Not only has treatment improved for the mentally ill, but also the perception of mental illness has greatly changed and will continue to do so as more is learned about the human mind.
In today’s world, mental illness is still looked upon as a very bad thing and the negative views of mental illness are common within the employees. Most of the time, people assume that employees who suffer from mental illness are often seen as weird, defensive, and hard to talk to. Generally, concepts about mental illness tend to be subjective, leading to difficulties in defining mental illness. One article has described mental illness as, “ mentally distorted, mad, or crazy” and the degree of mental illness varies depending from person to person (Corrigan et al. 2010, p. 909). The following essay is based on the topic ‘Mental Illness as an Emerging Discourse’ and the article ‘Employee Mental Illness: Managing the Hidden Epidemic’ was the main article that was analysed and used in the essay to discuss the topic. The analysis has been divided into two parts which are covered equally by the study group members.