mental illness during the course of their lifetime (Saha, Welham, Chant, & McGrath, 2008). Schizophrenia continues to develop new challenges today and continues to be a complex mental illness. It is a brain disorder that can happen to anyone occurring in any culture, affecting men and women equally and all areas of functioning, including thought, emotion, perception, and behavior. Most commonly, schizophrenia strikes a person between his or her late teens and early 20s. Nonetheless, it can affect
Schizophrenia Thousands of people all over the world have disabilities. Schizophrenia is only one of the many disabilities that people face. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary states that Schizophrenia is “a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality” (par 1). Schizophrenia is a serious disorder that affects all people, young or old, black or white, male or female
INTRODUCTION Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness. Patients experience progressive personality changes and a breakdown in their relationships with the outside world. They have disorganized and abnormal thinking, behavior and language and become emotionally unresponsive or withdrawn. “The first signs, usually only noticed in looking back on events, are likely to include an unexpected withdrawal of the degree or type of contact that the person used to have with family or school. The person
Schizophrenia can be described by a wide-ranging spectrum of emotional and cognitive dysfunctions. These can include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and behavior, as well as inappropriate emotions. Consequently, this disease can affect people from all walks of life. Since schizophrenia is such a complex disorder it can ultimately affect a person’s entire existence and their struggle to function daily. With a chronic disease like this, most people have a difficult time functioning in
Schizophrenia is a neurological disorder that affects the cognitive functions of an individual. The cause of this illness is unknown, but there are several theories of how an individual may acquire schizophrenia. Because there are many symptoms of the disease and because the symptoms can vary quite dramatically among several individuals and even within the same individual over time, the diagnosis of schizophrenia can be quite difficult. In the United States and Europe, schizophrenia occurs in
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. Their symptoms can be grouped into three categories: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, psychomotor symptoms. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, illusions, disorganized thinking and speech,
Introduction to Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that “disrupts the function of multiple brain systems, resulting in impaired social and occupational functioning” (Lewis & Sweet, 2009, pg. 706). Lewis (2009) suggests these functions usually consist of the confluence of disturbance in perception, attention, volition, fluency and production of language, recognition and expression of emotion, and capacity for pleasure. Schizophrenia has calamitous effects on people, and such
Schizophrenia is a chronic and disabling brain disease. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying episodes of hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn. Their speech and behavior can be so disorganized that they may be incomprehensible or frightening to others. Some people have only one episode; others have many episodes during
illness such as schizophrenia (Brown, Kaylene; Bradley, Loretta J. 2002). Schizophrenia is a mental illness, which affects one percent of the American population. It is a severe mental illness that affects the brain. For many people schizophrenia is debilitating it is known to prevent an individual from being able to have a normal life (Koch, J. 2010). Hearing voices and having hallucinations are the two main symptoms and usually the reason for a person to seek help. Other symptoms include difficulty
NEUROTRANSM1TTER SYSTEMS TREATMENT Schizophrenia is sometimes considered the most devastating of the mental illnesses because its onset is early in a patient’s life, and its symptoms can be destructive to the patient and to the patient’s family and friends. Although schizophrenia is usually discussed as if it were a single disease, this diagnostic category can include a variety of disorders that present with somewhat similar behavioral symptoms. Schizophrenia probably comprises a group of disorders