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.
There are many different sub-types of schizophrenia with the paranoid type being the most well-known and common-place sort. Some of the signs and symptoms of the illness include audio and visual hallucinations; people hear and see things that are not there. In most cases, individuals also suffer from delusions; these people think that other people whether it be friends, family or even strangers are plotting against them to do them harm in some way. Other psychological symptoms of schizophrenia include distractibility, and a poor attention span [2-5]. The core of the cognitive symptoms is a memory deficiency in which there is trouble maintaining things in their short-term memory [6, 7].These are but a few of the many symptoms that plagues the poor sufferers of schizophrenia and disrupts their daily lives.
There are just as many treatments as there are types of schizophrenia and most come in the form of a pill. No matter the treatment, a person who suffers from the disease will always have a skilled psychiatrist or even a whole team of medical doctors and pharmacologist involved with their health care needs. Some of ...
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Schizophrenia has multiple symptoms; according to the World of Health Organization, these symptoms include “delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior [as well as depressive behavior].” Monomania
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...
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According to Gamble and Brennan (2000), the effectiveness of medication for schizophrenia to relieve patients from psychotic symptoms is limited. Although patients have adequate medication, some received little or no benefit from it and almost half of them still experience psychotic symptoms. They are also more likely to suffer relapse (Gamble and Brennan, 2000). Furthermore, Valmaggia, et al. (2005) found that 50% of patients who fully adhere to anti-psychotic medication regimes still have ongoing positi...
...however issues such as reliability, validity and bias occur when studying brain damaged patients therefore is not always a valid way of studying working memory (in Smith, 2007).
University of Maryland Medical Center. 2013. Schizophrenia. [online] Available at: http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/schizophrenia [Accessed: 30 Nov 2013].
Schizophrenia is a devastating and costly mental disorder that affects 1% of population worldwide. Patients manifest clusters of positive, negative and cognitive symptoms in early twenties and are often left with life-long severe mental disability and social stigma. Cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia are considered core symptoms of this disorder, and can manifest at the initial stage (Elvevåg and Goldberg, 2000). Atypical antipsychotics ameliorate positive symptoms but may only modestly improve cognitive symptoms (Richelson, 2010). In addition to this, some of the typical antipsychotics are even have deteriorative effects on cognitive symptoms (Heaton and Crowley 1981). To find the appropriate treatments for cognitive deficits of schizophrenia, it is important to know the underlying pathophysiology.
...ients that suffer severe symptoms. The most common treatment is a combination of medicine and therapy. Where the patient engages in individual psychotherapy with a therapist, rehabilitation, family education, or self help groups. These therapies usually help people cope with schizophrenia and its effects. At this time there is no cure for schizophrenia, there are very effective treatments and medications. Research is being conducted to help scientists understand the disorder better and is being used to try to treat schizophrenia permanently. The only way this is possible is with the use of new treatments, such as new experimental drugs and electrotherapy. No treatments today are preventative nor do they permanently “cure” schizophrenia, but we can look to the bright future for the development of a new treatment option that could potentially fully cure schizophrenia.
Walker, E., Kestler, L., Bollini, A., & Hochman, K. M. (2004). Schizophrenia: Etiology and course. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), 401-430. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141950
Duckworth M.D., Ken. “Schizophrenia.” NAMI.org. National Alliance on Mental Illness, Feb. 2007. Web. 28 March 2010.
...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).
Schizophrenia requires a lifetime of treatment through either medications and therapy, in many cases both is needed. Psychiatrist’s help patients survive through the disease. Another form to treat schizophrenia is through antipsychotic medications which are most commonly prescribed drugs to treat schizophrenia.
"Schizophrenia." NIMH RSS. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.