Schizophreni A Correlation Between Poverty And Schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia experience unusual perceptions, odd thoughts, disturbed emotions, and motor abnormalities. Also, they experience psychosis, which is a loss of contact with reality. Schizophrenia can make it difficult for people to function at home, with friends, in school, or at work because their ability to perceive and respond to the environment becomes extremely disturbed. They might have hallucinations or delusions, or they might withdraw into a private world. About 1 of every 100 people in the world deal with schizophrenia during his or her lifetime and an estimated 24 million people worldwide are suffering with this disorder, with 2.5 million of these people in the United States. Schizophrenia is most common in lower socioeconomic groups, but it appears in all groups. Theorists aren’t completely sure whether or not there is a correlation between poverty and schizophrenia because it might just be that people with this disorder tend to fall from high to low socioeconomic statuses because their disorder makes it difficult for them to function effectively. Schizophrenia is diagnosed equally among men and women, but the average age of onset is different; the average age of onset for men is 23, while the average age of onset is 28 for women. Approximately three percent of people who are divorced or separated suffer from schizophrenia at some point in their lives, in comparison to 1 percent of married people and 2 percent of people who are single. Just like the uncertainty between schizophrenia and poverty, theorists aren’t sure whether or not marital problems are a cause or a result of this disorder. For schizophrenia, there are three groups of symptoms: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and psychomotor symptoms. Del...

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...ue on a course of action. Ambivalence causes people to have conflicting feelings about most things. It isn’t uncommon for people with schizophrenia to withdrawal from social environments; they might do this because they only want to attend to their own ideas and fantasies. Psychomotor symptoms might include awkward movements or repeated grimaces and odd gestures. Catatonia is an extreme form of psychomotor symptoms; people in a catatonic stupor don’t respond to their environment and remain motionless and silent for a long amount of time. Another kind of catatonia is catatonic rigidity, where people maintain a rigid and upright posture for hours and refuse to be moved. Catatonic posturing is characterized by awkward and bizarre positions that last for a long amount of time. Catatonic excitement is when people move excitedly; they might wave their arms and legs wildly.