SCHIZOPHRENIA

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

Introduction

Schizophrenia is one of the most common mental illnesses. Approximately 1 to 2 percent of the world's population develops this disease with in their life time. The syndrome was first described as a single disorder by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Schizophrenia is a chronic disease that can possibly happen to anyone, it has no boundaries. It has many symptoms and subtypes to go along with it. When diagnosing schizophrenia the patient has to have the disease for at least six months. The best treatment for the disease is a rehabilitation model (Carpenter, 2004, 681-690).

In 1896 Emil Kraeplin had discovered 'dementia praecox', which means intellectual deterioration in early adulthood. He divided the disease into four subtypes: simple, which is marked by apathy and social with drawl, paranoid, which is an attendant fear and delusions, hebephrenic and catatonic, which were characterized by a lack of movement and expression. Later in the 20th century a Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler renamed the disease schizophrenia. He felt that dementia praecox did not serve well as a name and all of Kraeplin's research had not been exactly proven. Bleuler also had a new way to define schizophrenia (Bengtson, 2001, 85-96). He split it into his four A's; Affect would refer to the moderate emotional responses, loosening of Associations which referred to the disordered pattern of thoughts, Ambivalence which referred inability to make decisions, and finally Autism which was a loss of awareness to external events. All of the early physiatrist's research was a beginning to this broad mental illness with various characteristics (Lewis, 2002, 137-140).

How to diagnose

Knowing the symptoms of schizophrenia is the first step in how to diagnose schizophrenia disorder. There are changes in the way a person behaves in social situations such as becoming confused and exhibiting signs of strange behavior. They can be moody or depressed from time to time. Other disorders that share these symptoms have to be ruled out before a diagnosis is made

Delusions, vivid hallucinations, the inability to organize speech or behavior are all included in the symptoms to watch for when making the attempt to diagnose schizophrenia disorder. There are cognitive symptoms that can go along with the negative and the positive as well to form a more complete picture making a diagnosis of a schizophrenic disorder easier (Folsom, 2002, 404-413).

How to diagnose schizophrenia disorder gets more complicated when you take the fact there are five different kinds of schizophrenia. When schizophrenia is finally diagnosed it will be put into one of the subcategories to make it a more specific diagnosis.

Disorganized schizophrenia is characterized by disorganization of speech and behavior. It can have negative symptoms associated with it as well. There will be fewer hallucinations and delusions when it comes to how to diagnose this schizophrenia disorder.

Catatonic schizophrenia shows signs of inactivity or extreme activity. Behavior is either abnormal or considered bizarre to come up with the diagnosis. Then there is the undifferentiated type of schizophrenia which combines symptoms of psychosis without a dominating ...