SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE TREATMENT

Schizophrenia and the Treatment



Schizophrenia and the Treatment

Introduction

Schizophrenia refers to a mental disorder, which is characterized through a collapse of the thinking processes and results into poor emotional responsiveness. The disorder notably features bizarre or paranoid delusions, auditory hallucinations, or disorganized thinking and speech, and is accompanied by various important occupational or social dysfunction. The beginning of the schizophrenia and its symptoms usually takes place in the young adulthood, and grows with a global lifetime prevalence of about 0.3-0.7%. The disorder is diagnosis with the help of the experiences reported by the patients and through their observed behaviors (Castle, Wessely, Der, Murray, 1991).

Schizophrenia has been studied as a lifelong and severe disorder present in the brain. People usually adapt it in young ages by complaining that they see things, and hear voices that are not present there at all. The symptoms of this disorder usually begin to show in the late teenage in men. Though the causes of schizophrenia are not known or guaranteed, but according to the medical practitioners, an individual's brain chemistry and genetic makeup play a possible role. Many of the symptoms of this disorder can be treated through the use of medicines; however, finding a right drug may take a long time and countless attempts.

Symptoms

An individual who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, reports to have experienced delusions (frequently persecutory or bizarre in nature), hallucinations (hearing voices), confused and scattered speech and thinking. The disorganized thinking and speech may refer to the continuum ranging from loss of thinking flow, to loosely connected sentences, to incoherence also called as word salad in many conditions. Some other symptoms showing the presence of schizophrenia in an individual include sloppiness of hygiene and dress, social withdrawal, and loss of judgment and motivation. The pattern of emotional difficulty in the individual can usually be observed through various instances such as the lack of responsiveness. Schizophrenia also indicates the impairment in social cognition, which symbolize paranoia; ultimately, the patient becomes socially isolated (Bentall, Fernyhough, Morrison, Lewis, Corcoran, 2007). More common symptoms and worsening conditions also include hardships in long-term memory and working, executive functioning, attention, and processing speed. One of the randomly occurring symptom observed includes the muteness of person, purposeless agitation, motionless bizarre postures, and the indications of catatonia.

Early adulthood and late adolescence are the most common phase of an individual's life for the beginning of schizophrenia, and these are also the most crucial years in the vocational and social development of an individual's life. In order to lessen the developmental disturbances that are linked with the onset of schizophrenia, there has been a lot of investigative and empirical studies have been undertaken to identify and cure the prodromal (pre-onset) stage of the illness, which has been detected up to 30 months before the onset of symptoms.

Early environment, genetics, social and psychological processes, and the neurobiology are apparently the most significant contributors of Schizophrenia. Moreover, there exist some prescription and recreational drugs that are the symptoms and causes of the ...