HEALTH AND ILLNESS

Health and illness



Health and illness

Introduction

A psychotic breakdown is almost always preceded by an overload of stress and severe depression in john's life, which, as we know, results in excessive sleep. When John is in psychosis, he is in fact trapped in the REM state, a separate state of consciousness with dreamlike qualities. In other words, schizophrenia is waking reality processed through the dreaming brain (Parnas, 2005).

To illustrate this, we only have to look at a number of typical schizophrenic behaviours and experiences and see how they relate to the REM state. Currently cognitive functioning (such as memory, problem solving, etc.) is being looked at in patients suffering from bipolar disorder like John is facing. The neuropsychological component is being concentrated on improving the understanding of cognitive functioning in bipolar disorder (Parnas, 2005).

Research groups such as supported by NIMH for research on mental disorders conduct and support a broad range of mental illness research from molecular genetics to large-scale epidemiological studies of populations. It is considered that this wide-spanning research effort that include fundamental observations on the brain, will continue to illuminate processes and principles essential for interpreting the causes of schizophrenia and for discovering more effectual cures. The predisposition to schizophrenia does not correlate with intelligence, but in many cases it is related to sensitivity towards other people. It may also stimulate artistic talents. Most schizophrenic artists, however, have lost their creative power after the manifestation of their illness (Goldner, 2002).

The term psychosis is used to describe when a person loses touch with reality. Teenagers often worry that they may be `going mad' when they are feeling stressed, confused or very upset. In fact, feelings like these are very rarely a sign of mental illness. Psychosis is much more serious and affects people of all ages, but becomes increasingly common as you reach young adulthood. When a young person like John has a psychotic breakdown, not due to drug use, it can be difficult to know what the long-term effects will be, and a definite diagnosis may not be possible.Psychotic patients may also talk about hearing voices. In the dream state, which is the province of the right hemisphere of the brain, people are not usually capable of independent thought, the province of the left hemisphere, because the mind is 'locked' into the metaphorical script of the dream. But if an individual is trapped in a waking REM state, with waking reality happening around them, there is still likely to be activity in the left hemisphere of the brain.

John suffered a psychotic breakdown at a very early age. Since then he has been dealing with obsessive thoughts, paranoid ideations, severe depression, and generalized and social anxiety conditions. Serious mental derangement characterized by defective or lost contact with reality (Goldner, 2002). The primary psychoses are schizophrenia and the delusional disorders (e.g., megalomania), but extreme cases of depression and bipolar disorder, substance-induced delirium, and certain varieties of dementia are also understood to share important features with the ...