SCHIZOPHRENIA

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

The heart and core of this paper is to critically analyze the concepts of mental disorder termed as Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is considered the most chronic and disabling of the severe mental disorders. Even with treatment, most people diagnosed with schizophrenia suffer lifelong symptoms.

Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain; it is one of the most traumatic diseases possible which the brain can be affected by. Schizophrenia is not very well understood, and it sometimes confused with MPD by some people. Schizophrenia has not gotten a lot of attention or funds for research like much other disease have. Schizophrenia needs to get more attention research, and the public needs to be better educated about this disease.

Schizophrenia is not as rare as many people may believe, or want to believe. Schizophrenia affects around one and one and a half percent of all Americans. Schizophrenia can happen to anybody, nobody is immune from it. Schizophrenia can happen to anybody at any time in their lives. This makes Schizophrenia very scary to a lot of people. Schizophrenia can affect the brain of the patient in several ways. One way is the ventricles of the person suffering from schizophrenia become larger. The enlarged ventricles cause the brain structure to undergo changes that are associated with the illness. This can be shown in a picture at the end of this paper from The National Institute of Mental Health, showing the brains of two identical twins. In this picture one of the two twins has schizophrenia and the other one is healthy. (The National Institute of Mental Health , http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research/sc5(6068.htm)

Another way in which schizophrenia can affect the brain is by reducing the brain activity in the frontal lobes of the brain. At the end of this paper is another picture from The National Institute of Mental Health, demonstrating this concept, labeled as image 2.

It has also been shown that those affected by Schizophrenia have less gray matter in their brains. This gray matter isn't just "gray matter," it's very important to a person being able to function properly. The gray matter contains all of the brain's the nerve cell bodies, with out this a person cannot function. This would explain many of the symptoms of a patient with schizophrenia, and how they have trouble functioning in society and dealing with everyday tasks. (American Journal of Psychiatry, 1548)

The symptoms of schizophrenia are mainly caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. The two chemicals which it affects is dopamine and serotonin. These two chemicals are responsible for the thought process, this explains why the patient is disorganized and unable to function correctly. It also can account for the delusions which the person experiences. (Maugh II, 3)

There are two causes of schizophrenia, one is genetic, the other is it may just set in later in life, with out cause or explanation. The gene believed to cause schizophrenia is a fairly rare recessive gene. When one of the parents has schizophrenia, the chances of the ...