The brain disorder, schizophrenia affects over 2 million adults in America usually before the age of 30.
What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a disorder of the brain that interferes with the way in which the affected person thinks, how they feel and act or react. This interference causes them difficulty in distinguishing what is imagined and what is real. Because of their inability to make this distinction they can become delusional about themselves and those around them.
This condition can interfere with the person’s ability to experience emotions others might come by naturally in social relationships. This can lead to withdrawal from socialization. This condition impacts ordered thinking. This causes inability to concentrate and decreased attention span.
Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Symptoms of Schizophrenia are separated into four categories which include:
- Hallucinations – This includes seeing, smelling, hearing or tasting what is not there. The most common example of schizophrenic hallucination is hearing voices and the voice telling them to do or not to do specific things.
- Delusions – This category includes false beliefs about either themselves or those around them. Thinking that someone is out to get them or harm them, watching them even when there is evidence to prove this is not the case. False beliefs about themselves such as believing they are from another planet or that they are someone other than themselves is a sign of delusion.
- Disorganized thinking and nonsensical speech – This disorder can cause communication problems. The conversation can change from one topic to the next very rapidly. Sentences may seem out of place or irrelevant, even contain made up words.
- Social Withdrawal and Apathy – Loss of interest in their surrounding or in life in general. This is usually due to their emotional unresponsiveness and lack of motivation in social situations.
Treatment of Schizophrenia
This disorder is not curable, it is treatable however. Symptoms can be managed with the use of antipsychotic medications. Most patients respond rather quickly to the use of these medications. If the patient is extremely depressed and withdrawn an antidepressant medication may be included in drug therapy to help reduce this symptom. Some patients are hospitalized initially until symptoms are manageable on an outpatient basis. It is important that the patient stay on the medication regimen as stopping the medications used to manage the symptoms will cause the return of the symptoms.
Individual talk and cognitive therapy is used in some cases to help teach coping strategies for stressful situations and thought processes. Family and social support is imperative and doctors can provide referrals to community support groups and services.
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