Schizophrenic: How this disorder spread over the mindset, Causes, Symptoms, Types, Diagnosis, and Treatments

Schizo means split, and phrenic, during this case, refers to the mind. Even though schizophrenia is often interpreted to mean “splitting of the mind”, it doesn't ask multiple personalities, as some media sources might portray, but rather schizophrenia describes a scattered or fragmented pattern of thinking. Schizophrenia’s actually a syndrome, meaning there’re all kinds of symptoms which may be related to it. Different patients might experience different symptoms. Although the symptoms are often broadly distributed into three major areas: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms. Most human symptoms from any illness are extreme versions of a traditional physiologic process. (for example, everyone features a heartbeat and tachycardia is a fast heartbeat, everyone has normal blood heat, but during a fever, temperature raise up higher).

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Positive symptoms

In schizophrenia, patients have positive symptoms which aren’t positive within the sense that they’re helpful but positive within the sense that they’re some new feature that doesn’t have some “normal” or physiologic counterpart. None of which occur physiologically; these are the psychotic symptoms, so delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and disorganized or catatonic behaviour. Delusions are false beliefs that the patient might feel very strongly about, such a lot in order that they won’t change their mind, albeit you give them evidence against it. There are all kinds of different delusions, like, for instance, a delusion of control, where somebody thinks that some outside force or person or thing is controlling their actions. They could even be delusions of reference, where someone might think that insignificant remarks are directed at them, sort of a newscaster speaking on to them through the TV.

 

Hallucinations are the second type of positive symptom and can be any kind of sensation that’s not actually there, including visual but also including auditory sensations, like hearing voices or commands. A third type is a disorganized speech an example being something like a word “salad”, which seems like just a random jumbling of words or phrases, like “pencil dog hat coffee blue”. Disorganized behaviour, on the other hand, could be like if they exhibit bizarre or silly behaviour that sort of context and doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose, like for instance wearing multiple layers of jackets on a hot summer day. Also, sometimes the behaviour is described as “catatonic”, which has to do with their movements, posture, and responsiveness. So, like they might be super resistant to moving or be in an unresponsive stupor.

 

Negative symptoms

Negative symptoms are like when there this reduction or removal of normal processes, and this is often sort of a decrease in emotions they will express or a loss of interest in things they once found interesting. One sort of a negative symptom is named flat affect, where they don’t respond with emotion or reaction that might seem appropriate like if they saw something very unexpected like a small monkey playing in their living room, they might simply sit and watch idly as if nothing was happening. Another type is alogia, or poverty of speech, which may be a lack of content in speech, so like if somebody asked them, “do you've got any children?” Their response is normal that I have 1 or two boy child or like that rather than they will say no, I have no child. The third type of negative symptom is avolition, which is this decrease in motivation to complete certain goals, so someone might stay at home for long periods of time, without trying to reach out to friends or find work.

 

Cognitive symptoms

Cognitive symptoms include things like not having the ability to recollect things, learn new things, or understand others easily. These symptoms are more subtle though, and harder to note and might only be detected if they need really specific tests performed. An example might be somebody not being able to keep track of several things at once, like a phone number and an address. People with schizophrenia seem to cycle through three phases, typically so as. During the prodromal phase, patients might become withdrawn and spend most of their time alone, and sometimes this seems almost like other mental disorders like depression or anxiety disorders. During the active phase, patients experience more severe symptoms like delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behaviour, or catatonic behaviour. Following a lively phase, patients often enter into a residual phase, where they could exhibit cognitive symptoms like not having the ability to concentrate becoming withdrawn again, like the prodromal phase.

 

For an official diagnosis of schizophrenia, patients need to be diagnosed with two of the following symptoms—Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behaviour or catatonic behaviour, or negative symptoms, and at least one of them has to be either delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech, So basically, they couldn’t have just disorganized behaviour and negative symptoms. Even though some patients have cognitive symptoms also, they aren’t specifically needed for a diagnosis. Also, though, for a diagnosis, signs of those disturbances must be ongoing for a minimum of 6 months, meaning they’re likely in one phase or another for six months, but there must be a minimum of one month of active-phase symptoms. And finally, those symptoms can't attributable to another condition, like substance abuse. Now that we’ve diagnosed it...why does it even happen in the first place? What causes schizophrenia? Well, we don’t really know, since it looks like the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia are pretty unique to humans, or a minimum of their hard to imagine or notice in animal models like mice or rats. One clue is that the bulk of antipsychotic medications that improve schizophrenia symptoms block the dopamine receptor D2, which reduces dopamine levels in neurons.

Prescriptions or Suggestions from the involvement of Schizophrenia 

This suggests that perhaps schizophrenia has something to try to with increased levels of dopamine. These medications, though, are neither universally nor completely effective and don’t work for everyone with schizophrenia, which adds to the confusion and means there’s probably more thereto than simply the D2 receptors. Interestingly, one among the foremost effective antipsychotic drug, clozapine, maybe a weak D2 antagonist, suggesting that other neurotransmitter systems like norepinephrine, serotonin, and GABA are involved. Twin studies have shown support for a genetic basis also, albeit there haven't been any specific genes conclusively linked to schizophrenia yet. Also, environmental factors, like early or prenatal exposure to infection, and certain autoimmune disorders like disorder are linked with schizophrenia.

Conclusion

Finally, schizophrenia seems to happen slightly more in men than women, with onset within the mid-twenties for men. Another important set of clues involves the epidemiology, but late-twenties for women; and thus, the clinical signs of schizophrenia are often less severe. Some studies suggest this difference might be because of estrogen regulation of dopamine systems. There doesn’t, however, seem to be any differences among the race. Now, it’s super important to combine the efforts of several clinicians and health professionals, including professionals in therapy or counselling, medicine, and psychopharmacology, although treating schizophrenia are often really tricky, and antipsychotic medications are often used. Antipsychotics are often very effective at reducing symptoms, but they often come to tons of additional considerations to stay in mind, like cost and therefore the potential for unwanted side effects like tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal.