Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a disorder that affects a person’s ability to think, feel, and begave clearly. Its a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

Symptoms:

Delusions: These are false beliefs that are not based in reality.

Hallucinations: These usually involve seeing or hearing things that don’t exist.

Disorganized thinking (speech): Disorganized thinking is inferred from disorganized speech.

Extremely disorganized or abnormal motor behavior.

Negative symptoms.

The exact causes of schizophrenia are unknown. Research suggests a combination of psychical, genetic, and environmental factors can make a person more likely to develop the condition some people may be prone to schizophrenia, and a stressful or emotional life event might trigger a psychotic episode.

Schizophrenia affects men and women equally. It occurs at similar rates in all ethnic groups around the world. Symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions usually start between ages 16 and 30. Men tend to experience symptoms earlier than women.

Different types of Schizophrenia:

Paranoid

Hebephrenic

Catatonic

Undifferentiated

Simple

Unspecified

Treatment is usually lifelong and often involves a combination of medications, psychotherapy, and coordinated specialty care services.

Schizophrenia is associated with changes in the structure and functioning of a number of key brain system, including prefrontal and medial temporal lobe regions involved in working memory and declarative memory, respectively.

It is a highly stigmatized and misunderstood condition. This stigma can make an already difficult life harder for those with Schizophrenia by lowering their quality of life and interfering with their ability to get a job or the treatment they need