Research of schizophrenia

What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is mainly known as a ‘split personality’.  This means that a person cannot extricate of what is real and what is not real so they lose touch of reality. They have mixed thoughts and perceptions and beliefs that other people would hold to be unreal. to be able to tell if someone is suffering from schizophrenia, they have to distinguish the symptoms from other psychological illnesses and then determine what type it is. The DSM is mainly used to give strategies of the classification of schizophrenia.

There are five categories for classifying schizophrenia:

•Disorganised: this varies from, bizarre behaviour to being flat affect (have no emotion)

•Catatonic: extreme motor activity for example saying a sentence over and over again

•Paranoid: mainly delusions and hallucinations. The most common is the delusion of grandeur or persecution.

•Undifferentiated: mixture of symptoms of the above categories but not main symptoms included

•Residual: previously suffered extreme symptoms but now they are mild.

There are two types of symptoms of schizophrenia. These are positive and negative symptoms.

Positive Symptoms:

vHallucinations: these are perceptions that occur outside the natural world. They can be visual, auditory, tactile or somatic. Auditory is the most common and its usually hearing voices that other don’t hear. These voices vary from someone persecuting them, threatening them to criticising everything they do. Visual hallucinations are the second common followed by somatic hallucinations for example insects eating the inside of the body.

vDelusions: these are beliefs, ideas that are thought of as real but are truly untrue. Delusions of persecution is the false belief that everyone is out there to get you. Delusions of reference is false belief that any random events has a significant pattern of events. Delusions of grandeur is the false belief that they have special power to over take the world for example God.

Negative Symptoms:

vAvolition: this is loss of energy as the person feels restless, tired, which results to loss of interest in life, no goal directed behaviour and unable to finish tasks given hand. For example in an office, the suffer may just sit down or rest in the chair the whole day without getting any of the work done leading to missing deadline but worst of all getting fired for not cooperating

vAbsence of emotion: this is known as flat affect and it’s a total absence of any emotion. People might respond to the suffer in a confused state as the surfer might not make any eye contact or be emotionless in any situation. This might take a toll on the person witnessing this as they might get dejected but also irritated especially in situation like a loss of close relative.

vAbsence of social functions: this is shown through poor social skills as the person may have low self esteem which means that its hard for them to get work, have friends and maintain relationships.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

What Causes Schizophrenia  

Inheritance

Researchers say that having a biological relative who has schizophrenia then its more likely that the person will develop the disorder however it doesn’t mean that this will always be the case. Combination of certain genes might make some people prone to developing schizophrenia but this doesn’t always means they will develop the symptoms.

Biochemical

Its based to believe that people with high excess levels of dopamine in the brain are more likely to have the condition. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that increases rate of firing at the synapse and makes communication between neurons easier and quicker. Antipsychotic drugs such as clozapine are sometimes used to treat the sufferers but they don’t take away the illness, they just reduce the symptoms so a person may lead a normal life.

Treatments Of Schizophrenia

Antipsychotic drugs: the most common drugs that doctors prescribe to their patients as they reduce both positive and negative symptoms. They are more effective than conventional drugs as they work less to reduce levels of dopamine but change levels of serotonin. However they have side effects such as nausea, weight gain, irregular heartbeat, constipation, dizziness, blurred vision.

Compared to conventional drugs which have severe side effects like severe muscle tremors, shuffling of feet, moving slowly, restlessness and tardive dyskinesia. Although, they are very effective however they have undesirable side effects which might put the person off so they might stop the medication. On the other hand they make a difference to the lives of the sufferers and their families nonetheless not everyone responds to drug treatment and also it does not treat the cause, it reduces the symptoms.

 Token economy: when tokens are given out to appropriate behaviours and punishments served to inappropriate behaviours. If taken to extreme, basic things essential for life like water, food and water are used as rewards and they have proved to be really effective however this is breached in the human rights act.

Insight Therapy: This is when the therapist tries to help the person change their negative thinking into positive thinking. It’s a one to one therapy with the therapist trying to gain trust with the person so she may feel comfortable to talk about their thoughts.