Psychiatric disorders are defined in our text as disorders of psychological function sufficiently severe to require treatment. The clinical psychologist or the psychiatrist has their work cut out for them when it comes to diagnosing psychiatric disorders. Each disorder has its own diagnosis, treatment method, and medication. Schizophrenia can make it hard to live everyday life without treatment. Schizophrenia can affect how you think, react, and just live in the world. With schizophrenia they have two categories for symptoms, positive and negative. Positive symptoms represent an excess or distortion of normal function. Negative symptoms represent a reduction or loss of normal function. Some positive symptoms include; delusions, hallucinations, inappropriate affect, incoherent speech or thought, and odd behavior. The negative symptoms include; affective flattening, alogia, avolition, and anhedonia. One way that clinical psychologist and psychiatrist determine if a person has schizophrenia is if they have any two of the symptoms occur for one month. The main symptoms that are looked for are delusions that are bizarre or an hallucination that includes voices. One of the biggest treatments for schizophrenia are antipsychotic drugs. The antipsychotic medication is effect because it changes the balance of chemicals in the brain and can help control symptoms. The negative effects of these drugs are that they are many side effects. Common side effects are; dizziness, feelings of restlessness or jitteriness, sleepiness, slowed movements, tremors, and weight gain. Depression is actually pretty common today. All of us at some point have experienced depression, whether it was grieving over a lost loved one, loss of self-esteem, or the loss of health. There are some people that fall into a deep depression called anhedonia, this is when they lose the capacity to experience pleasure, usually for no apparent reason. When people experience anhedonia they may find it difficult to function daily. They may not be able to keep a job, maintain contacts with people, eat, or even their hygiene. When someone experiences sleep disturbances and thoughts of suicide for more than two weeks they are typically diagnosed with clinical depression or what’s called major depressive disorder. After you are diagnosed with depression you may be prescribed antidepressant drugs, if you receive these from your doctor they may recommend you to seek some clinical help for your depression. Mania along with depression is an affective disorder. Affective disorder is any psychiatric disorder characterized by disturbance of mood or emotion. In a way mania is the opposite of depression. Mania occurs when you are overconfident, you are impulsive, you have distractibility, and high energy. When a person has mild mania they may be more efficient at their job and fun to be around. However, when mania is full-blown it can become serious. Often for treatment your doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist may prescribe you antimanic drug, which are mood stabilizers. You may also need to attend therapy for a period of time or for an extended period of time to help establish a routine to help keep your mania under control. Anxiety is defined as a chronic fear that persists in the absence of any direct threat. When anxiety becomes so severe that is disrupts a person from their normal daily functioning everyday life you have an anxiety disorder. An analysis of 46 studies shows that about 17% of people suffer from an anxiety disorder, and its twice as many women than men. There are five classes of anxiety disorder; generalized anxiety disorder, phobic anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. When you have extreme feelings of anxiety for no apparent reason this is generalized anxiety disorder. Phobic anxiety disorders are kind of like generalized anxiety disorders but there is something that triggers the anxiety whether it’s an object or situation. Panic disorders are rapid-onset attacks of extreme fear and severe symptoms of stress like choking, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath. Obsessive-compulsive disorders are frequent recurring, uncontrollable, anxiety producing thoughts and impulses. Posttraumatic stress disorders show a pattern of psychological distress following exposure to extreme stress. There are three types of medications used to treat anxiety disorders. One is benzodiazepines, which is prescribes as hypnotics, anticonvulsants, and muscle relaxants. One down fall to these drugs is that they are very addictive and should only be prescribed for a short period of time. The second type of drug is serotonin agonists, it produces the anxiolytic but doesn’t produce the ataxia, muscle relaxation, and sedation like the benzodiazepines do. The last drug that is common with anxiety disorders is antidepressant drugs. When someone experiences anxiety they often experience depression that tags along with the anxiety disorders. Tourette syndrome differs from the other disorders because its more specific with its effects. Tourette syndrome is a disorder of tics, which is involuntary, repetitive, stereotyped movements or vocalizations. Tourette syndrome typically shows up in young children when they start developing their simple motor skills, and grow more severe as the person grows older. Some common motor tics include; hitting, touching objects, squatting, hopping, twirling, and even sometimes making lewd gestures. Some verbal tics include; inarticulate sounds like barking, coughing, and grunting, coprolalia, uttering obscenities, echolatia, repetition of another’s words, and palilala, repetition of one’s own words. When treating Tourette syndrome it is beneficial that everyone associated with the person diagnosed is educated about this disorder. Then the next step focuses on the ancillary emotional problems like anxiety and depression. After the first two steps of treatment the next one is medication called neuroleptics. Neuroleptics can reduce tics by about 70 percent, but the side effects can deter people away from taking them like, weight gain, fatigue, and dry mouth.

References: * Biopsychology, Eighth Edition, by John P.J. Pinel. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc. * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001925/#adam_000928.disease.causes *