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Schizophrenia In the United States, nearly 3 million people have been, or will be affected by Schizophrenia according to Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing (pg252). What exactly is schizophrenia? Understanding what the meaning of the term helps shed some light on this disease. Schizophrenia comes from the Greek words “schizo” which means to split, and “phrenia” which means mind. However schizophrenia does not imply a split or multiple personality disorder. Rather “split mind” depicts the many symptoms in which the disease splits or disrupts mental functions. Schizophrenia is one of the major chronic psychiatric disorders with symptoms that can affect a person’s thoughts, behavior, emotions, and mind. Furthermore, the symptoms associated with Schizophrenia prevent the individual from sustaining a normal healthy lifestyle by preventing the individually from logically distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary. In order to understand the severity of this disease it is important to explore what exactly schizophrenia is, the causes, and the different treatments. What exactly causes or contributes to the onset of this disease? There is not one major cause for schizophrenia, however it is a combination of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors that result in the disease. Various studies have indicated that schizophrenia does have a genetic factor and several different experiments were performed to prove that it could be inherited. In the “Psychiatric – Mental Health Nursing “, it states that if a child has one biologic parent with schizophrenia it places
Girgis 2 him/her at a 15% risk, the risk would increase to 35% if both parents have the disease. Also if one identical twin has schizophrenia then there’s a 50% chance that the other twin would have it as well, as opposed to fraternal which would drop down to a

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