...Running head: SCHIZOPHRENIA 1 Schizophrenia Excelsior College SCHIZOPHRENIA 2 Abstract This paper discusses the features and symptoms of Schizophrenia. This paper addresses the issues associated with Schizophrenia such as stress. It also addresses the bio psychosocial explanations that are associated with the development of this disorder. In this paper I address the type of therapies used for the treatment of Schizophrenia. The remainder of this paper discusses the rationale uses of these therapies and the effectiveness for Schizophrenia. SCHIZOPHRENIA 3 Schizophrenia The key features of the disorder, including its symptoms Schizophrenia is a disorder that is characterized by unorganized thinking and odd perceptions that dysfunction in major activities within a person’s life. These sometime include withdrawals from society; they have delusions and also hallucinations. They also may not be able to show emotion, feel pain, pleasure. They also have a lack of facial expression. They suffer from depression, mania and paranoia. Schizophrenia is the main example of psychosis. Psychosis is a disorder that people suffer from, they become irrational and they have lost contact with reality. This...
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...Schizophrenia Introduction *Show Slide 1* Schizophrenia is a little known mental disease that affects a small percentage of people throughout the world. The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body, and it is hard to decipher what exactly causes social capability, and overall mental health to deteriorate. Schizophrenia is an extremely mysterious disease, that strikes the interest of many people. Today I am going to inform you all about one of the most commonly recognized mental diseases, yet most mysterious to doctors. Not all of you may have been affected by schizophrenia, maybe none of you at all. Although, it is a disease that greatly affects those diagnosed, and their families. In my speech I am going to talk about what exactly Schizophrenia is, the causes of Schizophrenia, who is at risk of developing Schizophrenia, the signs and symptoms of Schizophrenia, and my personal experiences with Schizophrenia Body According to a study by the National Institute of Mental Health Schizophrenia is a life-long, severe, and crippling brain disorder that has been around since the beginning of time. Schizophrenia causes the affected to live a life full of paranoia. Those diagnosed hear voices, think others are talking about them, generally think they’re constantly being watched, think their mind is being controlled, and think others are trying to harm them. Because of this paranoia, those with schizophrenia are often on edge,...
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...most people think about the psychological disorder known as chizophrenia, many believe that this defines a person who portrays multiple personalities. However, this is not what schizophrenia is. Schizophrenia is a complex type of dementia, which means that people perceive voices and behaviors that do not necessarily exist. This research paper on schizophrenia will observe the disorder’s: symptoms, prevalence, causes and treatments. When observing a specific mental illness, the first step is to always investigate its symptoms. The symptoms of a mental illness are basic signs that a person with the disorder portrays. In schizophrenia, there are two main types of symptoms (and each of these types has a sub-type). The first are positive symptoms, in which a person is not aware of reality. These symptoms are easily distinguishable. The second are negative symptoms. Unlike positive symptoms, negative symptoms are harder to recognize for other people. These symptoms are simply emotions and behaviors that are absent in schizophrenic individuals, that are common in other people. The first sub-type of positive symptoms are hallucinations. This positive symptom characterizes an individual who hears, smells or feels something that is not actually there. The most common type of hallucination that people with schizophrenia experience is “voices”. These voices are heard in schizophrenic people’s imagination and are different from the internal voice that most people perceive. Unlike the internal...
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...Schizophrenia means “split mind” but does not mean having multiple personalities. It is more of a split from reality. It is a chronic condition that usually surfaces for men in their early to mid 20s and for women in their late 20s (Crash Course). It is a unique disease with a variety of symptoms, subcategories, causes, and treatments. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that deserves more attention due to its effect on people that suffer from it in their everyday life. Schizophrenia is characterized by many symptoms that have been broken up into three categories: positive, negative, and cognitive. Positive symptoms are those that are not commonly seen in healthy people (NIMH). They “add” to the experience of the patient (Crash Course). Delusions...
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...Schizophrenia is a mental disorder affecting an estimated one half to one percent of the global population. Contradictory to popular belief, schizophrenia does not deal with multiple personalities. Rather, the disorder can cause hallucinations, paranoia or bizarre delusions and disorganized thought or speech pattern. People with schizophrenia often have other mental disorders (Sim et al. 2006). Thus schizophrenia can result in socially paralysing an individual. Treatment and prevention of the disorder are important steps in helping millions of people. One vital point in the process of developing a treatment and prevention strategy for schizophrenia is identifying the cause or causes of the disorder. Throughout the years, as examination into schizophrenia has advanced, the comprehension of schizophrenia has made strides. Researchers have possessed the capacity to pinpoint conceivable causes in the earth and the hereditary qualities of people that have schizophrenia, for instance. These headways thus have took into account the making of clearer models of how schizophrenia creates in people. The point of this article is to clear up the present perspective on what causes schizophrenia. The improvement of causation models will be talked about notwithstanding expounding on conceivable ecological and organic causal elements of schizophrenia. Amid the numerous years of exploration on the reasons for schizophrenia, a few diverse models have been proposed. The scope of models has been...
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...Schizophrenia is a serious disorder which affects how a person thinks, feels and acts. Someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary; may be unresponsive or withdrawn; and may have difficulty expressing normal emotions in social situations. Contrary to public perception, schizophrenia is not split personality or multiple personality. The vast majority of people with schizophrenia are not violent and do not pose a danger to others. Schizophrenia is not caused by childhood experiences, poor parenting or lack of willpower, nor are the symptoms identical for each person. What causes schizophrenia? The cause of schizophrenia is still unclear. Some theories about the cause of this disease include: genetics (heredity), biology (the imbalance in the brain’s chemistry); and/or possible viral infections and immune disorders. Genetics (Heredity). Scientists recognize that the disorder tends to run in families and that a person inherits a tendency to develop the disease. Schizophrenia may also be triggered by environmental events, such as viral infections or highly stressful situations or a combination of both. Similar to some other genetically-related illnesses, schizophrenia appears when the body undergoes hormonal and physical changes, like those that occur during puberty in the teen and young adult years. Chemistry. Genetics help to determine how the brain uses certain chemicals. People with schizophrenia have a chemical...
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...What are the causes and consequences of schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder. People often believe that schizophrenia is categorized as multiple personality disorder. This is when people feel they have many different personalities within themselves and believe that these people are real inside of them. They will change their actions based on which personality is speaking or coming out at that time. Schizophrenia is not the same as multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenic victims hear multiple voices in their heads, but do not become the other personalities by changing their actions or mannerisms based on which voice is speaking. Schizophrenia is often caused by two main factors, genetics and environment. There...
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...Distorted Reality: A Research on Schizophrenia Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is widely considered one of the more destructive illnesses known to man. Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia isn't a split personality or multiple personality disorder. The word "schizophrenia" does mean, "split mind," but it refers to a disruption of the usual balance of emotions and thinking. Schizophrenia is a severe class of brain disorders in which the sufferer has a vastly distorted perception of reality. Although it affects approximately one percent of America’s population (“Schizophrenia,” n.d), not much is known about it outside of recent progressive research. There are drugs and different therapies available to treat the symptoms of this complex disorder but in most of the cases, the patients will continue to experience schizophrenic symptoms for the rest of their lives. In my research, I was able to determine what schizophrenia is, its symptoms, believed causes, and finally, available treatments. Schizophrenia, as stated before, is a brain disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses, and to behave normally in social situations. Schizophrenia appears to occur equally among men and women, usually developing between the ages of 15 and 20. In women, however, it tends to start showing symptoms later, around the ages of 20 - 30. Additionally, schizophrenia has shown to have a greater...
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...Analyzing Psychological Disorders Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it hard to tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. Schizophrenia makes it hard to think clearly, and have normal emotional responses. Act normally in social situations is also affected by this disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has no exact known cause but is categorized as a brain disorder affecting the balance in neurotransmitter concentration of dopamine, glutamate and serotonin systems. Symptoms present in the disorder are positive, which means psychosis, or negative, which means affecting emotions and behavior. The primary areas of the brain implicated in schizophrenia are the forebrain, hindbrain and limbic system (LIVESTRONG, Aubri, John, 2011). The forebrain is the topmost and largest portion of the brain and includes the cerebral hemispheres which are divided into four lobes; they are the limbic system, thalamus, hypothalamus and corpus callosum. As a whole, the forebrain serves to control cognition which is the process of thinking, knowing, learning, judging, sensory and motor function, temperature regulation, reproduction, hunger, sleep cycle and emotional expression. It is within the frontal lobe where thought organization occurs, creating the delusional ideas that are a common positive symptom of schizophrenia. It is also in this lobe that overstimulation...
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...Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a severe and chronic brain disorder in which a person interprets actual reality abnormally. It is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to think clearly, have normal responses to emotions, act normal in a social setting, and tell the difference between their own interpretation of reality and actual reality. There are several types of Schizophrenia: paranoid, undifferentiated, disorganized, residual, and catatonic schizophrenia. The assumption is that schizophrenia is split or multiple personalities. Schizophrenia is defined as “split mind” but this references the disruption in normal balance of emotions and thinking. Schizophrenia is a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment. Paranoid Schizophrenia is the most common type of Schizophrenia. It is when a person loses touch with reality. A person’s ability to function and think normally daily is altered more than during other types of schizophrenia. However, it includes fewer problems with concentration, memory, and/or lack of emotion. It is still a serious lifelong condition that can lead to many different complications. Doctors do not completely know what causes this disorder. Researchers have theories that it is caused by certain neural chemicals that are impaired and links have been found to abnormal regulation of the neurotransmitters dopamine and glutamate. Even though there is no specific known cause, there are risk factors that can increase the chances of being diagnosed...
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...SHCIZOPHRENIA BY: ANNALINA RIVERS SCHIZOPHRENIA Schizophrenia is a mental illness that usually strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood but can also strike at any time in life. The signs and symptoms are always different from one individual to the next. All those who have the disorder show one or more of the following symptoms delusions, hallucinations, bizarre behavior, and negative symptoms. People with schizophrenia suffer a decline in their level of functioning. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that can be overwhelming, complicating and can only get worse. Schizophrenia usually appears during a persons late teens and mid 30’s but its course differs with each patient. Some may go through three phases prodromal which means that symptoms are there but not yet obvious. What often happens during the prodromal stage they’ll start to withdrawal from others, have strange ideas, and some may not express much emotion? During the active phase they can have negative symptoms, start blurting emotions out but some patients may recover from schizophrenia. The phases may or may not last for days some even years, those who do recover from schizophrenia are those who have been ok, being able to function really good before getting the disorder or those who were diagnosed due to stress. When it comes to race and diagnosis of schizophrenia there is a biases as far as who has it. The prevalence rates of schizophrenia really depend on a range of factors, such as the availability...
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...Dominique Matthews Informative Speech Schizophrenia Did you ever have an imaginary friend as a child? Maybe a couple of imaginary friends who can keep you company while everyone else is gone? Imagine living with these “friends” every second of everyday of your life. That’s what schizophrenics suffer. Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease and the reason why I am talking about schizophrenia is because I have an interest in psychology and schizophrenia is one of the many personality/mood disorders that interest me the most. Today I will be talking about the symptoms, the causes and effects and the possible treatments for schizophrenia. Although the severe mental disorder is frightening it cannot be cured. According to the University of Pennsylvania health system schizophrenia affects mostly the memory part of your brain and Patrick Young the author of the book “Schizophrenia” states that schizophrenics often lose touch with reality through this disease. There are three categories of schizophrenia; these include the positive, negative, and cognitive. The National Institute of Mental Health stated that hallucinations and delusions are the most common symptoms of schizophrenia. Hallucinations and delusions fit into the positive category. Hallucinations are when the person suffering from the disease will often hear, see, or even feel that person that they are imagining and no one else can see these people. For example, David Berkowitz was highly publicized in the press;...
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...Schizophrenia: An Examination PYC4802 Assignment 3: 668049 17 JUNE 2015 The El Index * Cover * Index * Introduction * Chapter 1: A Definition of Schizophrenia * Chapter 2: Symptoms of Schizophrenia * Chapter 3: Causes of Schizophrenia * Chapter 4: Treatment of Schizophrenia * Chapter 5: Living with Schizophrenia * Conclusion * References Chapter 1. Introduction Schizophrenia, or mental illnesses in general isn't something new. It isn't a new age ideal which popped up out of nowhere. Even in the time of the Egyptians, there were reported cases of mental illnesses, but back then, they did not have the knowledge that we do today, so as Yuhas (2013) states, they simply deemed that those who displayed the symptoms of mental illnesses, such as those who had issues with concentration, those who were delirious or those with dwindling attention spans as simply suffering from emotional distress. It's not just the Egyptians, though. As Nizamie and Goyal (2010) point out, the ancient Indian text known as the Atharva-Veda also speak of mental illnesses, but to them back then, they were simply divine afflictions and curses sent from the gods who were angry at those who suffered. They also go on to elaborate on the Atharva-Veda, revealing that in the ancient text, there were detailed descriptions of conditions which sound similar to both bipolar disorders and schizophrenia, with many...
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...Introduction Schizophrenia is a chronic mental health condition that can cause a range of psychological symptoms which include hallucinations and delusions. There is no exact cause of schizophrenia and no current cure yet it is one of the most common serious mental health conditions with one in one hundred people experiencing an episode of schizophrenia within their lifetime (Butcher, Hooley and Mineka 2014) Schizophrenia is a complex disorder with many possible causes that can predispose individuals to it or trigger it in them. The Mayo Clinic : “It's not known what causes schizophrenia, but researchers believe that a combination of genetics and environment contributes to development of the disorder. Problems with certain naturally occurring brain chemicals, including neurotransmitters called dopamine and glutamate, also may contribute to schizophrenia. Neuroimaging studies show differences in the brain structure and central nervous system of people with schizophrenia. While researchers aren't certain about the significance of these changes, they support evidence that schizophrenia is a brain disease”. Biological Causes; Genes, Environment, Biochemical, Drug Misuse Genetics S is influenced by genetics but not determined by it. Genetic factors can be researched using twin studies, especially...
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...One might not know that although schizophrenia only occurs in about 1% of the population, it takes up about ¼ of the population in mental institutes. After reading a couple articles I went in more depth in learning what schizophrenia is than we did in class. Dr Kim T. Mueser and Susan R McGurk were the authors of the first article I read. The title of the article is “Schizophrenia.” In this article, it explains that schizophrenia is among the top long-term disabilities and how often it occurs in the population. As well as the epidemiology of schizophrenia, the authors note on how schizophrenia is diagnosed and its clinical description. The description of schizophrenia included all of the negative symptoms and what schizophrenia may affect in the every day life. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic which makes it most likely to occur in the same family and or in adoption cases. As well, Schizophrenia is not noticeable until around the ages of sixteen to thirty years old. The article explains that there are many different treatments for schizophrenia but no cures. The treatment only helps with coping with the illness not curing it. The article was very informative, which helped me understand what schizophrenia is and how it affects the world. After reading every little fact about schizophrenia in the first article, the second article I decided that I should read some personal experiences of schizophrenia. As a nurse, Ghafoor S. explains that the goal of treatment is to help...
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