When you think of someone with mental illness, what are some of the first images that cross your mind? Do you think of someone who is “crazy”, with psychotic episodes and is dangerous, or do you think of someone who can’t function in exactly the proper way and has to have extra care for them because they seem like they have “withdrawn” from reality?
While these two are pretty extreme cases, not all cases of mental illness are this severe. In this blog post I will be going over the mental illness known as schizophrenia, which definitely could look like one of the two above scenarios in different individuals, although the actual the symptoms of the disease vary greatly from person to person.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal social behavior and a failure to understand what is real. It is generally a disorder that begins in young adulthood and can last a long time. Symptoms of schizophrenia can be broadly sorted into three categories known as Positive, Negative, and Cognitive symptoms.
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Positive symptoms – These are new features in an individual that are known as the “psychotic” symptoms. These include delusions or believing things to be true that are an impossibility, hallucinations or sensations of things that are not really there, disorganized speeches and behaviors saying or doing things that seem very out of normal for the context of the situation and catatonic behavior such as being super resistant to wanting to move or do a particular task.
Negative symptoms – There is a removal or decrease in normal processes of emotions. This can lead to less emotions and a loss of interests in things they used to found interesting. Another common negative symptom is alogia, or poverty of speech. This is where the person might only give short one worded answers to things that can be answered in more detail and generally would be. They might also have avolition, which is a decrease in motivation which means that the person might just want to stay home instead of going out with friends or trying to do any work.
Cognitive Smptoms – These are symptoms that affect the memory of an individual that might be experiencing schizophrenia. They might not be able to remember or learn things very easily, or they might have a great difficulty in understanding other people at all. These symptoms are pretty subtle and difficult to notice.
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Now that we have gone over and know some of the symptoms, what is the cause of schizophrenia though? Well the cause is kind of unknown, but there are a few things that it could potentially be or at least have been thought to be the causes of the disorder.
One guess as to what is going wrong is that since the majority of successful anti-psychotics are treating the dopamine D2 receptor that schizophrenia may have something to do with increased levels of dopamine, but there is almost certainly more to the story. Norepinephrine, serotonin and GABA are probably also involved in some way or another.
Studies in individuals such as twins have lead to believe that there is probably some support for a genetic basis to the disorder as well, but no genes have been conclusively linked to it yet. There is also support for a genetic theory on how the disorder is obtained due to the fact if you have family directly associated with the disease that puts you at a much higher risk of developing it yourself.
There are also probably some environmental factors involved with the disorder such as an early parental infection while you are developing, having an autoimmune disorder, or having past drug usage problems.
If after reading this blog post you still have questions about the disorder or are not entirely sure what I was talking about at one point or another, I highly recommend watching the video I am about to link in, it does a fantastic job showing the disorder.
Schizophrenia – How Can You Identify Someone With the Syndrome?
