Would you want to know if you have schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric disorder that affects about 1% of the general population as well as their family and friends.
Schizophrenia has many symptoms:
- Depression
- Withdrawal from friends and family.
- Lack of motivation
- Disorganization: this is more of an extreme disorganization, such as disorganization of words while speaking.
- Delusions: believing things are real when they are not.
- Hallucinations: visual or auditory stimulus that don’t exist. To a patient with Schizophrenia, it is real.
- Catatonia: being fixed in one place for a very long time
Schizophrenia is has a big genetic component to it but environmental factors are also a big part of it. The problem is that a doctor can’t find the specific gene responsible for Schizophrenia. The only thing the medical world knows so far is that there is a missing part of the 22nd chromosome that increases the risk of getting diagnosed with Schizophrenia.
The problem that occurs with the 22nd chromosome causes many problems other than Schizophrenia like palate defects and learning problems.
So actually you can’t get tested for Schizophrenia but you can be at risk if you find out that you have a missing part of your 22nd chromosome.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizophrenia/symptoms-causes/dxc-20253198
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188303/
