Mental health issues are one of the serious concerning medical disorders that have a direct impact on your body and life. Schizophrenia is one of them. Now you must be very conscious at the moment that what actually schizophrenia is? Don’t be worried because we are here to tell you complete information about this. Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder which is really complex in nature and sometimes it becomes very difficult to even identify it. It directly affects your thinking, behavior and feelings. So it affects your life in many ways. It disturbs your daily functioning, your quality of life and relationships. There are three things that are very important in the case of Schizophrenia: Symptom causes and treatment. So this detailed article is all about. Let’s get started.
What is Schizophrenia?
Medical study shows that schizophrenia affects 1% of the total population all over the globe. It is a chronic and complex disorder of the brain. It is Important to know that this condition in most of the cases appears in early adulthood or between the period of childhood and adult age. However it has capability and characteristics to attack at any stage and any age. This brain disorder is mostly linked as the psycho issue. In this disorder people mostly lose their way to reality. They feel and experience illusions or daydreams. They reduce the ability to think positively and comprehensively.
Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Due to its complexity, schizophrenia is divided into three groups. These following groups are based due to the characteristics that actually affect human life.
Positive Symptoms
Why are they called positive symptoms? It is because positive symptoms are those symptoms of schizophrenia that creates abnormalities to a person’s life. Some of the common ones are as follows.
Day dreams and illusions
Illusions or day dreams are like symptoms which seem to be real but your mind actually creates them. The common example of hallucinations or illusions is to hear those voices that are not in real and others cannot hear.
Delusions or Mental Illness
Delusion is a mental illness. In this condition a person believes something extraordinary that is actually not true. For example a person has a strong belief that he will die during an accident. Besides that, a person thinks that he has extraordinary capabilities that others don’t have. So this is basically a mental illness.
Chaotic Thinking
In this type of symptom a person reacts like disorganized thinking. An affected person speaks or thinks illogically. In this way it becomes very difficult for them to talk to anyone due to the chaotic thinking.
Movement Disorders
In this type of disorder a person sometimes may not be able to move or give environmental response. This disorder can vary from the situation of restlessness to depression.
Negative Symptoms
In negative symptoms a person’s ability to perform normal function decreases or even illuminates. Some common examples are as follows.
Effective Flattening
Effective flattening is a medical disorder related to emotional expression. In this condition emotional expression reduces and they can be clearly seen through facial expressions. Besides that, body language and voice tone also decreases to a greater extent.
Alogia
In this type of condition a person cannot speak fluently.
Anhedonia
This type of medical disorder actually is related to feeling pleasure and happiness. The ability to feel and experience pleasure and happiness from those activities that actually brings joy and smiles is minimized to a greater extent.
Avolition
This type of condition is directly related to motivation. In this type of disorder a person’s ability of motivation to perform any positive activities reduces or disappears.
Cognitive Symptoms
These symptoms are related to your mind. In cognitive symptoms the memory, attention and ability to execute activities and functions affects. Some of the important and common cognitive symptoms are as follows.
Poor Administrative Functioning
When we are talking about cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, the important one is lack of administrative ability to make decisions. In this type of situation a person feels much difficulty understanding information and then to execute for better decisions.
Trouble in Focusing and Attention
A person having schizophrenia disorder feels much difficulty concentrating on important matters and fails to maintain attention.
Problems With Working Memory
In most of the cases it is observed that people fail to remember certain things that they have recently learned. It becomes very difficult for them to keep that information and execute in the right way.
Causes of Schizophrenia
It is a fact that 100% exact causes of schizophrenia are not known. But it is strongly believed that schizophrenia is a combination of brain chemistry, genetics and environmental factors. Let’s talk about one by one.
Genetic Factors
Medical studies show that schizophrenia has linkages with genetic factors. Those people who are a first degree relative having this type of mental disorder are at higher risk. It is also important to note that there are also some other factors that collectively combined with genetic factors cause schizophrenia.
Brain Chemistry and Structure
There are some important elements in the brain known as neurotransmitters. The Imbalance or disorder in neurotransmitters such as dopamine and glutamate is a mental disease which is called schizophrenia. It is important to discuss here that according to research it is found that there is much difference in the brain structure of those who have schizophrenia as compared to normal ones.
Environmental Factors
There are also environmental factors included in this list of causes of schizophrenia. Some important ones are as follows.
Pre Birth
The complications during pregnancy or birth are also one of the contributing factors towards schizophrenia. These complications can be malnutrition or creation of toxins.
Psychosocial Stress
Psychosocial stress is another reason in case of schizophrenia. Those events that contain high levels of stress can become the starting point during childhood and adulthood.
Substance Abuse
Medical research shows that the use of mind changing substances has a significant impact on developing symptoms of schizophrenia.
Comprehensive Diagnosis
It is crucial to diagnose schizophrenia at an early stage in a professional way. So if you feel symptoms as mentioned above then you must have to consult with your mental health professional in an urgent way. There are several important diagnostic steps that have been taken to evaluate this mental condition in a comprehensive way. Let’s have a look.
Clinical Interview
The first important thing to do in this context is the clinical interview. The mental health physician performs this clinical interview in order to discuss symptoms, family and medical history of that affecting the patient.
Psychiatric Assessment
It is really important to know the level of severity in case of schizophrenia. For this purpose different standard tools are used to access the condition.
Physical Examination
It is also important to conduct a physical examination test in order to differentiate similar symptoms as also found in case of some other diseases.
Laboratory Tests
Laboratory tests are very important at that time when the situation seems to be difficult. For this purpose blood tests or imaging tests are taken in order to know the possible appearance of other diseases.
Effective Treatment For Schizophrenia
As in the case of many chronic diseases, as we have deeply discussed in our previous articles, schizophrenia also has no cure discovered yet. You can only manage this serious mental disease by keeping multiple options in consideration. Try to understand here that different treatment plans are made for different types of individuals according to their needs. Some of the important treatment options are as follows.
Medications
Antipsychotic medicine is key to success in treating schizophrenia. The major function of these antipsychotic medicines is to control or reduce symptoms by target neurotransmitter pathways in the brain. There are two types of antipsychotic medicine that are used according to the need.
Typical Antipsychotics
Typical antipsychotics are actually older forms of medicine such as Chlorpromazine and haloperidol. These medicines are also effective but despite the fact of their effectiveness it has side effects that have been reported in significant amounts. The common side effects by using these medicines are movement disorder and tardive dyskinesia .
Atypical Antipsychotics
If you want to go for a long term treatment then we recommend you to go for atypical antipsychotics. The common ones are as follows: olanzapine, Risperidone, and Aripiprazole. These types of medicine are actually newly formed having fewer side effects as compared to typical ones.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is another effective treatment option in order to treat schizophrenia. Now simply let’s talk about psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is basically a scientific study of the mind in order to check out possible effects in case of behavior. Some of the common psychotherapy treatments are as follows.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT
This type of therapy is very important in order to reduce or even illuminate symptoms of unwilling thoughts and behaviors. Cognitive behavior therapy is mostly effective in case of hallucinations and delusions.
Family Therapy
Family therapy is actually based on the support and care of the family members. In this type of therapy family members help their beloved ones through education and provide understanding about the condition.
Social Skills Training
Social communication is really very important to address the challenge in any kind of disease, especially those which are complex and chronic. The major task in this type of treatment option is to improve the communication and social interaction between a patient and other factors which can affect the improvement in case of schizophrenia.
Psychological Help
As we have deeply discussed above in this comprehensive article, schizophrenia is a complex mental health disease so it becomes really very important to provide psychological support to an affected person. So in this whole picture we are going to talk about some of the important points related to that. Let’s have a look.
Vocational Rehabilitation
It is really a good idea to provide positive activities during vocations. By doing this it will help to manage time in an effective way. You can help affected individuals by providing them skills and those employments for which they are fit.
Supported Employment
It becomes really crucial to maintain employment because of the disease that anyone is facing. So in this whole scenario the main aim is to support those people to maintain their employment.
Housing Support
Housing support is another contributing factor towards providing treatment options to affected people in case of schizophrenia. If you arrange some housing facilities for those people then it can be helpful to promote their independence and stability of mind.
Join Support Groups
The important thing in case of suffering from schizophrenia is to get support whether it is emotional or ethical. So try to connect yourself with those people who have similar experiences that you have.
Living with Schizophrenia
Now the important question that arises at the moment is how to live a healthy life with schizophrenia. There are actually the same strategies and approaches that we have talked about so many times in our previous articles in different types of diseases.
You can live a happier and healthy life by managing some key strategies like
✓ Try to stick to your treatment plans.
✓Adopt Healthy lifestyle, have a balanced diet and take regular exercise. These practices actually have a positive impact on your mental health.
✓ It is really important to reduce stress from your life. For this purpose you can use certain techniques such as meditation, relaxation exercises and mindfulness.
✓Try to engage with your friends and family members and get support and experimental advice from them in treating schizophrenia.
✓Awareness is really very important for managing symptoms of any type of disease especially in the case of schizophrenia.
Conclusion
Schizophrenia is a complicated and challenging disorder related to your mental health. Although it is a chronic mental health issue, you can manage it and get maximum results of recovery by implementing some strategies. For better treatment it is critical to understand its symptoms and root causes. There are many people around the world who are living a happy life despite the fact they have schizophrenia. How can they do that? It is really possible and you can also do this. Try to diagnose schizophrenia at an early stage and this is really possible. When you observe symptoms as we have talked about earlier in this article you must go to your mental healthcare provider for proper diagnosis. Try to keep yourself in touch with your friends and family and talk about your situation for getting suitable advice and guidance.