Schizophrenia - Psychological syndrome

 

Schizophrenia:

 Schizophrenia is a psychological syndrome. It is a syndrome because it has different symptoms for different patients. 

                                   Schizo = split 

                                   phrenic = mind.

Splitting of mind, not split personality disorder. It affects the men of late teens or early twenties and women of late twenties or early thirties.

 

Symptoms:

There are three types of symptoms for schizophrenia mentioned in follow:

1.     Positive symptoms

2.     Negative symptoms

3.     Cognitive symptoms

 

1. Positive symptoms:

·       Delusion:

                                                 Delusions are a false belief that patients might feel very strongly about it, so much so they won't change their minds, even if you gave them evidence against it. Some people believe in socio myth. Every human has some delusions. Some people believe in ghosts that also delusion.

·       Hallucination:

                                     The hallucination is the sensation of the things that not present. People have hallucinations of smell, sound, and visual. The patients can see things that aren't real. My friend had this hallucination of his dead brother. Our brain stores every information and visual we see. So hallucinations can occur for any individual.

 

·       Disorganized speeches:

                                       Some patients make a statement in an irrelevant way, like " Blue is water in color and tea full of cups". These people have all the information on their brains but, while speaking they disorganize it. This symptom is seen in dementia patients.

 

·       Disorganizes behavior:

                                             People act differently for a situation. People wear a formal outfit to a beach party. This is termed as disorganized behavior. 

 

 

2. Negative Symptoms:   

                 The Negative symptoms are like when there's a reduction or removal of the normal process. This like decrease in emotions they can express. And the loss of interest in things once they found interesting.

• Flat affect means inappropriate response to the situation as if a snake moving near them they don't react and see the snake silently.

• Alogia means the poverty of speech, which is a lack of content in speech. They always use a single word reply.

•  Avolition is the decrease in motivation to complete a task. People stay in homes for a long time, without trying to reach out to work or people.       

3.Cognitive symptoms:

    Cognitive symptoms include things like not being able to remember things, learn new things, or understand others easily.     

                                    

 

Phases of Schizophrenia: 

 

Prodromal Phase:

        

                Patients in this phase spend most of their time alone. They don't interact with others. They seem like the victims of depression and anxiety. 

 

 Active Phase:

     

                The active phase includes positive symptoms like delusion, hallucination, disorganized speech, and disorganized behavior. This phase is very important in the diagnosis process.

 

Residual Phase:

         

               This phase includes the cognitive phase. All these phases are repeats as a cycle in the frequent intervals.