What is schizophrenia?
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| Photo credit: Markus Spiske @markusspiske @unsplash What is schizophrenia? | @healthbiztips |
@healthbiztips by Arlene Gentallan | psychology blog
Schizophrenia is a diagnosed mental disorder marked by episodes of psychosis with duration lasting from days to lifelong. Psychosis is a condition in which a person experiences symptoms such as hallucination (sensory perception of non-existent things), delusion (strong affinity to false beliefs), disorganized speech pattern (making it hard to understand them), bizarre behavior, and inability to think clearly.
In schizophrenia, an individual's perception and cognitive ability is disorganized causing them to loose touch of reality. Additionally, it is worth noting that patients with schizophrenia may have varying presentation of symptoms. For example, one person may have a strong belief that he is God whereas another person also suffering from schizophrenia do not have this symptom.
Generally, men acquire schizophrenia at an earlier age compare to women. It typically manifest in male during the late teens and early twenties whereas it is at the late twenties and early thirties for women. However, it is still possible for younger and older people to develop this disease.
Schizophrenia has positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms:
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia includes:
- Hallucination
- Delusion
- Bizarre physical poses and movement
- Disorganized speech pattern such as using jumble of words, and flight of ideas
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia includes:
- Apathy
- Blunt affect
- Decreased emotional response
- Decrease motivation
- Responds very little
Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia includes:
- Difficulty concentrating
- Disorganized thinking
- Memory problem
- Decreased ability to understand and learn
Although this mental health problem is a life-long disorder that has no cure, with proper treatment, remission can be achieved.
