Schizophrenia is everyday mental health prevailing in many countries. It is a condition that interacts with the speech, cognitive abilities, emotional wellbeing and interpersonal relationship of a person and leaves significant impacts on the social interaction and everyday activities. It usually appears in late adolescence or early adulthood.
It has been noted that a schizophrenic patient starts showing the symptom of disease from early childhood but are ultimately revealed at an older age. In some cases, sudden symptoms also appear. It is regarded as a long-life condition but can be controlled significantly through treating and managing the symptoms.
COMMON SYMPTOMS
Schizophrenia shows many symptoms such as:
Lack of motivation, emotional and facial expression in doing any task due to impaired cognitive abilities.
Difficulty in concentrating and confused speech.
Anxiety and lack of focusing, especially in studies, is the primordial sort of symptom that appears before disease occurrence in some cases.
Delusions, hallucinations and disorganized speech are regarded as significant symptoms.
Delusions
They believe in a random thing without having a shred of solid evidence that is regarded as delusion. In most cases, it has been seen that schizophrenic patients believe that someone is pursuing them, or others are might trying to control them. Some patients think that they have extraordinary powers and are extremely important in other’s life.
Hallucinations
Feeling or observing things through all the five senses without their actual existence is called hallucination and is a significant symptom revealed by schizophrenia. Hearing random voices and seeing someone passing by without their presence in real comes under this category. Hallucinations lead people with schizophrenia into a kind of confusion in which they start to spend their life agnosticism.
Confused speech and cognitive abilities
Speaking in a kind of stammer or in a way that others find it challenging to understand and follow comes under confused speech and is related to the significant symptom of schizophrenia. Moreover, showing signs of memory problems like difficulty remembering daily life tasks or names, difficulty in understanding, and jumping or concluding to another subject without any logical reason leads to cognitive disabilities.
Effect of these symptoms
Lack of motivation: Due to lack of motivation, a person cannot accomplish even minor daily tasks such as self-care. This thing can also lead to catatonia, in which a person avoids talking or move due to a lack of motivation.
Lack of emotional expression: The lack of dynamic or facial features lead to a blank and expressionless personality. A person cannot express their feelings, such as happiness, sadness, anger or joy.
Low interest in social life: Due to agnosticism, the person might avoid social gatherings due to the fear that people may harm her.
Lack of communication: Difficulty in speech and thinking skills lead the person to interact less in social gatherings because of inability to understand its speech or style of talking.
CAUSES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
A genetic inheritance leads to the transfer of genes from one generation to another. If one person in a family is diagnosed with such symptoms, there are chances that the same disease will develop in other family members later in life too.
Chemical imbalances in the brain
Chemical imbalances in the neurotransmitter called dopamine and serotonin possibly leads to schizophrenic symptoms. Neurotransmitters are the chemical signals released to spread the brain signals quickly, and disturbance leads to specific brain disorders such as schizophrenia.
2. Environmental factors
Environmental factors also increase the chances of schizophrenia, such as trauma or injury at head region during or before birth, malnutrition before birth possibly due to inadequate intake of diet or consumption of heavy alcohol by mother, Viral infection or use of certain medications included in this.
TREATMENT OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
Using antipsychotic drugs: These drugs can be used daily. If a patient is using injection-based medications, then these can be used less frequently.
Mental counselling: Counselling through a clinical psychologist produces fruitful results as they help a person develop and cope with their skills and help them pursue their goals. Counselling leads them to speak up entirely and help them to express their thoughts and feelings without the fear of being judged.
Coordinated support: Family and friends are included in this, and their moral support can help the patient recover soon or lessen the symptoms from getting worse.
Medications related to schizophrenia
There are some medications too which can be consumed to lessen the impact of schizophrenia. These include Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Geodon, Clozaril, and Haldol via a trusted source.
Moreover, medications lead to side effects such as neurological symptoms and sudden weight gain. New medicines prepared in this era show lesser side effects due to their new and improved pharmacological and pharmacokinetic impact and actions. Therefore, the best way is to seek counselling support and use antipsychotic drugs in a moderate dose, which eventually helps relieve the worse symptoms of this disorder and help an individual gain back the desired motivation to live their life completely.
Social impacts
Schizophrenia leaves specific social impacts in which the individual is most likely to offend. Individual faces educational difficulties, highlighting the issue of low IQ level.
Early-onset substance misuse and conduct disorder are prominent concerns in social impacts, and offending is seen before diagnosis.
Schizophrenia leaves severe impacts and leaves cognitive extreme, motor, perpetual and emotional deficits leading to social withdrawal and limitations in interpersonal relations. This thing ends up in cessation of social contact.
Schizophrenia leaves huge social impacts regarding the use of medication and differences of opinion. It is believed that some patients might be discouraged to use the prescribed medicines by their friends and family members because of non-biological views of mental disorders.
Violent acts and their relation to schizophrenia is a common problem. Research has indicated that patients with schizophrenia commit violent acts such as interpersonal violence at a higher rate than others.
Moreover, researchers have also proved that schizophrenic patients in western countries commit about 5-10% of cases of murder.
The feelings like the perception of threat, hallucinations and delusional jealousy have been inconsistent, creating substantial social impacts.