What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder that affects approximately 2.2 million American adults, or 1.1 percent of the population age 18 and older. Schizophrenia interferes with a person's ability to think clearly, to distinguish reality from fantasy, to manage emotions, make decisions, and relate to others.
The first signs of schizophrenia typically emerge in the teenage years or early twenties. Most people with schizophrenia suffer chronically or episodically throughout their lives, and are often stigmatized by lack of public understanding about the disease.
Schizophrenia is not caused by bad parenting or personal weakness. A person with schizophrenia does not have a "split personality," and almost all people with schizophrenia are not dangerous or violent towards others when they are receiving treatment.
The World Health Organization has identified
schizophrenia as one of the ten most debilitating diseases affecting
human beings.
What are the symptoms of Schizophrenia?
The symptoms of schizophrenia are generally divided into three categories, including positive, disorganized and negative symptoms.
Positive
Symptoms, or "psychotic" symptoms, include
delusions
and hallucinations because the patient has lost
touch with
reality in certain important ways. "Positive" as
used here
does not mean "good." Rather,
it refers to
having overt
symptoms that should not be there.
Delusions
cause the patient to believe that people are
reading their
thoughts or plotting against them, that others
are secretly
monitoring and
threatening them, or that they
can control
other people's minds. Hallucinations cause
people to
hear or see things that are not
there.
Disorganized Symptoms include confused thinking
and
speech, and behavior that does not make sense.
For example,
people with schizophrenia
sometimes have
trouble communicating
in coherent sentences or carrying
on conversations
with others; move more slowly, repeat
rhythmic gestures
or make movements such as walking
in circles
or pacing; and have difficulty making
sense of
everyday sights,
sounds and feelings.
Negative Symptoms include emotional flatness or lack
of expression,
an inability to start and follow through with
activities,
speech that is brief and lacks content, and a lack
of pleasure
or interest in life. "Negative" does
not, then,
refer to a
person's attitude, but to a lack of certain
characteristics
that should be there.
"Hope is necessary in every condition."
Samuel Johnson
1709-1784
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