Victim To My Own Thoughts: A Case Study

Victim To My Own Thoughts On September 16th, 2013, there were twelve murdered and three injured. At the age of 34, Aaron Alexis fired shots at a Naval Sea Command Headquarters where he was discharged from for “exhibiting a pattern of misbehavior”. Aaron was said to have schizophrenia that was not treated nor noticed even after the symptoms that were exhibited through his “unnatural behaviors” (Shear 1). There are better ways for people who have schizophrenia to be recognized and treated other than medications. Elyn R. Saks, a past patient, states that “mainstream treatment may actually make it harder for people to cope with daily life and work.” Schizophrenia is shown to stem more from past traumas rather than something that is wrong genetically,

Despite the fact, doctors vocalize that it would be more effective to start treatment earlier rather than later” to ensure a better future, but they pay no mind to the consequences of taking the antipsychotics they prescribe (“Living With Schizophrenia” 1). Psychologists spend more time trying to find a cure for schizophrenia, and in result they aren’t doing enough research on the treatments that could potentially help a patient through more than just medication.

Schizophrenia, meaning split mind, is a chronic mental disorder characterized by an array of symptoms, and it affects 1% of our world’s population. The meaning split mind is to show how each person that lives in this mental state have different characterizations in each small fragment of their mind. It’s shows up in both men and women starting from their late teens to early thirties. Studies show that the basis of understanding where it comes from is the occurrence of “abnormalities in [the] neurotransmission” which can start with either an excess or a deficiency of neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters include serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate. It is also found that schizophrenia has

There are many different kinds of medications but as Dr. Krishna Patel wrote in “Modern Treatments”, the most common are Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa. After the failure of two antipsychotic medications doctors typically give patients Clozaril. Clozaril has one major side effect that is the most defective which is the “deficiency of white blood cells” (Piotrowski 3). White blood cells help fight bacteria and other illnesses and when those are destroyed the patient becomes more prone to development of other diseases. Each of these medications has different side effects that can damage the patient who is taking them. Based off of the overproduction of serotonin and dopamine the medication is used to block all production of each of these chemicals. Yvette Brazier writes in “Medical News Today” that serotonin acts as a neurotransmitter which helps send signals from one side of the brain to the other, and it can also be found in the digestive tract. Another chemical that is overproduced is dopamine. Lex Wunderink, a psychiatrist at University Medical Center, stated dopamine is a necessary for all people because it is a chemical that primarily deals with motivated behavior and has a direct relationship with memory, motor movement, sleep, libido, and addiction. Blocking off each of these chemicals may help the side effects of schizophrenia, but they create new problems for patients to cope