Jin Schizophrenia

This case study tells the story of Jin, a thirty nine year old Korean-American man who has been experiencing significant distress and impairment in his daily life since he left home and went to college. While in college, Jin began to feel very detached from the world around him and began to isolate himself from his classmates. As his symptoms grew worse, he withdrew from classes and his parents convinced him to see a doctor who prescribed him antidepressants, which he did not continue taking. After he stopped taking the antidepressants, he began to hear voices in his head that often criticized him and called him evil. He had very little familial support, as his father had passed away when Jin was twenty five and his mother had to move into

For the next few years, he spent time alternating between transitional housing, homelessness, and living in psychiatric hospitals. Although he has experienced lengthy periods of time where his mood would improve and the voices would subside, the voices and delusion always return. Even though he has only experienced minimal symptoms for the last few months, he was recently hospitalized after the voices and delusions returned. Based on the vignette, it is clear that Jin has schizophrenia and has been experiencing both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia since he was in college. According to the textbook, Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World (10th ed.), schizophrenia is described as “a chronic, debilitating disorder that touches every facet of the affected person’s life” (Nevid, Rathus, & Greene, 2018, p. 416). While analyzing Jin’s case study, I noticed that the majority of his symptoms are classic schizophrenia symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations. When Jin began to first experience distressing symptoms while in

During the promodal phase, the symptoms develop gradually and are usually non-psychotic in nature. He went through this phase during his college years when he only experienced negative symptoms. During the acute/active phase, psychotic symptoms become present. He experienced this phase of schizophrenia when he began experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. During these active/acute phases, he rotated between transitional housing, homelessness, and psychiatric hospitals. Lastly, the residual phase can be described as an absence of or less intense psychotic symptoms for a prolonged period of time. He experienced this phase when his hallucinations and delusions went away for several months to years at a time and he was able to work and live