Schizophrenia and Social Dysfunction

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Schizophrenia, also known as the splitting of the mind, is a mental disorder characterized by disintegration of thought process and of emotional responsiveness. It manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid and bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it are accompanied by significant social and or occupational dysfunction. It is a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions and hallucinations, and accompanied by other emotional behavioral or intellectual disturbances. There are three main factors that are involved in the diagnosis of schizophrenia: 1-Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder, grossly disorganized behavior or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms, blunted affect, alogia or avolition; 2-Social or occupational dysfunction; 3- Significant duration: continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months; according to the DSM IV. Delusions are a false belief based on faulty judgment about one’s environment. Hallucinations are experiencing something from any of the five senses that is not occurring in reality. Positive and negative (deficit) symptoms are important in diagnosing schizophrenia. Positive symptoms (PS) are not experienced, but are present. Delusions, disordered thoughts and speech, tactile, auditory, visual, olfactory, and gustatory hallucinations or manifestations of psychosis are all positive symptoms. Negative symptoms (NS) are deficits of normal emotional responses and thought processes that normally do not respond to medications. The patient experience a flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), inability to expe...

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...ion or hospitalization is needed.

A patient who has been hospitalized is usually treated with pharmacotherapy, which is treatment prescribed by a psychiatrist through different medications. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), family therapy and or orthomolecular therapy, which is vitamin and mineral supplements, are used to treat schizophrenia. Schizophrenia decrease life expectancy 12-15years and is one of the major causes of disability. Deinstitutionalization is a therapy treatment also, whereas the patient is able to live on his own within a gated community. The patient should not relapse as long as they are taking their medications. This shows that although your mind is split, you are still able to cope and live in society with this disease. As chaotic as schizophrenia is there is still hope and a belief that you can be helped and you can live in society.

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