Schizophrenia (Term Paper Sample)

Schizophrenia
Name
Institution

Introduction
Sudden development of illness in which one is overwhelmed with voices from forces they can neither describe nor see. Loses the ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy, have their mind play tricks on them. Totally doubt their senses, see the family or friends as part of the conspiracy that want to harm them and alienates themselves from the rest of the world. Either because they do not want to mingle with people or people simply recoil from them, is one the most unfortunate experiences in life to an individual, the family of the individual and the society at large.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis of psychotic disorders of heterogeneous group in clinical phenotype description, which results when the normal brain functions is disturbed, sometimes from different brain structure and chemistry or the environment, such as fetal nutritional problems or viruses, consequently affecting an individual’s actions, thinking and the view of the world. The course of the condition remains unclear despite the research progress (Spear, 2002).
Characteristics of schizophrenia
The characteristics of the condition are broadly categorized as: positive, negative and cognitive.
Positive symptoms
Positive symptoms are psychotic in nature and are not experienced by healthy people, the person show dissertation of normal thinking, and lose touch with reality, they cannot tell what is real or what an imagination is. The symptoms may appear or disappear; the severity of positive symptoms depends on level of medication. Some of the positive symptoms include;
Hallucination
In the state of hallucination a person can to see, hear, smell and feel things that other people around them can neither see, smell nor feel. The most common hallucination is voice Hearing. The voice may tell the person about their behavior, order them to perform some activities or caution them against the impending danger Tsung (2013). The hearing of the voices may continue in patients suffering from the condition for a long period before people close to the patient notice the problem. Victims of schizophrenia may also see nonexistent people or objects, smell odors that that is unique to them and feel being touched by invisible hands when in real sense there no hands touching them (Tsung, 2013).
Delusion
According to National Institute of Mental Health, People schizophrenia believe things that are not true, the believes mostly are false and illogical, for example, they believe that neighbors have the capacity to control their behaviors, the messages from the television anchors are directed to them, the broadcasting from radio is conveying their personal thoughts and sometimes they may believe to be someone else, may be a historical figure. They are always paranoid suspect that someone is trying to harm them or the people he or she cares about.
Thought disorder
National Institute of Mental Health further asserts that the persons’ thought are disorganized, unusual and dysfunctional, the thoughts are not logically connected, and they are always hard to understand. They are also characterized by neologism where the thoughts make meaningless words. People with schizophrenia may sometimes disrupt speech in the middle of a thought because they could no longer remember the flow of the thought.
Movement disorder
Though rare these days, because of medical advanced medical research some patients still experience it. It is characterized by agitated body movement, repetition of motions or catatonic experience; a state of no movement or response to others as reviewed by Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia.
Negative symptoms
Negative characteristics are hard to identify, many a times they are mistaken for conditions like depression. The symptoms are widely associated with disrupted normal emotions and behaviors, such as; flat effect, lack of purpose in life, poor planning and execution and lack of interest in interaction and speaking. People with negative symptoms may neglect personal basic hygiene (Walker, 2004).
Cognitive symptoms
Cognitive characteristics are hard to identify just like the negative characteristics, they are only detected upon performing other tests, some of the cognitive symptoms include; poor executive function, they lack the ability to comprehend information for decisions making. Have trouble with focusing and concentration, they may also experience memory problems; this can be evident when they fail to relate information to appropriate use immediately after learning it, because of distress associated with cognitive symptoms, is hard for schizophrenia patients to live a normal life and sustain an employment (Walker,2004).
Heredity and “The Schizophrenia Gene”
According to National Institute of Mental Health scientific researchers have revealed that schizophrenia runs in the family. The illness occurs in 1% of the general population the percentage increase to ten in people with first degree relative with the illness. The relative could be a parent a brother or a sister. People with long degree relatives such as uncles, aunts, grandparents or cousins with the disease have also been found to have higher chances of developing schizophrenia in comparison to the general population. The risk increases tremendously for an identical twin of a person with the condition (40%-60%).
National Institute of Mental Health states that people inherit genes from parents, scientist using the available empirical evidence deduce that several genes are associated with the increased risk of the condition, no one specific gene can be attributed to the disorder. The research further reveals that people with the conditions tend to have a higher rate of rare genetic mutation; the mutation involves hundred of different genes that are thought to cause disruption in the development of the brain. Recent studies suggest that the disorder partly occur upon malfunctioning of genes key to making vital brain chemicals, affecting part of the brain that is responsible for coordinating higher functional skills. It is premature to use genetic information to predict the probability of the occurrence of the disorder in an individual because the research is still ongoing. The use of genome scans is also not likely to give conclusive information on the possibility of developing the illness because scientist cannot authoritatively point out all the gene variation that contributes to schizophrenia. The known gene variations only raise the risk by small amount.
Scientist suggests that it not only genes that should be centre of focus on other factors like environmental factors may also lead to the condition, for instance virus exposure, fetal malnutrition, complications during birth and other psychosocial factors( McGorry, 2005).
Brain Anomalies in Schizophrenia
According to scientific research, it is thought that the imbalance complex, interrelated chemical reaction of the brain involving the neurotransmitters dopamine and glutamate may contribute to schizophrenia. Neurotransmitters are substances that serve as a medium of communication between brain cells Spear (2005). There are ongoing research on brain chemistry and its link to schizophrenia.
Brains of people with schizophrenia subtly differ from the brains of healthy people. For example, many people with the illness have larger brain ventricles; less grey matter and some part of their brain experience less of more activities. There are also changes in the distribution of brain cells in the patients with the schizophrenia (Barbato, 2005).
Suicide Rates
People love their family members, no single family is happy with the loss of a loved one. People suffering from schizophrenia live within a family structure, they have parents, siblings, cousins and other close relatives who adore them, unfortunately, suicide have been cited to be the leading cause of deaths for these good people. Mental Illness Fellowship Australia reports that 5% to 15% of people with the disorder have committed suicide, 40% to 50% attempt suicide at le...