Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects approximately 1% of the world’s population, being usually shown during adolescence and chronicled in the absence of a treatment that cures it and can only be treated with antipsychotic drug treatment and psychosocial therapy.
Living with this mental illness can be very hard, but it is important to know the symptoms and causes of schizophrenia to give as much support as possible to the patient and help him overcome the worst moments.
What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a serious and chronic mental disorder that is characterized by alterations in the perception of reality and behavior, as well as by changes in thought. Its etymological meaning is a split, a term that refers to the changes in thought presented by patients.
Thus, the sick can suffer from delusions and hallucinations, lose all contact with reality, problems in the work and social spheres, making it difficult for them to live their uniqueness and individuality.
Schizophrenia also features variants such as paranoid schizophrenia, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual schizophrenia.
Symptoms
Specialists divide symptoms of schizophrenia into positive and negative symptoms, depending on whether they are abnormal experiences or we are facing normal misconduct. Among the positive symptoms, we find delusions and hallucinations, that is, thinking that things happen that are not true or you see things that don’t exist.
Within the delirious delusions, schizophrenics may have:
Delusions of persecution.
- Greatness: when a person believes he has powers.
- If the person thinks someone wants to hurt him?
- Somatic delusions: if the person thinks strange things happen with his body.
- Odeomaniaan delis: when the person thinks others have loving or erotic feelings with it.
- Celoptypical dellies: if the person thinks everyone is cheating on him.
- Reference dellies or self-referentiality: when the person has the suspicion that everyone speaks about it.
For their part, hallucinations can be false perceptions that the person believes to hear, see, feel, taste, or smell, feeling them real.
Negative symptoms include:
- Alterations in thought: with the consequent loss of the capacity for association of ideas, becoming untrue and incoherent, with a disorganized thought.
- Alterations of affection: with great difficulty in expressing feelings.
- Alterations of behavior and behavior: abandoning your toilet and isolating from friends and family, among other inappropriate behaviors
- Alterations of cognition: it is difficult to keep attention and present memory failures.
The patient has numerous disorders, profoundly altering his perception of himself, as well as deteriorating his emotions and isolating others.
Causes
Although the origin of schizophrenia is not known, there is now growing evidence that it may be due to a combination of neurobiological, genetic, and environmental factors. Specialists point out possible causes of schizophrenia:
– Early brain development alterations
One of the latest theories points to schizophrenia being based on brain alterations occurring during the development of the embryonic brain.
– Alterations of brain molecules
Specialists point out how neurotransmitters, substances that communicate neurons to each other, are affected by schizophrenia and end up unbalanced.
– Family history
Although not decisive, the risk of schizophrenia increases when there is a history in the family.
– Drug use
If there is a predisposition to schizophrenia, cannabis use can increase the risk of developing this disease. The relationship between the use of this drug and schizophrenia continues to be studied.
– Infections of the viral during pregnancy
Although still under study, in some cases this type of disorder has been linked to complications given during childbirth or because the fetus is affected by viral infections suffered by the mother during pregnancy.
Helping Someone Who Might Have Schizophrenia
As we have already pointed out, living with schizophrenia is not easy for the sick or for family and friends, but it is essential to make the effort to understand the disease and to inform you so that you can help and support it. Specialists advise being a company and constant support to encourage patients to continue their treatments, both pharmacological and psychosocial therapies, accompanying them in all medical appointments.
It can also be interesting to record all the symptoms we perceive to have a complete view of how the patient is, in addition to being attentive to changes, relapses, or aggravation of his situation. On the other hand, knowledge of the potential symptoms and the effects, advantages, and disadvantages of antipsychotic treatments is also essential to ensure that the patient receives the appropriate treatment.
To make the relationship between the patient and the family and friends so fluid and complete, the help of the doctor is essential. Dialogue between all parties is a basic therapeutic tool to get everyone to learn to live with the disease and to develop useful psychological resources and tools to ensure that the help the family provides to the patient is effective.