Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects the way someone thinks and lives their lives. It is a wide range of unusual behaviors, which disrupts their everyday life, along with the lives of other people around them. Most cases of schizophrenia include delusions and hallucinations. There are different types of schizophrenics such as catatonic, paranoid, and disorganized. According to Michael Bengston M.D., about one third of people diagnosed with schizophrenia attempt suicide and 10 percent of those people will commit suicide within the first 20 years of being diagnosed. People with this disorder do not talk about their suicidal thoughts, which make it harder for them to be saved.

There are some positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The positive symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and agitation. The negative symptoms are affective flattening, alogia, and avolition. Affective flattening is when the person's range of emotional expression is diminished, reduced body language, and poor eye contact. Alogia is when the person replies with short brief responses. Avolition is the inability to work hard in goal-directed activities. The symptoms must be shown for at least a month before it can be considered schizophrenia, and on top of that the disturbances must be present for a consecutive 6 months.

Catatonic schizophrenics are where a person is withdrawn from the world and assumes some unusual postures without realizing it. Patients that take on a position that looks extremely uncomfortable to the outside world actually doesn't affect them, it shows that they have considerable physical strength. Paranoid schizophrenia is when the patient feels extremely suspicious or has an extreme case of anxiety. During this case of schizophrenia the patients have auditory hallucinations. Paranoid is the most common subtype of schizophrenia. Disorganized schizophrenia is where the person is incoherent but does not have to have delusions. Residual schizophrenia is when the patient no longer hallucinates but isn't interested in life. These patients are emotionally unstable and do not have any interest in normal everyday routine such as getting dressed. Also, their speech may become incomprehensible, not in the way that their words don't come out but their words are jumbled up in the sentences.

Schizophrenia normally shows up in a person's