Written by Elif Gulce Batgi
Imagine that you are in your twenties living with your family and friends. You grew up with your little brother in the same house, including a lot of fights and joy. Your friend remembers the day you tried to climb a tree, fell, and broke your arm. What a funny day, though. You couldn’t even play games with them for months. The cake that your mom baked for your birthday’s taste still lingers. After such memories from your childhood, how would you react if it would’ve been told none of them was real? Or getting darker, what would you feel if one of your closest friends has never existed?
Schizophrenes create a different world in their minds different from the world they are currently living in. In other words, they physically exist in the real world but mentally exist in the life and world they have been creating. Most psychiatrists mention that its irremediableness is making it one of the darkest illnesses. That’s why people with schizophrenia have to take lifelong treatment to keep up with daily life and other activities.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia involve a range of problems with cognition, behavior, and emotions (1). Even though each person’s experience is unique and symptoms can vary among individuals, symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech, and impaired ability to function are common. Hallucinations, the situation of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching nonexistent things, indicate schizophrenia the most (2). Symptoms depend on the gender, age, and period of the illness you are in (5). For example, in men schizophrenia begins in the mid-20s, whereas in women it begins in the late 20s (5).
On the other hand, there are some negative symptoms that might have been thought of as positive symptoms of the illness such as having trouble with sticking and planning activities, feeling pleasure in everyday life, talking in a dull voice, and showing a little amount of facial expression while talking, avoiding social interaction or being socially awkward and having low energy and spending time with passive activities (1).
Researchers believe that biological and environmental factors play a role in the causation of schizophrenia, and life stressors may play a role in the start of symptoms and their course (3). Imbalances in chemical signs your brain uses for cell-to-cell communication lost connection between the areas of the brain, and brain development problems before birth are the three main reasons (4). Having one in your family tree who has schizophrenia is dangerous for you to have it, and also risks the continuous parts of your family tree.
Most people with schizophrenia don’t show violent behaviors normally (1). Moreover, the chance of being hurt by others is more than hurting someone (1). They are more likely to hurt themselves and have suicidal thoughts and behaviors (5).
Schizophrenia is an untreated illness, there is some permanent treatment for reducing the effects of it however a person can’t be %100 purified from the effects. Antipsychotic medications are used by people with schizophrenia to reduce the occurrence of psychotic symptoms (1). As a cure to the difficulty of social interactions in daily life patients may be taken psychosocial treatments to shape their behaviors (1).
Today, approximately 24 million, 1 in 300, people live with schizophrenia worldwide. Even though the amount is enough to get used to it, in daily life many patients face the problem of discrimination or the lack of specialist services (6). These kinds of behaviors decrease the likelihood of a decrease in the symptoms.
References:
Schizophrenia. (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia.
Overview - Schizophrenia. (2021, February 12). nhs.uk. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia/overview/.
Please wait... (n.d.). Please Wait... | Cloudflare. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/schizophrenia/what-is-schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia: What it is, causes, symptoms & treatment. (n.d.). Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4568-schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia - Symptoms and causes. (2020, January 7). Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizophrenia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354443.
Schizophrenia. (2022, January 10). World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/schizophrenia.
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