Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that affects/changes the way someone thinks, acts, expresses emotions, perceives reality, and relates to others. Often, people with schizophrenia have problems functioning at work, at school, in society, and in relationships. Schizophrenia is a psychosis (a type of mental illness causing someone to be unable to tell what is real from what is imaginary) causing people with schizophrenia to occasionally lose touch with reality. To people with schizophrenia the world can be a confusing jumble of various thoughts, images, sounds, etc. People with schizophrenia often have very strange behavior. Due to the varying severity of schizophrenia, the number of psychotic episodes (a sudden change in personality and behavior, due to someone losing touch with reality) is different for each person with schizophrenia. There are three different categories of symptoms for schizophrenia: positive symptoms, disorganized symptoms, and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are obvious symptoms not present in people without schizophrenia (sometimes referred to as psychotic symptoms). They include delusions (strange beliefs not based in reality that someone will not give up) and hallucinations (perceiving sensations that don’t exist). Disorganized symptoms show someone’s incapability to think clearly and respond appropriately. They include talking in sentences that don’t make sense, using nonsense words, shifting quickly from one thought to the next, moving slowly, being incapable of making decisions, writing excessively and without meaning, forgetting or losing things, repeating movements or gestures, having problems with everyday sights, sounds, feelings, etc. Negative symptoms are normal behaviors absent in someone with schizophrenia. They include lack of emotion and expressions, emotions/thoughts/moods that don’t fit with a situation, withdrawal from family/friend/social activities, reduced energy, lack of motivation, poor hygiene/grooming habits, problems functioning at school/work/other activities, moodiness, and catatonia (in which someone becomes fixed in a single position for a very long time). Schizophrenia is treated with medications (primarily antipsychotics), psychosocial therapy (including rehabilitation, individual psychotherapy, family therapy, and group therapy/support groups), hospitalization, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT- rarely used today), and psychosurgery. Schizophrenia typically first appears in the teenage years or 20’s and generally appears earlier in men (teens and 20’s) than in women (20’s and early 30’s). About 1% of the population, or 2.2 million Americans over age 18, will develop schizophrenia- it is a fairly common disease. In the U.S. it is 2 times as common as Alzheimer’s, 5 times as common as MS, 6 times as common as insulin-dependent diabetes, and 60 times as common as muscular dystrophy. After 10 years 25% of the people with schizophrenia completely recover, 25% are very improved, 25% are somewhat improved, 15% are unimproved, and 10% are dead (mostly from suicide). After 30 years 25% of the people diagnosed with schizophrenia completely recover, 35% are very improved, 15% are somewhat improves, 10% are unimproved, and 15% are dead (mostly from suicide). About 6% of the people with schizophrenia are homeless/live in a shelter, 6% are in jail, 5% live in hospitals, 10% live in nursing homes, 25% live with a family member, 28% live independently, and 20% live in supervised housing.