My first encounter of learning about schizophrenia was during the course of my undergraduate, abnormal psychology class. By reading the relevant chapters in my textbook and listening to my professor give his lecture, the symptoms and criteria needed to constitute a diagnosis of schizophrenia seemed very straightforward and easy to interpret. For example, if a person had delusions and/or hallucinations and expressed either inappropriately low or high emotionality, then it was automatically thought to be schizophrenia. As I learned about the symptoms and diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia, as determined by the DSM IV-R, I instilled a stereotypical profile or image of patients with schizophrenia in my mind. This is because many or almost all
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I am dwelling on chapter 12 because most of my ideas from earlier in my undergraduate career and from observing the media’s representation of schizophrenia is now leading to have many questions about schizophrenia. It has been researched that genetics do play a role in an individual’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. Also, some environmental risks that are stated from previous theories of schizophrenia include having a schizophrenogenic mother and exposure to toxins. I am starting to believe that genetics may be more powerful in determining the etiology of schizophrenia. For example, I remember that the Oprah show had a little girl named Jani Schofield in which they followed for a couple of days. Jani Schofield was just 6 years old and had a severe case of childhood schizophrenia. At one point when Oprah was interviewing Jani, Oprah asked Jani about a picture she drew, and Jani response was “That is cat 400 and he is my friend, but he is the bad friend and that her friends live in a place called Callani that is part of my world.” Her response did not make it believable that she is just going through an innocent phase of having imaginary friends, there seems to be something delusional about her responses and reactions throughout the
I am dwelling on chapter 12 because most of my ideas from earlier in my undergraduate career and from observing the media’s representation of schizophrenia is now leading to have many questions about schizophrenia. It has been researched that genetics do play a role in an individual’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. Also, some environmental risks that are stated from previous theories of schizophrenia include having a schizophrenogenic mother and exposure to toxins. I am starting to believe that genetics may be more powerful in determining the etiology of schizophrenia. For example, I remember that the Oprah show had a little girl named Jani Schofield in which they followed for a couple of days. Jani Schofield was just 6 years old and had a severe case of childhood schizophrenia. At one point when Oprah was interviewing Jani, Oprah asked Jani about a picture she drew, and Jani response was “That is cat 400 and he is my friend, but he is the bad friend and that her friends live in a place called Callani that is part of my world.” Her response did not make it believable that she is just going through an innocent phase of having imaginary friends, there seems to be something delusional about her responses and reactions throughout the