Schizophrenia Research Article Summary

Schizophrenia is a widely known mental disorder. As many as twenty four million people around the world have been diagnosed. While we are aware of causes and side effects to this disorder, not much research has been done pertaining to the effects that physical activity can have on someone with this disorder. According to Rastad (2014), people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia “die 12 to 15 years prematurely” (p. 1468). This can be attributed to the fact that very few people with schizophrenia are physically active. These researchers’ goal was to study the patients’ subjective experiences and attitudes toward physical activity. I chose this article because I did not know that there was a problem with these patients being active. This study …show more content…
Each of these categories can be broken down into subparts. Most of the results were to be expected, but a few took me by surprise. Some of the barriers that you would expect include not feeling well enough to participate in physical activity, not being motivated, fear of not gaining the expected results, and a lack of resources. I did not think that some of the patients would be content with inactivity, but that answer was recorded at least once. Rastad (2014) reports that “the participants in the study were aware of the positive health effects of exercise but were not aware of the benefits of reducing sedentary time” (p.1469). This may have been the reason that some of the patients were not physically active. One of the patients claimed that their barrier was that they were simply ‘too old’ to start being active. The rewarding experiences the patients gained were common among most people, so there were no real surprises. They reported an increase in confidence, feeling more alert, and having something to look forward to during the day. One thing I thought was interesting was that the researchers asked the patients for some helpful tips for the people who did not currently participate in any kind of physical activity. They were simple things such as finding a support group, choosing something they enjoy, planning for the activity, and mentally preparing themselves. All of these