Symptoms And Treatment Of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia normally “begins in late adolescence to early adulthood and is lifelong” (Keefe). This mental disorder, schizophrenia, affects the mind and brain of anyone who suffers from it. Schizophrenia has many different variations in terms of how it affects people, how severe their symptoms are, and how they cope with them. Schizophrenia can not be cured, however there are many different types of treatments available to people who are living with this disease. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, which can be caused by environmental, genetic, and structural factors, with symptoms that include: hallucinations, delusions, lack of pleasure in everyday activities which includes lack of being vocal, poor executive functioning, and poor working …show more content…
It is a distortion of how a person thinks, acts, relates with others and how they see reality. Symptoms for schizophrenia “will usually appear between the ages 13 and 25, but often appear earlier in males than females” (MHA). There’s two types of symptoms for schizophrenia which are positive and negative symptoms (Feldman 475). Positive symptoms are the “psychotic behaviors not seen in healthy people [and] … often “lose touch” with reality” (NIMH), and negative symptoms “are capabilities that are “lost” from the person’s personality” (MHA). The positive symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorder (NIMH). Hallucinations can either be visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences (Hollister). Auditory and visual are the most common hallucinations for schizophrenia. Negative symptoms includes “the flat affect”, social withdrawal, extreme apathy, and lack of drive (MHA). The “flat affect” is “a blank, blunted facial expression or less lively facial movements, flat voice (lack of normal intonations and variance) or physical movements” (Hollister). …show more content…
The mental disease is incurable and only “affects about 1% of the world population”