Schizophrenia Information: An Overview

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder in which the person suffering from it can experience delusions, disturbances of thinking, hallucinations and disorganised behaviour.

A diagnosis of schizophrenia is serious, and there is stigma attached to schizophrenia, as there is with all mental illness. This stigma can be overcome by people learning about the illlness, and other ways that will be detailed later on in this article.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

A delusion is a false belief held with absolute certainty by a person, even if there is evidence disproving it.

Delusion of Reference
This is when things seem to be related directly to the person, but in reality they are not. For example, a person with schizophrenia may believe that special personal messages are being sent to them through the television or radio, or they may believe that a song was written about them, even if it was written before they were born.

Delusions of Grandeur
Is a belief held by the person that they have powers or abilities, or are very special. For example, a person may believe that they are a rock star, can fly, can cure cancer, or is the President.

Delusion of Persecution
This is the belief that others are out to "get them". The person may believe that they are being spied on, followed or tricked by others. For example, a person may believe that the government is spying on them, or that they have tracking devices hidden underneath their skin and somebody is watching them. Delusions of persecution are the most common delusion in people suffering from schizophrenia.

Delusions of Control
A belief that one is being controlled by an external force. Delusions could include the belief that someone is controlling their behaviour, or that thoughts are being placed into their mind from an outside source against their will (thought insertion), or that their thoughts can be heard by others (thought broadcasting).

The speech of a person with schizophrenia can be disorganised, which reflects the fragmentation of their thinking at the time. The disorganised speech can fall into any of a number of categories: neologisms, derailment, clang and perseveration.

Neologisms are made up words or phrases that only have significance to the creator. For example: "I'm going to have relywinin for dinner."

Derailment is conversation that rapidly changes topic, with little or no association between the topics. For example: "The queue was so long at McDonald's. I waited for half an hour for my ice cream. Do you think that the meaning of Christmas has been lost because it's become too commercialised?"

Clang is speech made up of rhyming words that have little or no meaning in the context they are being used. For example: "The dog is a frog on a log in a bog fog smog soggy chips."

Perseveration is speech that has repetition of words or phrases. For example: "I love eating fish and chips and fish and chips and fish and chips."

A person with schizophrenia may have disorganised or catatonic behaviour.

Disorganised behaviour can include:

• being unable to make meals for themselves
• being unable to look after their personal hygiene, for example showering and brushing their teeth
• dressing unusually (for example, wearing few clothes on a cold day, or jumpers and beanies and gloves on a hot day, or wearing multiple pairs of sunglasses)
• behaving in inappropriate ways in public, such as public urination

Catatonic behaviour can range from frenzied, agitated behaviour to complete stillness.

Hallucinations are experiences involving the perception of something that is not present. They can be related to any of the five senses: sight, smell, touch, hearing or taste. The most common hallucination among people with schizophrenia are auditory hallucinations- that is, that they hear things that nobody else can.

Auditory hallucinations can range from whispering to yelling, and the frequency varies too. The occurrences could be every few months, or every single day.

The voice can be male or female and with an accent or with no accent. Sometimes the voice is that of someone who they know in real life, such as a parent, sibling, neighbour, enemy or friend. It can also be the voice of a celebrity such as Elvis Presley or a movie character.

Most schizophrenia patients who reported hearing voices said that the voices were unfriendly. Most of the voices fall into one of two categories.

Critical Hallucinations are hallucinations that say negative things to the person, such as "You're so stupid," or "Look how ugly you are".

Command Hallucinations are hallucinations that orders, or forces, a person to perform certain actions. For example, the voice might tell them to kick the wall, or to feel unwell, or to scream.

A person experiencing an auditory hallucination will often appear distracted, because they are paying attention to the voice they can hear. They might also reply to the voice out loud, so they may be seen talking to themselves.

Anti-psychotic medications are drugs that work by blocking dopamine activity, reducing the effect that dopamine has on the brain. This treats the symptoms of psychosis, such as confused thinking, delusions, paranoia and hallucinations.

It is unclear exactly what role dopamine has in schizophrenia, but it is seen as very likely it has a role for two reasons:

1. Drugs such as amphetamines (speed) and cocaine enhance dopamine activity in the brain, and use of these drugs can result in symptoms of schizophrenia, even when the user doesn't have schizophrenia. (For some people, especially those with a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, use of drugs can trigger schizophrenia, leading to a lifelong battle with a psychotic illness.)
2. Anti-psychotic medications, such as Risperdal, block dopamine activity which reduces psychotic symptoms.

New anti-psychotic medications such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Clorazil and Seroquel have advantages over older anti-psychotic medications, because they have fewer side effects.

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness, and as a result there is a lot of social stigma. Stigma can result in a person with schizophrenia being discriminated against, feared and avoided. Strategies for dealing with stigma include protest and education.

Protest tries to change negative attitudes and stereotypes by doing things such as monitoring internet media and published media for inaccurate or offensive articles, and protesting against them.

Education tries to remove stigma by supplying the community with accurate information about an illness or disease so that the person can tell the difference between the negative stereotypes and the actual disease.