SCHIZOPHRENIA

Schizophrenia is one of the most recognized disorders that dates back through history, it and also depression. It is one of the most serious and disabling of all of the brain disorders and the statistics are unbelievable. The most prominent statisitic is the one that says it affects one out of every hundred people, men and women. For those of us who have sat through classes or productions in which there are about a hundred people in them, that's a very scary thought, one of these people that I know could have this disorder.

The other statistic that I found on the Net, was that the American population of people with Schizophrenia, is the same number of people that live in Oregon, Kansas, or Mississippi. That's about 2.5 million people.

I could not believe that when I saw it, have you ever seen videos of a person with Schizophrenia?

DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU ARE PREDISPOSED,
YOU CAN TRIGGER THE DISORDER WITH
A HIT OF COCAINE?

I'm not even sure where to begin, I suppose with some basic symptomology. Lately we've been discussing the difference between negative and positive symptoms in this disorder. The are extremely different in both appearance and also in origin. It is thought that positive symptoms are caused by over activity in the brain and that the negative symptoms are caused by brain damage. The symptoms are:

POSITIVE SYMPTOMS NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS
  • disorganized thought
  • irrational thought
  • detatched language
  • hallucinations
  • delusions
  • flat facial affect
  • no experience of pleasure
  • social withdrawal

There have been many studies on whether or not Schizophrenia is heritable and so far the results are pretty staggering towards the fact that it is. They have found that monozygotic twins have a 4 times higher chance if inheriting it than does a dizygotic twin. Adoption studies have also shown that the concordance is the same as if it was only a sibling.

There are also many theories out on what causes Schizophrenia, some believe that ther is a certain spot on the chromosome that is responsible for it, others think it couls possibly be a virus that the mother had during a certain period of her pregnancy. The list continues on.

Even though the cause is not entirely determined, there are drug treatments available to reduce the symptoms; as it is with many disorders, the drugs come about mostly by accident. The first major one they tried was a antihistamine called Chlorpromazine, it had a calming effect on the patients. Also, those patients who had flat facial affect, became more alive and expressive. With these early drugs, there were many side effects, so untill recently, there wasn' t many things proven very effective. The popular drug now is Clozapine, it has less side effects and was even found to help a larger percentage of the Schizophrenic population.

This disorder has so many parts to it, that I could go on forever about all of the theories, and even all of the pathways involved in the brain. We spent about a week on it in class alone, so if you want more information I have a link at the bottom of the page I think would be extremely helpful.

One more thing though, I did a speech in my persuasion class recently, on the stigma that has been placed on the mentally ill in our society. That is an aspect that is most commonly ignored when we are thinking scientifically, so if you want to read up ona bit of that, threre is so muchinformation out there. There is one group called Oregon Alliance For the Mentally Ill (OAMI) and they are working wonders. They have formed groups of family and loved ones, of those who have been diagnosed with a brain disorders, and they have joined together to inform the public. Not about the scientific jargon out there but about the negative stereotyping that is going on.

IF YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED IN SOME MORE INFORMATION
ABOUT SCHIZOPHRENIA......

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT LINK!!!

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