VERIFIED CONTENTAuthor: lek. Tomasz Nęcki

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that most often begins in young adulthood. Schizophrenia is commonly associated with hallucinations and delusions, however, in its course, there may also be numerous other problems, such as indifference, eccentricity or impaired speech. What are the symptoms of schizophrenia? What are the treatment options for this disease and the prognosis of patients with schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia - what is it?

Schizophrenia , among many various diseases and mental disorders, is considered to be the most severe and serious entity.

Such a belief did not come out of nowhere -schizophreniacan significantly hinder the functioning of a person suffering from it, and besides, various difficulties in the treatment of schizophrenia are often encountered.

This disease is classified as a psychotic disorder, i.e. those in which the patient's perception of reality is significantly distorted. The termschizophreniacomes from Greek -schizismeans "to split" and the wordphrentranslates as "mind".

This chronic mental illness usually begins between the ages of 15 and 45, but the onset of schizophrenia may also occur in an elderly patient and even in children (schizophrenia in children is a rare phenomenon, however, it is possible - even a few-year-olds can get sick).

According to statisticsschizophreniaoccurs in about 1% of the human population. The frequency of an individual depending on gender is estimated differently - according to some studies, men and women suffer from schizophrenia with the same frequency, while according to others, it occurs more often in male representatives.

One aspect is assessed similarly in various studies - it is noticeable that in menschizophreniausually begins at an earlier age.

Schizophrenia - causes. Is schizophrenia hereditary?

Due to the severity of schizophrenia and the problems associated with the disease, many researchers have been interested in the causes of schizophrenia. One particular causal factor that leads to this disease has not been achieved so farfind.

Currently, it is recognized thatschizophreniais multifactorial - most likely, the incidence of this disease is influenced, among others, by genes, events that occur during intrauterine life, as well as environmental factors influencing the human psyche.

Possible causes of schizophrenia:

  • Genetic disorders have attracted the attention of schizophrenia researchers because it has been noticed that the risk of developing schizophrenia is increased in those people whose families have already suffered from this mental illness. This risk varies depending on the degree of relationship, for example in the case of monozygotic twins (having the same genetic material), when one of them suffers from schizophrenia, the other is at a risk of up to 50% of the same disease. Currently, the topicof inheriting schizophreniais becoming more and more popular - scientists have already managed to discover certain genes and mutations that may favor the emergence of this disease.
  • Other factors that may potentially be involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia include problems related to the course of pregnancy and childbirth (such as, for example, infections occurring in the mother during pregnancy or complications of childbirth, leading e.g. to cerebral hypoxia ).
  • It is also noted that numerous environmental factors may be conducive to the occurrence of schizophrenia (in this case, the particular risk concerns people predisposed to schizophrenia, e.g. due to the family burden on this individual). Examples of such factors include the use of psychoactive substances, but also growing up in a dysfunctional family, experiencing social isolation or persecution by other people.
  • The above-described phenomena are indeed treated as possible causes of schizophrenia, however, researchers also focused on other aspects - they were interested, for example, in why patients experience, for example, psychotic disorders or negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
  • Currently, the most attention is drawn to the disturbances in the number of neurotransmitters in the nervous system - the focus is primarily on dopamine. It turns out that in the course of schizophrenia, dopaminergic hyperactivity may occur in some regions of the brain, while dopamine deficiencies may appear in others. This theory may be justified by the fact that the preparations used in the treatment of schizophrenia primarily affect dopamine and its receptors in the nervous system.

70 percent people suffering from schizophreniain Poland, it does not follow the doctor's recommendations

Source: Biznes.newseria.pl

Important

One in 100 people worldwide has schizophrenia.

This disease can happen to any of us.

Schizophreniastarts most often in adolescence, but can also attack in old age and middle age. There is also childhood schizophrenia.

Environmental factors can act as triggers, i.e. they contribute to the disclosure of schizophrenia.

It is true that we do not fully know its causes.

Schizophrenia - symptoms

Schizophreniamay develop fairly quickly and the patient may have varioussymptoms of schizophreniaearly on, but it is possible that the disease will progress slowly and various disorders will appear gradually.

There is even a notion of the so-called a prepsychotic state, i.e. a state in which symptoms appear to be of low intensity (sometimes referred to as the initial symptoms of schizophrenia) and which precedes the development of a full-blown psychosis.

The symptoms of schizophrenia can be varied. The simplest division takes into account:

  1. positive (productive) symptoms
  2. negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are ailments that are not experienced by people with a properly functioning psyche. These include various hallucinations (e.g. visual or auditory in the form of hearing different voices) and delusions.

Inconsistent with reality beliefs in the form of delusions have a variety of topics - in the course of schizophrenia, there may be both persecutory delusions and delusions of possession, incurring thoughts or sexual delusions, as well as other types of delusions.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia are associated with - often to a significant degree - impaired functioning. This group ofsymptoms of schizophreniaincludes:

  • avolition
  • abulia
  • apathy
  • anhedonia
  • speech impoverishment
  • slow motion
  • reduced self-care

Schizophrenia - the course of the disease

The symptoms described above should indicate that schizophrenia is associated with a large number of problems.

The listed ones, however, do not yet constitute all possible symptoms of schizophrenia - patients may also develop in the course of the disease:

  • cognitive impairment (e.g. deterioration in concentration and memory or attention disorders)
  • affect disorders (e.g. in the form of blunting affect)
  • isolating yourself fromother people, communication problems with other people
  • psychomotor disorders (e.g. catatonia).

Schizophrenia - types

The course of the disease is not the same in every patient with schizophrenia. In one patient, positive symptoms of schizophrenia may dominate, in another, defect symptoms of this disease may prevail.

This is why there is a division into different types of schizophrenia. It is distinguished by, among others :

  • paranoid schizophrenia , in which the main complaints are delusions and hallucinations
  • residual schizophreniadominated by negative symptoms and bizarre behavior of the patient, and the productive symptoms are absent or only mild
  • catatonic schizophrenia
  • hebephrenic schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia - recognition

Schizophrenia is diagnosed on the basis of a thorough psychiatric examination.

Unfortunately, there are no blood tests or imaging tests that would allow the diagnosis of the disease - however, psychiatrists have special scales and questionnaires, which are sometimes commonly referred to as the "schizophrenia test".

It is worth noting that the time criterion is important in the diagnosis of schizophrenia - in order to be able to recognize this individual, positive or negative symptoms of schizophrenia should persist for at least a month.

A patient with suspected schizophrenia may be subjected to various tests and examinations - their performance is justified by the fact that it is necessary to exclude other potential causes of the patient's symptoms.

Schizophrenia should be differentiated, among others, with:

  • states after taking psychoactive substances
  • schizoaffective disorder
  • bipolar disorder
  • borderline personality disorder
  • various metabolic disorders
  • multiple sclerosis
  • dementia
  • CNS syphilis
  • cancers of the central nervous system

Schizophrenia - treatment

Is schizophrenia curable? The treatment of schizophrenia is quite a complex aspect. The mainstay of therapy is pharmacotherapy - the main drugs used in the course of schizophrenia are antipsychotics (neuroleptics).

These measures, however, primarily affect the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, which is why there is a need to implement other therapeutic interventions in patients, such as psychotherapy orpsychoeducation.

Patients with schizophrenia require chronic treatment.

The therapy is conducted mainly on an outpatient basis, but sometimes hospitalization is necessary - especially in the case of new diagnoses of the disease in a situation where the patient's psychotic symptoms are of high intensity.

In addition to the already mentioned methods of treating schizophrenia, sometimes other possibilities are also used - an example of them is electroconvulsive therapy, used in some patients with an extremely severe course of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia - prognosis

The estimates of people with schizophrenia who receive treatment vary.

It is generally accepted that in approximately one third of patients, therapy manages to achieve an appropriate degree of improvement that allows patients to function at least as close to normal as possible.

In the next 1/3 of patients, improvement is noted, but it is not fully satisfactory. According to statistics, in the last part of all treated patients with schizophrenia, it is not possible to improve their clinical condition.

Early treatment implementation in patients with schizophrenia is very important not only because the disease worsens the functioning of patients.

It should be emphasized that schizophrenia increases the risk of committing suicide - according to some studies, the risk for patients with schizophrenia is as high as 10%.

It is also scary that schizophrenia may lead to a significant - up to 10 and sometimes even 25 years - shortening the life expectancy of patients.

Category:

Psychiatry