Free «Schizophrenia» Essay Paper

Schizophrenia is a disease that is commonly known to affect both men and women equally. This is a serious disease that weakens the mind cells thus resulting in hallucinations, unplanned speech, lack of feelings as well as emotions and paranoia. In the late centuries, mostly up to the 19 century, schizophrenia cases were minimal and rarely heard of. The first cases to be reported about schizophrenia were described in the 1797 by James Tilly Mathews and later in 1809 by Phillipe Pinel. They both wrote about the disease and their works were published in the medical and psychiatric literature.

In 1853, Benedict Morel described the disease as a disorder that affected young adults and youth. In 1891, Arnold Pick termed schizophrenia as dementia praecox while reporting about the disease in a psychotic disorder report. Later in 1893, Emil Kraepelin helped people understand the difference between dementia praecox and mood swings. He proved that dementia praecox was a disease that mostly affected the brain.

 

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The Greek word “schizophrenia” means “a condition where the mind splits”. The word was coined by Eugen Bleurer in the late 1908. According to Bleurer, the main symptoms of the disease were autism, low memory and indifference to surroundings. He realized that the disease did not deserve to be classified and termed as dementia as many of the patients recovered soon and their condition improved.  Treatment for patients with schizophrenia was invented in the late 1950s, just after chlorpromazine had been introduced.    

Discussion

Schizophrenia, also known as the tearing down of one’s personality, is a disease that has no main cause. It is said to be brought about by genetic materials passed from one person to another. However, environmental factors, development factors and substance abuse, contribute to the percentage rates of schizophrenia in different people, as well.

This disease is said to affect men in one and a half times more than women. Results of the statistics research that were taken in USA show that schizophrenia has affected one percent of the two million populations. It is a psychotic mental problem. The complications brought across by schizophrenia are known as psychosis.

Causes

Environmental Conditions

The living environment of schizophrenia patients can either increase or decrease the degree of their condition. Hostile parents who have children affected by the disease can make their condition to move from better to worse, while the condition of patients with supportive parents improved. Beating or shouting may make such patients become hostile and depressed, ending up to committing suicide.  The percentage of kids affected by schizophrenia has been proved to be higher among the children who are born and brought up in urban areas than those living in rural areas. Other environmental conditions that increase the rate of schizophrenia are discrimination against ones race, poor housing conditions, family problems like arguments and fightings. All these factors can affect the kids, as well.                                  

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Genetic

The risk for the families where the first and closest related cousin has suffered from schizophrenia is high. Genes like histone protein loci and notch4 are commonly transmitted from one person to another during fetus formation in the womb. People from the same family, with a person who is suffering from schizophrenia, are at a higher risk of contracting the disease compared to twins from an affected mother.

Substance Abuse

Use of some drugs like cocaine or cannabis has greatly affected and increased the rate of schizophrenia spreading. The results of the research, performed in the United States of America, proved that half of the number of the patients affected by the disease use alcohol and other drug substances at large excessively. Most of them use these substances to muddle through depression and loneliness. Patients who have taken the idea of using substance so as to reduce their stress could be helped by taking them to rehab centers, where the doctors will administer the right medication for them.

Development Factors

These factors include hypoxia, the process of fetus development in a mother as well as depression. These development processes may result in a higher risk of contracting schizophrenia later, in few years. In the USA patients who suffer from schizophrenia are mostly born in the spring or winter season. This is a result of contracting infections, mostly viral, which occur in the uterus of mothers during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy (Smith, 58). There is not enough sunlight in winter for producing vitamin D. As a result, the child developing in the mother’s womb may lack the vitamin which is necessary during the brain formation.       This problem can be solved by a couple in two ways – by controlling their reproductive rate during winter seasons, or by using vitamin D before the pregnancy and during it.

Types of Schizophrenia

According to the information given above, the degree of schizophrenia in different persons is determined by the genetic materials, the environmental conditions, development factors and substance abuse. The following factors can lower or rises the degree of the disease percentage. Thus, schizophrenia is classified into five types:

Paranoid schizophrenia. This is a type of schizophrenia that is characterized by the tendency to suffer from hallucinations. Sick person is convinced that other people do not love him/her. Such person believes that everybody has bad intentions.. As a result, ill human becomes violent and fights with innocent people.  

Disorganized schizophrenia The patients with this type of the disease mostly suffer from inappropriate vocalizations. They tend to stammer and sometimes one cannot understand what they want to say.

Catatonic schizophrenia. Patients who suffer from this type of schixophrenia are well known to have a tendency of moving from one place to another. They suffer from repetition of words. There are those who do not like moving from the initial place.  For example, they may sit and stare at one place for a long time without taking their eyes away from some area.

Undifferentiated schizophrenia. This disease cannot be characterized by any specific symptoms. The symptoms can be combined. For example, hallucinations and unsystematic speech, or figment of the imaginations and catatonic symptoms. Generally, people who suffer from this disease cannot concentrate on one topic.  The patients from this group cannot be treated in the same way as those who suffer from the other type of schizophrenia.

Residual schizophrenia. The mental illness in patients does not progress.  The symptoms can be easily identified. The patient may have a psychotic episode. The main treatments commonly used for schizophrenia are, antipsychotic medication, social rehabilitation and psychotherapy (Kneisl, 57). The most affected patients are taken to hospitals where they spend some time, while the doctors administer the appropriate treatment for them. Antipsychotic medication plays a big role in the reduction of dopamine and serotonin.

In conclusion, one can affirm that schizophrenia is a hereditary disease. The highest percentage of those suffering from the disease comes from one family or from people related by blood. Schizophrenia patients are supposed to be handled with a lot of care. When they are well catered for, their condition can change from worse to better. The only major way that one can prevent himself/herself from the disease is by keeping of from drug substance abuse and do not forget to use vitamin D.