Everything you need to know about Schizophrenia: According to statistics, the incidence of mental disorders is 0.5-1 percent . In cities with a lot of people, 30 thousand have schizophrenia. In men, the disease starts 2 years earlier than in women. Both sexes can get the disease, but men get it more quickly than women. Usually, schizophrenia starts at a young age, between the ages of 15 and 30. Every 10th person who has a mental illness kills themselves.
When did people start hearing about the disease? It was around in the XVII century. B.C. Signs of schizophrenia are described on the papyrus called “Book of Hearts.” Later, Avicenna wrote about the symptoms of the disease. He called the mental disorder “severe insanity,” and the doctor said it was different from other types of “madness,” like mania, bipolar disorder, and rabies, which are all “mad.” So, here in this article, we will tell you everything you need to know about schizophrenia.
Causes of schizophrenia disease: Everything you need to know about schizophrenia!
People in a lot of different fields are trying to figure out what causes schizophrenia, but there is still no consensus on what causes it. There are a lot of different ideas about what causes mental disorders that aren’t clear or even contradictory. Each of the following is a way to study this mental illness:
- Biological.
- Cognitive.
- Psychoanalytic.
- and other ways.
There are several theories of disease development– Everything you need to know about schizophrenia!
1. Dopamine hypothesis
The dopamine hypothesis was proposed for the first time in the 1960s. There are more signs of mental illness in people who have a high dopamine level, she says. In addition, people with schizophrenia have a lot more activity in their brain’s dopamine system and are more sensitive to dopaminergic receptors.
In healthy people, dopamine stimulates the nervous system, and when it is too much in the body, it causes hyperstimulation of brain neurons, which are overexcited and send a large number of signals. People who have schizophrenia have a lot of dopamine in their blood, and it has been shown that this is true.
Because of the dopamine hypothesis, people who have mental disorders get drugs that make dopamine receptors less active, which lowers the number of neurotransmitters in the body.
2. Serotonin hypothesis
According to the serotonin hypothesis, the disease is caused by a lack of serotonin neurotransmission. People who have an excessive number of serotonin receptors (5-HT) cause the serotonin system in the brain to become depleted. Theory: Antipsychotics that stop the transmission of dopamine and serotonin began to be used in schizophrenia because of this theory.
3. Dysontogenic theory
Most people are now interested in the Dysontogenic theory, which has been around for the last 20 years. Also, it’s called the theory of brain growth disorders. It is based on a lot of research that shows that people with schizophrenia have structural changes in their brains.
A computed tomography scan showed that these structural problems in the brain aren’t very big, but only affect cells and subcells. At the same time, pathological changes aren’t moving forward at all. People who have these changes in their brains don’t have a disease, they just have a higher chance of getting schizophrenia. Stress, in addition to bad things can worsen these structural problems in the brain, which results a person to have a mental disorder.
There are a lot of different things that can cause this damage, like infections, toxic substances, and genetic mutations. Pathological changes can be seen at 5-8 months of pregnancy, when parts of the foetal brain start to form.
Symptoms and signs of schizophrenia
Positive and negative symptoms can be found in the disease. When a person is sick, they have a lot of symptoms that go away in their minds. These include emotional decline, indifference, and lack of will.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia disease
These symptoms cause in a person with an overdose of dopamine. It also causes hyperstimulation of nerve endings when they happen. A positive symptom has the following symptoms:
- Hallucinations.
- the emergence of delusional thoughts.
- obsession with ideas.
- brain disorders, confusion in conversation.
- involuntary movement.
Negative signs of schizophrenia disease
Symptoms that have a negative meaning have a structural and functional relationship with each other. They are also termed as “deficient” or in other way “defective.” This is because reaction to things & actions doesn’t occurs in their minds. Negative symptoms are characterized by:
- Emotional imbalance.
- Sociophobia, self-isolation.
- Disorder of will.
- Drift syndrome.
Schizophrenia can be treated- Everything you need to know about schizophrenia!
Therapy’s main goal is to keep the disease at bay for a long time. Every effort should be made to keep mental illness symptoms from getting worse as soon as possible.
How can you help a person who has schizophrenia
In order to take care of people who have schizophrenia, they should also have social workers and family and friends help them. It is important to keep an eye on illnesses and treat them as soon as possible. At the first signs of worsening, the patient should be taken to a psychiatric hospital, which will help them avoid long-term psychosis and avoid problems. People who get enough inpatient treatment on time will have stable and long-term remission.
People who stay in the hospital for a long time become isolated and don’t get enough social stimulation because they don’t get to talk to people. Following a hospital stay, you need to start psycho-social therapy and get help from your family and friends. It is very important when the patient is getting better, because it stops mental disorders from getting worse. The success of social therapy is dependent on the patient’s family. In psychotherapy, you can get help with a lot of different things.
- Using art and creativity to help people with mental illnesses.
- occupational therapy;
- Learning how to think.
The goal is to teach the patient new ways to process information. Man learns how to properly think about everything that happens to him. During cognitive training, work is done that helps patients pay more attention and think more clearly. The doctor looks at the signs and sees where the distortion can be seen. To show you how this works, say that a person hears voices telling him to pass something. In fact, the person thinks about passing something (like a book or a ticket).
As a result, the patient thinks that other people can read his mind and has a compulsion to be punished. People who have family therapy are more likely to be able to get along with people. Its goal is to help the mentally ill and his family learn new skills. Social therapy looks at how people interact with each other and how relatives interact with each other.
So, In this post, here’s everything you need to know about schizophrenia. Comment below if you know something more!
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