BLOG POST 13: The SCHIZOPHRENIA (Part 01)

SCHIZOPHRENIA is considered a serious form of psychosis. Symptoms of SCHIZOPHRENIA are generally found in people with sceptical, deranged, destructive, antisocial behavioural pattern. 

SCHIZOPHRENIA generally occurs between the age of 15 to 65. But the reason can also be due to heredity or some bitter family or social experiences from childhood.Some patients of SCHIZOPHRENIC are of SCHIZOID nature. They like to stay away from feelings of love, affection, belongingness and faith. A person experiencing social neglect, disregard, disdain, rejection or excessive anger or such kind of treatment from family since childhood can develop a SCHIZOD nature. They develop the same attitude or mentality of dealing with people when they grow up. They also preferably keep a distance with people so that they don’t have to face the neglect and disregard from others. They think if they themselves don’t establish a contact, then they won’t face any disappointment in the relationships. But they don’t realise that the generalisation which they carry in their mind set, deprives them from the love and belonging of good people in the society.

There are four main types of SCHIZOPHRENIA:

1) SIMPLE SCHIZOPHRENIA: This slow downs the willpower and enthusiasm in people.
 
2) HEBEPHRANIC OR DISORGANIZED SCHIZOPHRENIA: Such patients fall into the category of so called MENTAL PEOPLE created by society. These patients are found engrossed in themselves, talking to themselves often with noticeable hand gestures.
 
3) CATATONIC SCHIZOPHRENIA:In this symptom the physical movement becomes bizarre and deranged. Patients feel uneasy and slow down their movements. Its acute state or symptom is called STUPOR. In this phase, the patient's body stiffens just like a mannequin without any movement. They even give up speaking, eating and drinking too. This condition seems terrible. With ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) the patient’s stiff body is loosened and then the patient starts living a normal life. The symptoms of these attacks are same as that in MANIA or BIPOLAR DIOSRDER. They can occur within a time span of months or years. But the patient leads a perfectly normal life in between the spans of these attacks. Also frequent tremors can be controlled by medication.
 
4) PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA:This results in developing a suspicious mind set, clinically known as DELUSION. In this phase, the patient suspects people around them (colleagues or family), talking about or conspiring about them. Patients also consider themselves as very important and self obsessed. They start hearing unknown voices. In psychology, it is termed as  AUDITORY HALLUCINATION. Patients can even step up to suicide to get rid of these voices if the situation gets worse.

Just as a SCHIZOPHRENIC patient experience  AUDITORY HALLUCINATION, he/she may also experience HALLUCINATIONS in visual form. VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS are just like a dream. When any person thinks obsessively about a thing, a person or an event, a sort of photo copy gets registered in his/her subconscious mind. When in sleep the same image stored in the subconscious mind becomes visible in the form of dream.The dream can be a pleasant one or scary, depending upon the experience of the person related to the thing, person or event associated with it. But when the person starts seeing the images in clear awake state it is called VISUAL HALLUCINATION. As only the person associated with the event, person or thing can see the image in his dreams while in sleep, similarly only that person experiences the VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS of the respective incident.

 

Distortion of thoughts, feelings and will power is the the common main symptom in all these 4 types. So it becomes a little difficult to differentiate and conclude among these types. Innumerable sensations are active all around us all the time. According to the research, human brain has a natural tendency of filtering the unwanted sensations and respond naturally to the appropriate sensations. When this filtering process worsens, person becomes a victim of SCHIZOPHRENIA. SCHIZOPHRENIC patient's anger, suspicion or lazy behaviour is not intentional. But relatives, friends, family members misunderstand their behaviour as an intentional one. Having a suppressed mind set on one hand and the misunderstood behaviour of the loved ones on the other can make the condition of the SCHIZOPHRENIC patients worse.
 

A person's sensory organs (ears, nose, eyes, skin) always keeps him/her aware of the movement of things around them. But the person doesn’t loose his focus on the main work which he is doing. These are the symptoms of healthy mental state of human being. For example, if a person is reading a book, he hears the sound of his room's ceiling fan rotating, feel the air, hear the noise of the people chatting around him. But it doesn’t distract him/her from reading the book. Even if the focus on reading goes astray for some time, the sense of surrounding sounds and the feel are blurred automatically. This does not distract them from their main activity of reading the book. When these external sounds and sensations become more potent and hyper active, person becomes a victim of SCHIZOPHRENIA. Therefore, that patient is unable to pay attention on his main activity and gets upset with these disturbing sensations and sounds.

 

The mental state of SCHIZOPHRENIA can be a cause of distortions in personal, social as well as professional relationships. The patient stays away from his own family and friends. They are unable to trust anyone due to the doubt and the fear developed regarding the intention of the people around. Signs of DE-REALISATION & DE-PERSONALISATION become prominent. In this phase, they develop a feeling of unfamiliarity even with their own people as well as the surrounding environment. For example, after consuming two pegs of alcohol, the mind starts wandering, it feels like the friends who are nearby, their speech, their voice is being heard from a distance. SCHIZOPHRENIC patients experience this feeling continuously. A kind of imaginary world develops around them.

Research says that there is 01% evidence that a healthy person can have SCHIZOPHRENIA. Chances of developing this disorder in children of a SCHIZOHRENIC patient may increases by 2-3%. If both parents are SCHIZOPHRENIC, then the chances of this psychosis getting developed in children increases by 30–40%. Many times SCHIZOPHRENIA can be found in more than one person in the same family. If one of the two twins is suffering from SCHIZOPHRENIA, then the other one is also likely to have 30–60% mental illness even if he / she is brought up in a different family or in a different environment.

 01 out of every 100 human beings can have SCHIZOPHRENIA of lesser or higher intensity. Yet people are not at all aware about SCHIZOPHRENIA.
 
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 Keep reading  to gain information and awareness regarding SPLIT PERSONALITY or MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER in HEBEPHRANIC type of SCHIZOPHRENIA in the next blog titled The SCHIZOPHRENIA (Part 02). Till then stay safe and healthy, MENTALLY & PHYSICALLY.😊

- (KD Blogs)

✍© Kunal Deshpande.