Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a cruel disease. The lives of those affected are often chronicles of constricted experiences, muted emotions, missed opportunities, unfulfilled expectations. It leads to a twilight existence, a twentieth-century underground man. The fact is, that it is the single biggest stain on the face of present-day American medicine and social services; when the social history of our time is written, the dilemma of persons with schizophrenia will be recorded as having been a national scandal.

“Schizophrenia is a neurological brain disorder that affects 2.2 million Americans today, or approximately one percent of the population. Schizophrenia can affect anyone at any age, but most cases develop between ages 16 and 30 (Treatment Advocacy Center, 2007).The brain functions of healthy people, are done such a way that incoming stimuli are sorted and interpreted, followed by a logical response. On the other hand, the inability of patients with schizophrenia to sort and interpret stimuli and select appropriate responses is one of the hallmarks of the disease.

“Overt Symptoms, or "psychotic" symptoms, include delusions, hallucinations and disorganized thinking because the patient has lost touch with reality in certain important ways. Delusions cause the patient to believe that people are reading their minds or plotting against them, that others are secretly monitoring and threatening them, or that they can control other people’s thoughts. Hallucinations cause people to hear or see things that are not there. Approximately three-fourths of individuals with schizophrenia will hear voices at some time during their illness. Disorganized thinking, speech, and behavior affect most people with this illness”(Treatment Advocacy Center, 2007 ). For instance, people with schizophrenia sometimes have trouble communicating in coherent sentences or carrying on conversations with others; move more slowly, repeat rhythmic gestures or make movements such as walking in circles or pacing; and have difficulty making sense of everyday sights, sounds and feelings.

Negative Symptoms include emotional flatness or lack of expression, an inability to start and follow through with activities, speech that is brief and lacks content, and a lack of pleasure or interest in life. "Negative" does not, therefore, refer to a person’s attitude, but to a lack of certain characteristics that should be there.

There is no known single cause of schizophrenia. Many diseases, such as heart disease, result from an interplay of genetic, behavioral, and other factors; and this may be the case for schizophrenia as well. Scientists do not yet understand all of the factors necessary to produce schizophrenia, but all the tools of modern biomedical research are being used to search for genes, critical moments in brain development, and other factors that may lead to the illness.

Scientists are studying genetic factors in schizophrenia. It appears likely that multiple genes are involved in creating a predisposition to develop the disorder. In addition, factors such as prenatal difficulties like intrauterine starvation or viral infections, prenatal complications, and various nonspecific stressors, seem to influence the development of schizophrenia. Although, it is not yet understood how the genetic predisposition is transmitted, and it cannot yet be accurately predicted whether a given person will or will not develop the disorder. It has long been known that schizophrenia runs in families. People who have a close relative with schizophrenia are more likely to develop the disorder than are people who have no relatives with the illness. Basic knowledge about brain chemistry and its link to schizophrenia