Causes And Treatments Of Schizophrenia Essay Research

Causes And Treatments Of Schizophrenia Essay, Research Paper

Does one ever think they hear voices fighting for control of their mind or telling them what to do. Does one hallucinate constantly or feel that people are following them and trying to kill them. If an individual matches this description, they might be a prime candidate for schizophrenic treatment. Schizophrenia, a devastating brain disease, has torn apart the lives of many with its unrevealed causes leaving few known treatments and no cures.

Schizophrenia is a major mental disorder typically characterized by a separation between the thought processes and the emotions (Hawkins). Nonetheless, trying to define schizophrenia is like trying to hit a moving target. New research is discovered constantly supplying new methods for treating and understanding this mental disorder a bit better. This disorder can distort reality and provide delusions as well as hallucinations. Schizophrenia is a brain disease, meaning that there should be a way to cure it, however, that cure has not been found yet (Winerip 28).

Schizophrenia affects one percent of the adult population and signs of it usually emerge in the late teens to the middle twenties (Winerip 28). It is uncommon to obtain schizophrenia after the age of thirty, but it is even more rare to acquire schizophrenia after the age of forty. Since it is so unusual to obtain schizophrenia in the later years, it is believed that schizophrenia in older individuals is a different disease all together. The age of onset for men with this disorder is earlier than that of women. This evidence would provide that there are more males as opposed to females with schizophrenia (Torrey 63).

Schizophrenia often causes its victims to hear voices and to hallucinate which is usually the final factor in making schizophrenics go insane in the end (Bowler 208). The chief symptom of schizophrenia is the delusions, or what is called by the medical term “negative syndrome” (Schizophrenia). The earliest stages of schizophrenia are hard to spot due to people believing that these symptoms are just the natural over exaggerations of teenagers. Then these early symptoms lead into the overacuteness of the senses. However, this symptom is also quite hard to see. Other major symptoms of schizophrenia include the following: moodiness, withdrawal, apathy, loss of interest in one’s personal appearance, perplexity, the belief that people are watching one, preoccupation with one’s body, and vagueness in thoughts (Torrey 64). Nevertheless, these are all characteristic of teenagers at certain periods of their life.

Schizophrenia is treated with medications controlling excess brain chemicals which are called neurotransmitters. These medications are used since scientists and psychologists have found that schizophrenia is a mental disorder affecting the brain (Winerip 28). Schizophrenia has four major subdivisions providing a variety of medications and treatments. The four major subdivisions of schizophrenia are as follows: simple or undifferentiated, hebephrenic or disorganized, catatonic, and paranoid. Little is truly conclusive about schizophrenia, but research for this disease is an ongoing process (Schizophrenia).

There are many theories on how schizophrenia can develop, but few are conclusive. One conclusive cause of schizophrenia is the early life situation. This condition can develop at any time in the early years of a human. Scientists say that schizophrenia can develop as early as while a fetus is still growing in the uterus. A statistic shows that most schizophrenics born in the Northern Hemisphere, are born in the late winter and early spring. Scientists and psychologists believe that there must be a recurring factor in the conception, pregnancy, or birth of the child in order for them to be a schizophrenic at an early age. Still, there is no tangible evidence to support this theory. The parents of the early schizophrenics usually were shy, introverted, and unable to relate to other people when they were young which lead the children to not have a normal childhood; most schizophrenics have antecedents of their disease in their early childhood. Persons with early schizophrenia have an excessive number of unusual fingerprints which happens when infants catch infectious diseases like rubella and cytomegalovirus. During the birth of early schizophrenics, the infants seem to have many more complications, as well as usually being at an inferior weight when compared to their siblings (Torrey 81).

A prime example of an early schizophrenic is Rhoda Torrey, sister of the father of schizophrenic research E. Fuller Torrey. E. Fuller Torrey came home one day to find his sister acting quite delusional. E. Fuller Torrey says, “She was lying out in the front yard yelling, ‘The British are coming.’ Actually, what was coming was schizophrenia.” (Winerip 28). E. Fuller Torrey believes that the sudden death of their father at a young age caused his sister to go into mental shock. After all, she was, before this tragic event, an attractive high school senior with decent grades. It seemed to everybody that knew her, that she just flipped from normal to schizophrenic overnight (Winerip 28).

Another conclusive cause for schizophrenia is the genetic situation. This case offers the fact that schizophrenia runs in the family. If schizophrenia did not run in the family, there wou