Azaria Cook

Health Services 2

Lewis

April 18, 2018

Signs and Treatments of Schizophrenia

As listed in the DSM 5, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th

edition, schizophrenia is a mental illness that when active, has five key symptoms that consist of

hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, and negative

symptoms. Before European psychiatrists started describing diseases or disorders with unknown

causes, most cases of schizophrenia or similar diseases were diagnosed as melancholia, mania, or

basic “insanity” (2014). The fairly new idea of schizophrenia mainly affects younger people, but

continues to progress and leads to chronic deterioration. Schizophrenia sparks interest and

curiosity in me because it has to do with the brain. Anything involving the brain has fascinated

me since I was young. I am an overly analytical individual, and my favorite thing to analyze is

people. Something about the erratic behaviors associated with schizophrenia is what draws me

in. The research on schizophrenia will help me in my future career path. I plan to join the BAU

(behavioral analysis unit) of the FBI. This job requires me to be able to accurately read and

analyze the behavior of criminals, a large majority of which have mental illnesses.

Understanding how schizophrenia affects the thought process and behaviors will give me a small

amount of insight of what my future career choice truly entails.

Schizophrenia is different than other mental illnesses in the sense that there is no

diagnostic laboratory test, it is diagnosed through clinical observation and self-report. The

construction of schizophrenia is far more complex than simple genetic disorders which have
straight forward inheritance patterns (Gejman, Sanders & Duan, 2010). Much of the risk of

schizophrenia is inherited, but it has been found that alleles that are not inherited, or newly found

mutations, can contribute to risk as well (2014). Schizophrenia is predominantly found in

younger males in or around their mid-twenties. Though it is mainly found in men, schizophrenia

can also be found in women, but does not become apparent until they are in their thirties or

forties. Although genetically, each generation has the ability to possess a carrier for the disease, it

is known that schizophrenia typically skips one, then reappears in the following generation.

Schizophrenia can look different for each and every individual who is diagnosed with it.

Most mental illnesses are diagnosed on a spectrum of mild or severe, but schizophrenia runs on a

slightly different scale. Rather than mild or severe, schizophrenia gets diagnosed as a subtype.

These subtypes are; catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated (WebMd

2018). Included in the symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations. These hallucinations are

small things such as voices inside one’s head, clicks, or non-word sounds. Hallucinations usually

mean something to the person experiencing them. Most auditory or voice hallucinations are the

voice of someone of importance to that individual. Schizophrenics experience these voices being

over-critical, vulgar, or abusive. Schizophrenia can make it hard to follow a train of thought.

Through severely disorganized speech schizophrenia becomes easier to recognize. Some tell-tale

signs of schizophrenia through speech are: loose associations, neologisms, perseveration, and

clang. These four signs essentially just mean that schizophrenics make connections through

unsimilar topics, say things that only mean things to themselves, use a lot of repetition and

rhyming.

Although schizophrenia has been widely diagnosed many people still have trouble or

even an inability to deal with and or handle the condition. Even though it can be treated, a wide
assortment of medicines and medications are used, they consist of the following Chlorpromazine

(Thorazine), Fluphenazine (Prolixin), Haloperidol (Haldol), Loxapine (Loxitane), Perphenazine

(Trilafon), Thiothixene (Navane), and Trifluoperazine (Stelazine) (NAMI, n.d.). The treatment of

schizophrenia, along with most other mental illnesses become easier to treat overtime due to the

nation of overprescribing that society has fallen into. Schizophrenia is one of the most “self-

treated” diseases. People who are diagnosed with schizophrenia usually fall into excessive drug

and alcohol abuse, making the treatment and recovery significantly more difficult for the

individual.

In conclusion, schizophrenia is an exceedingly complex illness. There are many factors

that contribute to the complexity, not all of which are known yet. In order to truly understand the

depth and intricacy of this disease, there is still a great deal of research that needs to be done.

Genes are a large contribution in terms of schizophrenia, but environment also plays a significant

role. Schizophrenia is a well known, but not well-studied disease, meaning most people know of

it and that it exists, but do not know about it or what it really is. There has been a lot of headway

in research on schizophrenia since it was originally discovered, but there is plenty more progress

to be made.