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Schizophrenia is a complex disorder characterized by hallucinations (mostly being hearing voices), delusions (beliefs with no basis in reality), and disturbances in speech. Psychiatrists classify the symptoms into negative and positive categories for schizophrenia. The positive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, thought disorders, and an altered sense of self. The negative symptoms are a lack of motivation or apathy, blunted feelings, depression or social withdraw. There are three main types of Schizophrenias. The first type is Paranoid Schizophrenic; people with this suffer preoccupation with persecutory and/or grandiose delusions. The second type is Disorganized Schizophrenic; they suffer from speech and behavior problems and they have a flat of inappropriate affect. The third type is Catatonic Schizophrenic; in this case the person gets motor immobility or excessive motor activity that is purposeless, peculiar movements, echolalia or echopraxia. In America there are about 2.2 million people with this illness. That might seem like a lot, but most of the cases get overlooked. They sometimes get called “Nervous Breakdowns” or just “Bad nerves”. There have been studies done to see if different groups of people have a greater tendency to get the illness. But so far nothing has been proved. Some groups might seem like they are less at risk, but nothing can be proved so until then there can be no connections made. Although studies show that cases of the illness in Europe have declined over the years, in America they have increased slowly just about every year. So they are trying to figure out why this is. Changes in the chemistry of the brain, changes in the structure of the brain, genetics, viral infections, and head injuries all play a part in what may be the cause of this disease. There are billions of nerve cells in the brain, each one having branches that transmit and receive messages from other nerve cells.
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