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Schizophrenia A Tragic 2 Imagine a voice instructing you to meet a friend at a park, right away and apologize to them for planning on dating their girlfriend or boyfriend. Although you had no plan of doing so you do as your instructed, arriving at the park at 2 a.m. The park is deserted and you dismiss the incident as an overactive imagination. You go on with your ever day activities but the voices keep intruding. Eventually you start to see visions of bloody images, cut-up people, and dismembered bodies. You don’t know who or what to believe you’re at odds with reality. Your positive that the visions and voices are real, you don’t know who to trust, what is real, and why this is happening to you. To the person with schizophrenia the voices and visions sound and look as authentic as the announcer on the radio and the cupboards in the kitchen. 2.5 million Americans have the disease, which transcends economic status, education, geography and even the love of family (Gesalman, Springer, & Underwood,2001). The disease that came to be termed schizophrenia was first described by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in the 1890s, but it remains one of the most tragic and mysterious of mental illnesses(Abramowitz,2001). Whether it brings the voices of heaven or of hell, it causes what must be the worst affliction a conscious being can suffer the inability to tell what is real from what is imaginary. Schizophrenia A Tragic 3 Schizophrenia, a disease of the brain, it is one of the most disabling and emotionally devastating illnesses known to man. Schizophrenia is marked by a persistent presence of at least two of these symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, frequently derailed or incoherent speech, hugely disorganized or catatonic behavior, or the absence of feeling or volition (Torrey, 1995). If the delusions are especially bizarre, or the hallucinations consist of either a running commentary on what the person is doing or thinking, or multiple voices carrying on a conversation, then that alone qualifies the person as schizophrenic (Herz,& Marder, 2002). People with schizophrenia usually experience two types of symptoms, positive symptoms or negative symptoms. Positive Symptoms are psychological features that are added as a result of the disorder, and are not normally seen in healthy people. Positive symptoms would be hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and agitation (Barbour, 2001). People who display predominantly positive symptoms are considered to have Type I schizophrenia (Barbour 2001). Negative symptoms are psychological capabilities, which most people posses, but which people with schizophrenia have lost. Lack of drive or initiative, social withdrawal, apathy, and emotional unresponsiveness are all considered negative symptoms (Barbour 2002). People who display predominantly negative symptoms are considered to have Type II schizophrenia (Barbour 2002). Schizophrenia A Tragic 4 (Gesalman, Springer, & Underwood, 2001) In one subtype, catatonic schizophrenia, the patient often seems to be in a stupor, resisting all entreaties and instructions, or engages in purposeless movements, bizarre postures, exaggerated mannerisms or grimacing. In paranoid schizophrenia, the patient becomes convinced of beliefs at odds with reality, hears voices that aren’t there or sees images that exist nowhere but in their mind (2001). Neither doctors nor scientists can accurately predict who will become schizophrenic. The cause is largely unknown. (Matson, 1996) The first signs of schizophrenia typically emerge in adolescence or young adulthood. Schizophrenia is found all over the world, and rates of illness are very similar from country to country.
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