Schizophrenia

But this myth impacts the lack of knowledge that many people have about the illness. In fact, schizophrenia is a much more complex mental disease. Schizophrenia is one of the most common psychotic illnesses. It affects almost 1 % of the global population.

Why does an individual become schizophrenic? Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disease, it usually appears during youth or young adulthood and affects how the individual thinks, feels and behaves. The predisposition is heritable , but schizophrenia itself is not. For a long time, scientists thought that schizophrenia runs in families. However, many people have schizophrenia without having a family member diagnosed with schizophrenia or are healthy despite a number of schizophrenic relatives. It is also known that different genes may increase the risk for the disease. However, at present it is not presently possible to tell which genes are responsible for the disease. Interactions between genes and environment are necessary for schizophrenia to develop, e.g. exposures to viruses, malnutrition before birth, problems during birth or psychosocial factors. Psychosis is probably caused by disorders during brain development and disorders of information processing. During the first decade of life, many synapses are formed. Some of those synapses, especially in the cortex, are reduced between early childhood and puberty (ends by the time of sexual maturation); this is called synaptic pruning and is a normal part of brain developmental. Synaptic pruning becomes very important for the development of motor and cognitive skills. It was shown that the brains of overly affected people have too few synapses or even destroyed necessary synapses. The excessive pruning causes a disturbance between the connection and communication of the neurons. Those disturbances affect many cognitive domains (memory, language, learning, social-cognitive skills, etc.) and lead to cognitive deficits. That is how the clinical symptoms appear. Aside from hereditary factors, several additional parameters like drug consumption or psychosocial tensions (e.g. violence or migration) are relevant for schizophrenia formation.

What kind of symptoms may a schizophrenic patient develop? There are three types of symptoms:

• Positive symptoms (psychotic behaviours, not generally seen in healthy people)

• Negative symptoms (are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviour)

• Psychomotor limitations

Not all these symptoms appear at once, and may partly counter each other. Beside that, no affected person gets all the symptoms. Some schizophrenic patients also get some symptoms more intensively than others. An overall disease pattern can’t be given.

Positive symptoms • Hallucinations

Hallucinations can be acoustic, vocal or visual. Most commonly schizophrenic individuals hear voices. What the voices talk about is always different, often the voices humiliate the affected person. There are cases where the voices even force the person to do something. If the voices want the person to hurt or even kill somebody, this can become really dangerous and the person has to be treated clinically. It is neurologically interesting that when individuals hear voices, the same brain parts are activated as when listening to real voices and during speaking.

• Delusional wahnhaft Ideas

The schizophrenic individual has the feeling that everything is happening because of herself/himself.

• Alogia

Alogia makes it really difficult to talk with a schizophrenic person. She or he might mix existing words with not fitting topics or use existing syllables to create new words (neologisms). This won’t be understandable for anyone else than the patient her-/himself.

• Depersonalization die Entpersönlichung

The schizophrenic person believes that her personal thoughts can be observed by other people.

• Inadequate unangemessen reactions

The schizophrenic person reacts in an inappropriate or exaggerated way.

Negative symptoms • Emotional flattening die Abflachung

Schizophrenic people feel less happy or sad. This symptoms appear during later stages of the psychosis.

• Indetermination

The schizophrenic individual is not able to make decisions or this is very difficult for the person.

• Social isolation

A schizophrenic person breaks off their contacts with friends. If the person isolates from others, everything that matters is her-/himself.

• Lack der Mangel of motivation

It is very difficult to motivate the diseased person to do anything.

Psychomotoric limitations • Catatonic excitation die Reizung, der Stimulus

The schizophrenic person gets hyperactive.

• Catatonic stupor die Benommenheit

The patient can’t move the body, but stays conscious.

What kind of treatment is used for schizophrenia? It is very important that the family, and also the physician, comprehend the situation. There is no use in telling the schizophrenic person to “pull yourself together” or just “ignore” the voices. The medication is usually combined with a psychosocial therapy. In some cases even hospitalization may be indicated.

There are various medical treatments that can be chosen. In general, nobody is aware of the treatment’s full results, so usually the medication changes often until the right one is found. The treatment has to be taken life-long , although the symptoms may subside. Antipsychotic medications are usually chosen. Here the goal is to manage the signs and symptoms with the lowest possible dose, by affecting the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. Other opportunities are antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs. The problem is that all medications for schizophrenia can cause serious side effects. This may be often the reasons why the patient refuses to take the medicine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Trorrey EF: Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers, Harpers Collins Publishers, 2006. 2. http://dict.leo.org. 3. www.dict.cc. 4. www.webster-dictionary.org.

EXERCISE: 1. What percentage of the world population is affected with schizophrenia? a. 1 % b. 10 % c. 0.5 %

2. What kind of disorder is schizophrenia? a. Disorder of the brain b. Disorder of the neurotransmitters c. Disorder of the vertebrae

3. What sex is more likely affected with schizoaffective disorders? a. Male b. Female

You’ll find the answers on: http://tinyurl.com/weiterbildung-englisch

Die Autorin: Carmen Lobitz mail@lobitz-seminare.de www.lobitz-seminare.de

Carmen Lobitz ist freie Trainerin, Lehrerin und MTA. Sie gründete 1998 in Berlin lobitz seminare, die u.a. Englischseminare für Health Professionals anbieten.

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Lösung für Exercise:

Answer: 1. a Answer: 2. a Answer: 3. b

Schizophrenia

Why does an individual become schizophrenic?

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Schizophrenia

Why does an individual become schizophrenic?

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