Causes of Schizophrenia, Types, Symptoms, Tests and Treatment

Read about Causes of Schizophrenia, Types, Symptoms, Tests and its Treatment. Schizophrenia is a type of brain disorder in which patient understands the reality abnormally. It is severe brain disorder with manifestation of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior. Lot of people believe that schizophrenia is a split personality disorder but in reality it is just a myth.

However,schizophrenia is a complex disorder due to which it is difficult to differentiate between what is real and unreal but it  does not mean that we should lose hope because schizophrenia can be managed effectively with certain medications.Severity of schizophrenia varies from patient to patient.Some patients experience only few psychotic episodes while others have frequent episodes of psychotic illness.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

In men,schizophrenia symptoms usually appears during their teen age while in women schizophrenia symptoms appears usually after their 20’s.It is difficult to point out accurate symptoms of schizophrenia because it is complex disorder and symptoms may vary with age.However few symptoms are reported frequently which are mentioned below.

• Delusions
• Disorganized speech
• Hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that aren’t there)

Schizophrenia Positive Symptoms

• Hearing voices
• suspiciousness
• Neologisms(making up words without a meaning )

Schizophrenia Negative Symptoms

• Social withdrawal
• difficulty in expressing emotions
•  Inability to feel pleasure
• Aggressive behavior

Types of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia can be categorized into many types but some common types of schizophrenia are mentioned below:

Paranoid Schizophrenia

Manifestations of paranoid type schizophrenia are delusions and auditory hallucinations (hearing voices that don’t exist)but expressions of emotions and intellectual functions are relatively normal. The delusions may be about being harassed or treated unfairly or something like that.Patient suffering from paranoid-type schizophrenia may exhibit anger,anxiety and aggressiveness in behavior.

Disorganized Schizophrenia

Manifestation of disorganized schizophrenia is disruption in speech and behavior due to which they are  difficult to understand.People with disorganized type schizophrenia may exhibit emotional expressions like laughing or crying without any reason. Their disorganized behavior may disrupt normal activities, such as showering, dressing, and preparing meals and sometimes they often give illogical statements.

Undifferentiated Schizophrenia

This type of schizophrenia is difficult to identify because patient suffering from this type of schizophrenia have symptoms of both paranoid and disorganized type schizophrenia that’s why it is termed as undifferentiated type schizophrenia.

Causes of Schizophrenia and Depression

It is not clearly understood that what are the real causes of schizophrenia and Depression attached with it, but research has revealed that combination of factors including genetic factors and environmental factors may contribute to the development of schizophrenia.

Genetic Causes of Schizophrenia

One of the most important factor in the development of schizophrenia is genetic predisposition so, people having problem of schizophrenia in their family history may have high risk to get involved in this disorder at their later ages due to specific genetic make-up. Estimates of heritability vary because of the difficulty in separating the effects of genetics and the environment.

Environmental Causes of Schizophrenia

Environmental factors also play important role in the development of schizophrenia.Environmental factors like social isolation and immigration related to social adversity, racial discrimination, family dysfunction, unemployment, and poor housing conditions.People having poor and unsupportive life style may have incerase risk to indulge into schizophrenia at their later ages.so, your living style should be a simple,healthy and supportive.

Drug Abuse Causes Schizophrenia

About half of the patients suffering from schizophrenia have been used drugs and alcohol excessively in their previous history.So, drug addiction and consumption of too much alcohol may also contribute towards schizophrenia.

Risk factors of Schizophrenia

Although exact cause of schizophrenia is still not clearly understood but research has revealed that few factors play important role in the the development of schizophrenia These risk factors are mentioned below:

• Having a family history of schizophrenia
• Exposure to viruses, toxins or malnutrition while in the womb
• Increased immune system activation
• Taking mind-altering (psychoactive or psychotropic) drugs during teen years and young adulthood
• Older age

Schizophrenia Tests and diagnosis

Although it is difficult to diagnose schizophrenia with the help of any specific diagnostic test because there is no specific test to determine that weather it is schizophrenia or not.However,certain tests are useful in the diagnosis of schizophrenia.These are mentioned below:

• Complete blood cell count(CBC)
• Computerized Tomography
• Magnetic Resonance imaging
• Electron electroencephalography(EEG)

Treatment of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms have subsided.Treatment with medications and psycho-social therapy helps to manage the condition.

Schizophrenia Treatment Medications

There are two categories of medicines that are being used in the management of schizophrenia.These are mentioned below:

Schizophrenia Treatment with atypical Anti-Psychotics

These are second generation anti-psychotics or also termed as newer anti-psychotics.Their mechanism of action is to antagonize the effects of certain neurotransmitters responsible for disorganized behavior and speech.Now a days they are widely used due to their efficacy and high safety profile Examples of atypical anti-psychotics are:

•  Aripiprazole
•  Asenapine
• Olanzapine
• Clozapine

Schizophrenia Treatment Anti-psychotics

These are first generation anti-psychotics or also termed as older anti-psychotics.Now a days they are almost completely replaced by atypical anti-psychotics due to their neurological side effects and low safety profile.Drugs included in this category are

• Chlorpromazine
• Fluphenazine
• Haloperidol
• Perphenazine

Schizophrenia Treatment Psycho therapy

Psycho-social process takes time to show it effectiveness because psycho-social therapy is basically a mental rehabilitation therapy in which patient is admitted to mental rehabilitation center to restore his mental functions and mental activity to a normal level.