Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that makes it difficult for a person to distinguish between what is real and unreal. It has an effect on the way a person acts thinks and sees the world. A person suffering from Schizophrenia has a different view of reality. They hear, see and feel things that do not exist. They speak in strange ways and often believe that there is someone harming them. It becomes difficult for them to perform normal day to day activities. Some of these people may keep themselves away from the outside world or act in a strange way out of fear or confusion.Incases of schizophrenia appear in the late teens or early adulthood. Sometimes it can affect young children and adolescents. It is found to be more severe in men than women
Causes of schizophrenia
In early days the cause disease was that it was inherited. Recently it has been found that Schizophreniais a complexdiseasethat may be caused by hundreds or thousands of genetic variants that interact with one another in different ways. Genes cannot function alone. They function in clusters to damage the brain. Studies show that there may be 108 gene variations that may be associated with the mental health disorder. It has become difficult to identify these variations that create problems in people. In some cases even a single gene was at risk for the disease.
It has recently been researched that schizophrenia may really be eight separate diseases. The experiment revealed there are several gene clusters in a person that can cause eight different types of schizophrenia
Symptoms
Symptoms ofschizophrenia can vary from hallucinations to disordered speech to attention and decision-making problems. The symptoms develop over months and years. Sometimes there may be several symptoms together and other times there may just be few.People with schizophrenia have trouble keeping friends and working with people. They have difficulty in controlling their anxiety, fear thoughts and behavior. Early symptoms of schizophrenia are irritable feeling, trouble in concentrating and lack of sleep. As the disease advances there can be problems in hearing, thinking, reduced emotion, lack of concentration and strange behavior.
Treatment
Support programs and behavioral techniques like training of social skills can help people with schizophrenia to function better in social get together and work places.
The support of family members and caregivers plays a very vital role in the treatment of schizophrenia. The skill is to take the medicine regularly and to manage the side effects and cope with symptoms present after the medicine. A healthy lifestyle with proper food and enough sleep is to be followed religiously.
People suffering from schizophrenia can be successfully managed by identifying the signs and symptoms and then giving them long term treatment. The right treatment and support can help a person with the disease lead a happy life.
New approach to Schizophrenia
The new approach to this disease believes that schizophrenia is probably 80 diseases which include all the psychiatric conditions. Different gene mutations can cause different symptoms in different people and same symptoms can also be appearing different in different people. The cause of the disease can help in determining the correct treatment, but at times it becomes difficult to predict the cause.
The example of pleurisy will clear the situation and finding of schizophrenia disorders. Pleurisy is a condition where water accumulates near the lungs. This condition can be caused by pneumonia, cancer or any viral infection. If the treatment of pleurisy is done for pneumonia only a few people will be benefited. But if the cause of pleurisy is cancer the treatment for pleurisy will be different. The same is true for schizophrenia and other mental health conditions. But in this case it is often difficult to know the specific cause. There is always a vague idea with number of similar symptoms.
Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/16/health/schizophrenia-eight-diseases/index.html?hpt=he_bn2
