Schizophrenia is a serious and complex
mental illness that has many long term symptoms.
The illness is often diagnosed in the early adulthood. It has been studied and found out that
schizophrenia is somewhat
hereditary and that certain surrounding
stress factors affect the breaking out of the illness.
It is possible to
recover from schizophrenia but risk of the illness breaking out again is constant.
SYMPTOMS The most common symptoms of schizophrenia are the
loss of emotions and the will to speak,
delusion,
catatonic postures,
problems with concentration,
hallucinations, depression etc. The symptoms can be divided into three different categories: the
advance symptoms, the
acute symptoms and the
after symptoms. These can be further divided into
positive and
negative symptoms.
After the
ICD-10 -standard schizophrenia can be divided into four types:
paranoic, heberphrenic, catatonic and
indifferentiated schizophrenia.
TREATMENT
Schizophrenia is mainly treated with
antipsychotic drugs which are also called
neurolepts. Neurolepts cause many
side effects like exhaustion, dizziness, rashes, weight gain and low blood pressure. Also
tranquilizers and
antidepressants can be used to treat schizophrenia.