Schizophrenia Essay -- Schizophrenia Essays

dementia praecox is a serious, continuing mental turnover characterized by loss of contact with reality and disturbances of thought process, mood, and perception. schizophrenia is the most common and the most potentially sever and disabling of the psychosis, a term encompassing several severe mental disorders that result in the loss of contact with reality along with major personality de sitements. Schizophrenia patients experience delusions, hallucinations and often lose thought process. Schizophrenia affects an estimated whiz pct of the population in every country of the world. Victims share a graze of symptoms that can be devastating to themselves as well as to families and friends. They may have trouble dealing with the most minor everyday stresses and peanut changes in their surroundings. They may avoid social contact, ignore personal hygiene and behave oddly (Kass, 194). Many people outside the mental wellness profession believe that schizophrenia refers to a split pe rsonality. The contrive schizophrenia comes from the Greek schizo, meaning split and phrenia refers to the diaphragm once thought to be the location of a persons mind and soul. When the vocalise schizophrenia was established by European psychiatrists, they meant to describe a shattering, or breakdown, of basic psychological functions. Eugene Bleuler is one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time. He is shell known today for his introduction of the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox and for his studies of schizophrenics. The illness can high hat be described as a collection of particular symptoms that normally fall into four basic categories formal thought disorder, perception disorder, aspect/emotional disturbance, and behavior disorders (Young, 23). People with schizophrenia describe strange of wild thoughts. Their speech is sometimes hard to follow because of disordered thinking. Phrases seem disconnected, and nouss unravel from topic to topic with no logical pattern in what is universe said. In some cases, individuals with schizophrenia say that they have no idea at all or that their heads seem empty. Many schizophrenic patients think they possess extraordinary powers such as x-ray dream or super strength. They may believe that their thoughts are being controlled by others or that everyone knows what they are thinking. These beliefs ar... ...ected over another because it has less chance of damaging a diseased liver, worsening a heart condition, or alter a patients high blood pressure. For all the benefits that anti-psychotic drugs provide, understandably they are far from ideal. Some patients will show marked good with drugs, while others might be helped only a little, if at all. Ideally, drugs currently will be developed to treat successfully the whole range os schizophrenia symptoms. Roughly one third of schizophrenic patients draw off a complete recovery and have no further recurren ce, one third have recurrent episodes of the illness, and one third deteriorate into continuing schizophrenia with severe disability (Kass, 206). Bibliography BIBLIOGRAPHY Arasse, Daniel. Complete Guide to Mental Health. Allen street Press,New York, 1989. Gingerich, Susan. Coping With Schizophrenia. New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Oakland, 1994. Kass, Stephen. Schizophrenia The Facts. Oxford University Press. New York, 1997. Muesen, Kim. Schizophrenia. Microsoft Encarta cyclopaedia. Microsoft Corporation, 1998. Young, Patrick. The Encyclopedia od Health, Psychological Disorders and Their Treatment. Herrington Publications. New York, 1991.