Psychological Disorder Paper

Psychological Disorder Paper

Schizophrenia can be characterized as a group of severe brain diseases in which people interpret reality abnormally (Shiraev, & Levy, 2010). Moreover, these individuals see, hear, and feel things that are not really there which causes many instances of paranoia and confusion. Furthermore, schizophrenia is a disorder defined by the existence of delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and disorganized catatonic behavior (Riordan, Antonini, & Murphy, 2011). This disorder is usually seen in late adolescence or early adulthood and as with any other disease, the signs and symptoms vary from individual to individual.

Human Development

For many years of research now, the cause of schizophrenia has not been determined. According to Snowden, Flemming, Marland, & McNay (2011), schizophrenia is not caused by just one thing. Nine times out of ten, schizophrenia is the result of various factors including an individual's genes along with environmental risk factors (Snowden, Fleming, Marland & McNay, 2011). In selected cases, studies were performed on individuals and the outcome was problems with naturally occurring brain chemicals such as dopamine and glutamate levels. Additionally, numerous neuroimaging studies have also showed a correlation between individuals with schizophrenia and individuals with differences in their brain structure and central nervous system.

Socialization

Individuals who suffer from schizophrenia have a difficult time communicating for the simple fact that their thoughts are abnormal making their social cognition lower than the rest of the population (Loughland, Draganic, McCabe, Richards, Nasir, Allen, & Carr, 2010). Social issues fall into three categories regarding positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms. The positive symptoms refer to hallucinations and delusions which make others feel uncomfortable and making it difficult to socialize with others. The negative symptoms refer to the individual not having the confidence and motivation to want to interact with others as their struggle with schizophrenia plagues them. The cognitive symptoms refer to difficulty in getting their thoughts together which discourages schizophrenic patients to interact with others.

How Schizophrenia Affects the Patient

Every schizophrenic patient has symptoms that may be mild or severe but a major effect these patients experience are psychotic episodes. These psychotic episodes involve thoughts and actions depicting delusions and hallucinations (Kamath, Moberg, Gur, Doty, & Turetsky, 2012). Patients with schizophrenia are prescribed medications to control the symptoms but schizophrenia is not curable so the patient will need to be on medication for the rest of their life. Moreover, the