----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Schizophrenia is a serious mental disease. It is nearly impossible to live a functional life with it if you don’t get proper treatment. But in order to get treatment you will first have to be diagnosed as schizophrenic. So how to find out if you have schizophrenia? It’s not as easy as it seems. First you need to understand, there is not just one form of schizophrenia. There are many different forms and excluding one of them doesn’t mean you don’t have any of the other forms. Secondly, schizophrenia is highly difficult to diagnose, seeing as it’s symptoms have many similarities with those of other mental illnesses. However don’t let this get your hopes down, there are still signs to look for, ways to find out whether you or someone you know might possibly have schizophrenia.
First things first: we’ll start with the early sings of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia usually starts developing between the age of 16 and 30, which is when these warning signs might occur. If you show any of these warning signs, and especially if you show many of them, that might indicate that you could be developing schizophrenia, and we advise you see a doctor for further testing.: - Inability to cry or express joy. - Withdrawal of social activities. - Hostile or suspicious behavior. - Deterioration of personal hygiene. - Forgetfulness and an inability to concentrate. - Seemingly odd or irrational statements. - Strange use of words or way of speaking. - Flat, expressionless gaze. - Laughing or crying at inappropriate times. - Depression. - Oversleeping or insomnia. - Extreme reaction to criticism.
Keep in mind that these were only the early warning signs; more developed schizophrenia involves more extreme symptoms. Furthermore these warning signs might also indicate that you have a mental disease other than schizophrenia or have recently suffered severe trauma.
In general the symptoms for schizophrenia can be divided into three types: The first type is positive symptoms. Positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors not seen in healthy people. People with positive symptoms often "lose touch" with reality. These symptoms can come and go. Sometimes they are severe and at other times hardly noticeable, depending on whether the individual is receiving treatment. They include the following:
1. Hallucinations. Hallucinations are sounds or other sensations experienced as real by a certain individual, that nobody else experiences. Hallucinations can involve any of the five senses, however auditory hallucinations are most common in schizophrenia (e.g. hearing voices). Visual hallucinations are also relatively common.
2. Delusions. A delusion is a firmly-held idea that someone has despite clear and obvious evidence that it isn’t true. Delusions are extremely common in schizophrenia, occurring in more than 90% of those who have the disorder. These delusions often involve illogical or bizarre ideas or fantasies. Common schizophrenic delusions include: - Delusions of persecution. The belief that others (government, their family, etc.) are out to get them, often involving bizarre ideas and plots. - Delusions of reference. The belief that a neutral event in the environment has a special and personal meaning. (e.g. thinking an add or program on TV is sending a message meant specifically for you). - Delusions of control. The belief that one’s actions or thoughts are being controlled by something other than themselves. Common delusions involve thought broadcasting (belief that others can read your private thoughts), thought insertion (belief that someone else is planting thoughts in your head), and thought withdrawal (belief that you thoughts are being stolen). - Delusions of grandeur. The belief that one is a famous or important figure (e.g. Jesus Christ or Napoleon). Delusions of grandeur might also involve the belief that one has unusual powers that no one else has (e.g. the ability to fly).
3. Disorganized speech. People with schizophrenia often think fragmented, a lot of loose thoughts that don’t seem to connect. This can often be seen in the way they speak. People with schizophrenia tend to have trouble concentrating and maintaining a train of thought. They may respond to questions with an unrelated answer, start sentences with one topic and end somewhere completely different, speak incoherently, or say illogical things. Signs of disorganized speech include: - Loose associations. Shifting from one topic to another rapidly, without connection between one thought and the next. - Neologisms. Words or phrases that are made up and only have meaning to the patient. - Perseveration. The repeating of words and statements. - Clang. Meaningless use of rhyming words.
4. Disorganized behavior. Patients with schizophrenia often have problems working goaldirected. This makes taking care of themselves, working and interacting with others difficult. Signs for disorganized behavior include: - Behaviours that appear bizarre and don’t have purpose. - Lack of inhibition and impulse control. - Unpredictable or inappropriate emotional responses. - Decline in overall daily functioning.
Then there’s the negative symptoms. Negative symptoms are not, like positive symptoms, behaviors that differ from the norm, but rather the absence of normal behaviors. Common negative symptoms of schizophrenia include: 1. Lack of emotional expression. This involves showing blank or restricted facial expressions, speaking with a flat voice, not making eye contact etc. 2. Lack of interest or enthusiasm. This involves problems with motivation; lack of self-care. 3. Seeming lack of interest in the world. This involves social withdrawal and seeming to be unaware of the environment.
4. Speech difficulties and abnormalities. This involves not being able to carry a conversation, short and sometimes disconnected replies to questions, speaking in monotone etc.
The third type is cognitive symptoms. Cognitive symptoms are subtle and therefor often difficult to recognize as part of the disorder. They are often only detected when other tests are performed. Cognitive symptoms include the following: 1. Poor "executive functioning" (the ability to understand information and use it to make decisions). 2. Having trouble focusing or paying attention. 3. Problems with "working memory" (the ability to use information immediately after learning it). Cognitive symptoms often make it hard to lead a normal life and earn a living. They can cause great emotional distress.
If you have some of these symptoms very strongly yet completely lack others, that is not enough to exclude the chance that you might have schizophrenia. You see, it can be divided into three different types: paranoid schizophrenia, disorganized schizophrenia and catatonic schizophrenia. They are classified by their most prominent symptom.
Paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia involves the patient have absurd or suspicious ideas and beliefs, often revolving around a coherent, organized theme or “story�. Delusions of persecution are most common, however delusions of grandeur are also quite frequent.
Disorganized schizophrenia. Disorganized schizophrenia can be diagnosed when the patient portrays symptoms such as: - Impaired communication skills - Incomprehensible or illogical speech - Inappropriate reactions (e.g. laughing at a funeral) - Emotional indifference - Infantile behavior (baby talk, giggling) - Peculiar facial expressions and mannerisms
Catonic schizophrenia. Catonic schizophrenia’s most prominent feature is a disturbance in movement: either a decrease in motor activity, reflecting a stuporous state, or an increase in motor activity, reflecting an excited state. - Stuporous motor signs. Someone in stuporous state will show a dramatic decrease in activity. The person often ceases all voluntary movement and speech, and may be extremely resistant to any change in his or her position, even to the point of holding an awkward, uncomfortable position for hours. - Excited motor signs. Sometimes, people with catatonic schizophrenia pass suddenly from a state of stupor to a state of extreme excitement. During this frenzied episode, they may shout, talk rapidly, pace back and forth, or act out in violence—either toward themselves or others.
* Please remember that only a qualified psychologist or psychiatrist can properly diagnose schizophrenia, or any other brain disorder. The following symptoms overlap with many other diseases such as bipolar disorder, major depression, the various kinds of personality disorders (specifically paranoid and schizotypal personality disorders), and other problems such as brain tumors and temporal lobe epilepsy. There is no "typical" case of schizophrenia. Everyone has different symptoms. Seek the opinion of your doctor always. Moreover, it is always important to keep the big picture in mind. Having just a few of these symptoms does not necessarily mean that a person has schizophrenia, or any other sort of psychiatric disorder. Almost all of the signs below can be present to a "normal" degree in people; it is when someone displays them to a significant degree that they can become psychiatric symptoms. Think if all of these behaviors as being on a continuum, in which the middle 99% of people displaying varying degrees of the behavior, but are still within the "normal" range. The 1% of people on the outer edges have the behaviors in extreme proportion, and/or a significant proportion of the time, and that is when they can become debilitating. A diagnosis of schizophrenia requires that continuous disturbance (i.e. debilitating symptoms) be present for at least six months, including at least one month of certain key symptoms (active symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized/catatonic behavior, negative symptoms such as severe emotional flatness or apathy) Sources: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/schizophrenia_symptom.htm, http://www.schizophrenia.com/earlysigns.htm, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml?utm_source=publish2&utm_medium=refe rral&utm_campaign=www.kpbs.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia