What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a severe form of mental disorder in which one cannot distinguish between reality and illusion, cannot think clearly, and has difficulty managing emotions. Abnormalities mainly related to these things include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and abnormal motor behavior (like catatonia; lack of movement and communication) and negative symptoms. In order to understand schizophrenia, one must first understand these abnormally disturbed states.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

01. Delusion

Delusions are beliefs that are strongly held internally but inconsistent with reality and evidence in the outside world. People hold these beliefs about different things such as persecutory, referential, somatic, religious or grandiose.

Persecutory delusions are the belief that one will be harassed or harmed by some person or group of people. Referential delusions are the belief that other people’s behavior, various signs, various events, etc., have some meaning or fact hidden from themselves (themselves mean people who experiencing the delusion).

Somatic delusions are the belief that one’s external or internal body functions are not functioning properly and the belief that one will get various diseases from different people or animals (parasites, insects).

Grandiose delusions are beliefs about one’s own superiority, one’s worth, one’s rightness. For this reason, they are reluctant to accept their mistakes even if someone points them out. Religious delusions are the beliefs one has about one’s religion, culture, various supernatural beings or unseen forces. Sometimes these people believe that they have support and help from things like this. Sometimes they believe that they are being harmed by various invisible powerful forces, they are getting sick due to such things, and they are facing various troubles.

Erotomanic delusions are the belief that another person is in love with or interested in the person, who experiences this delusion. Nihilistic delusions are the belief that one has died years ago, that one is no longer alive, or that one’s body organs such as kidneys or liver have been lost.

Although such beliefs are laughable to someone who has not been in this situation, a person who has fallen into this situation will live entirely in such beliefs. Therefore, if someone you know sometimes behaves in this way or makes related statements, you should understand the situation of that person.

02. Hallucination

Hallucinations are hearing, seeing or feeling things that are not actually there without any external intervention. This can occur in all five ways: auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory and gustatory.

But this is felt not as a dream, but as perceptions actually occurring in the outer world or coming to the self from the outer environment. It is not an easy task to convince someone in such a situation that nothing is really happening in the external environment as they experience it.

Most people experience auditory hallucinations. That is, the person hears a voice or various strange voices of someone they know and feels that they are talking to them.

Sometimes different people, different events may appear in front of him. All these things appear to them very clearly and vividly. So they think, this is really happening. But all these are self-constructed mental images.

03. Disorganized Thinking

Disorganized thinking is a jumble of thoughts. This can be caught well when talking. While talking, suddenly those people start talking about something different off topic. Also, when a question is asked to them, sometimes they answer the question indirectly, or give an answer that is completely unrelated.

04. Abnormal Motor Behavior

Abnormal motor behavior or disorganized behavior is an unexplained, unpredictable, and strange change in behavior (walking, eating, talking). Many things are related to this, such as doing certain things without any desire, or doing them very slowly, or doing them at an unnecessary speed, engaging in the same task several times, behaving like a silly child.

Sometimes behaving, reacting and maintaining inappropriate body postures in a way that is not at all relevant to the occasion.

05. Negative Symptoms

Negative symptoms include loss of facial expressions, eye contact, changes in hand and head movements, changes in voice tone, and inability to carry out normal daily activities.

Causes of Schizophrenia

On the one hand, schizophrenia is not an overnight condition. Therefore, many different causes can be the root cause of schizophrenia. Perhaps it cannot be said that this disease / disorder was caused by this reason. But some commonly accepted causes of schizophrenia are given below.

• Genetics.
• Pregnancy and birth complications such as a low birthweight, premature labour, a lack of oxygen during birth.
• Structural changes in the brain.
• Drug abuse.
• Stress. »»