Psychological Description of Schizophrenia
Psychological Description of Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disease that effects over 1 percent of the population. It can occur at any age but most commonly happens between 16-30. It leaves the patient confused in a chaotic state of mind with multiple debilitating mental confusion. The first of them being delusions, the patient is convinced that people around them can read their minds, and that they can read other peoples (British Journal of Psychology, 625). The patient then begins to believe that the people around them are plotting against them and are out to get them. Not only does the disease effect the patient mentally though, but also it starts to effect their physical sensations. The patients can`t interpret incoming sensations and can`t control their physical emotions, this effects the patients common sense of what to do in every day situations. For example when a person with normal mental health receives a gift their natural reaction would be to thank the person who gave it to them. A schizophrenic person would become confused and be unable to react and cope with the situation. The patient begins to get an altered sense of themselves and have an extremely hard time functioning in every day life.
They start to believe they can control other people`s thoughts. They usually start to become violent because they get so confused with the thoughts of plots against them they believe they are defending themselves. A person who is diagnosed with a schizoid personality is basically on the way to having schizophrenia. It is considered a stage to the disease. The causes of each of the diseases are the same, and most of them are physical abnormalities of the brain. In over hundreds of studies on schizophrenia and similar mental conditions doctors have found some similar abnormalities in the brains of the patients. The first being enlarged ventricles in the brain (British Journal of Psychology, 697). The second being a reduced volume of gray matter in the brain, mainly in the temporal and frontal lobes (British Journal of Psychology, 110). The third is an enlarged amygdala and an increased number of white matter hypertesites (British Journal of Psychology, 260). Finally a set of neuropsychological abnorms such as cognitive functions, information processing, and verbal memory (Fourth Generation of Progress, 1245). In some other studies doctors have found a reduced prefrontal area. A doctor will not diagnose a person with...