What is Schizophrenia?

Lauren DeWiggins  period:6

What is it like to have schizophrenia? Not being able to lead a normal life, and not able to control this ‘world’ that seems so real? Schizophrenia is considered a “mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses, and to behave normal in social situations” (Merrill 2010,7). This disease may seem like "split personailty disorder" but it is not. "Multiple personality disorder is its own category of mental illness, and it can exist independently from psychosis. It may be brought on by extremely traumatic events during someone’s childhood. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is more likely to be caused by heredity. "(Bragen, 2011, 22) Having this disorder is not easy; it is an everyday battle with reality and not knowing if the voices you are hearing are real or just made up. Although this disease seems untreatable; doctors, physiatrists’, and scientist are all contributing and fighting to control this hypnotizing and unwanted disease.

Although schizophrenia seems to be just one single disease, there are actually many different types of this disease. This illness seems to distort “all five senses including sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch” (Red Orbit Staff, 2009, 2).  Some examples are undifferentiated, catatonic, disorganized, and paranoid schizophrenia. Each type consists of different symptoms including delusions, change in personality, hallucinations(visual perceptions of false images), disorganized behavior and speech and paranoia. These different categories don’t relate to each other and all have their own symptoms. For example if a patient is diagnosed with disorganized schizophrenia which consists of “prominent symptoms [of] disorganized speech and behavior, as well as flat or inappropriate affect.” Then, “The person does not have enough symptoms to be characterized as catatonic schizophrenic.” (Edwards/Stoppler 2010, 3)
Is schizophrenia hereditary?  This disease is not considered hereditary and can be thought to be triggered by many different causes. Many mental disorders tend to have common genetic mutations causing the disease; like bi-polar disorder. Bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia have many common factors and “share a number of the same risk genes. However, the fact is that both illnesses also have some genetic factors that are unique.”  Both disorders have been found to have as many as 30,000 gene variations that may contribute to the mental illness” (Red orbit staff, 2009, 1). Certain infections during pregnancy can cause schizophrenia to develop even before birth, but is found equally in both males and females; although “schizophrenia is often more severe debilitating for men” (Stark, 2011, 4) and is found to be  “begin later and be milder” for women. (Merill, 2010, 5) Most schizophrenic symptoms develop during the ages of sixteen through thirty, but usually not diagnosed until mid forties. Children are rarely diagnosed so young, but cases are increasing. Diagnosing children is harder because of hormones and behavior that at first seems normal for teens and growing children, which later can turn into the child actually having schizophrenia. Doctors diagnose schizophrenia using a variety of techniques, although “there is no one test that definitively indicates that someone has schizophrenia”(Edwards/Stoppler, 9) because it involves gene mutations that are unknown and is “such a complex and heterogeneous disorder”(Lenzenweger 2010, 8). A professional doctor takes record of their entire life, a very detailed ‘background check’ and can evaluate the patients health and prior health issues if any. With the information they find they can decide whether the patient is psychotic or deals with other disorders like personality disorder or anxiety disorder. These mental issues can lead to the diagnosis of schizophrenia or be disorders that are commonly mistaken for schizophrenia. If doctors diagnose a person with schizophrenia it is very helpful because most schizophrenics become depressed and have suicidal temptations. Some medications are used to help control the hallucinations, delusions and other symptoms that occur along with having schizophrenia. There are ‘typical’ antipsychotics that “have been available since the mid-1950's”[11] that includes Perphenazine, Chlorpromazine, Fluphenazine, and Haloperidol. In the 1990's, new antipsychotic medications were developed. These new medications are called second generation, or "atypical" antipsychotics. Some examples of atypical antiphycotics are Ziprasidone, Olanzapine, Paliperidone, Risperidone, Quetiapine, and Aripiprazole. Another atypical antiphyscotic is Clozaril and is often used. “It is a very effective medication that treats psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, and breaks with reality, such as when a person believes he or she is the president.” [12] Unfortunately there is always side affects to certain medications which can vary from slight to extreme. Not only are these medications used only for schizophrenia, they are also used for other psychotic diseases. (NIMH, 2011) Some medications are costly, but do, if not cure, help the disease. ”Clozaril costs $478 per month. It does not cure schizophrenia, but only treats the symptoms”which patients usually tend to choose medication over being in a mental institute which could end up costing a lot more than investing in medication would. “Treating people in communities is far less expensive than treating them in institutions.” The yearly cost for treating a patient in communities can be as little as $60,000 compared to the yearly payment of $130,000 for institutional treatment. (mhag, 2011 10)

There is never a normal day living with schizophrenia. One well known schizophrenia case is Jani ,a 7-year old girl that has one of the most severe cases of schizophrenia there is and ever more surprising case to see in children, especially as young and she is.  For most young children it is normal for them to have ‘imaginary friend’s’ or have a wide imaginations but Jani’s imaginary friend’s and wide imagination reached a whole new level. Sometimes her hallucinations and delusions would leave to violent behavior. For Jani, she had three imaginary friends in particular that were evil and their names were 24 hours, Wednesday, and 400. 24 hours was a young girl, Wednesday was a rat, and 400 was a cat and these three imaginary friends all inflicted her violent behavior towards her mom, dad, brother, and even herself. When Jani was 5 years old her behavior reached a turning point. Her outbreaks started to get extremely violent and incontrollable. "She would scratch until she drew blood. She bit until she drew blood. She would try to run her nails down my face to try and scratch my eyes out, then, seconds later, she was back to being sweet again"[13] says her father Michael. Jani would tell her parents that her friends were making her hit and punch, and that if she didn’t do what they said they would hurt her. Jani was soon trying to kill herself. She would try to strangle herself, or in one situation she was sent to her room for ‘timeout’ and her parents found her trying to jump out her bedroom window. "The violence got so bad in year five that we had to hospitalize her," Michael says. "She's been in the hospital more than she's been home this year."[14] Life wasn’t easy for Jani’s parents and is still an everyday struggle just to keep her alive everyday and healthy. Jani is currently on 200 milligrams of Clozaril which is the strongest and top medication prescribed for schizophrenia. This disease changes your whole life. You cannot live a normal life and being diagnosed with schizophrenia is even worse, having to grow up all through your childhood with this constant ‘fake’ world that is made up. Jani’s made up world is called ‘Calalini’ and this is where all her imaginary friends live and is between both of her worlds. Jani just tries to get trough each day and only being 7 makes it that much harder. (The Oprah Winfrey Show. 2009)

Scientists have found a new gene mutation that is connected to schizophrenia and may be a new target for producing and testing new drugs and medications. Since this disease affects the senses and causing hallucinations, delusions and thought problems, it is known that this disorder must be genetic factors. This disease isn’t common but is more likely to affect  10% of first degree relatives, with "an estimated heritability of 80–85%^"(nature international weekly journal science 2011, 21) The gene mutation that has been discovered “consists of copy number variants or CNV’S-a type of genetic variation in which the number of copies of a gene differs between individuals”(Ash, 2011, 15).

Drugs have also seemed to increase the chances of developing schizophrenia. A drug in particular was marijuana. Researchers did a ten year study testing marijuana use in people from ages starting at 14 to 24. They came to a conclusion that "those participants who had no psychotic symptoms and had never tried marijuana when the study began and then started using marijuana had nearly double the risk of experiencing psychotic symptoms in the future[16], and those who used marijuana before start of the study and who continued use over the study period had an increased risk of persistent psychotic symptoms"[17] (Mann, 2011).  This proves that marijuana increases the risk of developing schizophrenia throughout teenage and early adult years and also increases the risk of developing psychotic symptoms. Marijuana use increases the psychotic symptoms and episodes. “Carefully conducted prospective studies such as this one provide the best evidence available that cannabis contributes to the cause of some cases of schizophrenia,”[18] says Matthew Large of Prince of Wales Hospital in New South Wales, Australia. Even though cannabis and marijuana are different they still have the same affect on people and increase psychotic episodes. :The study goes a long way to clarifying that it is not psychosis that causes cannabis use, but rather the reverse” (Mann, 2011). It is also found by MELBOURNE researches that “oestrogen can reduce severe symptoms in men with schizophrenia - a therapy previously thought to be beneficial only for women.” (stark, 2011,19). During a clinical trial, it was proved that higher hormone levels could “reduce severe psychotic symptoms, depression and anxiety.”[20] Oestrogen imitates the effects of antiphyscotic drugs by reducing body’s levels of dopamine and serotonin which balance mood. In a recent article it stated “that men who had lower oestrogen levels and higher testosterone suffered from more severe psychotic symptoms.” (Stark, 2011, 21)

  All in all, schizophrenia is a life-changing disease. When diagnosed with this disease, life is never the same. Everyday is an obstacle and haveing to go through all the hallucinations, delusions and depression every day is out of control. Some days are worse than others and sometimes the will to be alive may not be there. This disease is incurable but with all the dedication and hard work to finding a cure, there will soon be a way to treat schizophrenia, and there will never be a limit on people that have this disability.