make it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, think logically, have normal emotional responses, and behave normally in social situations
mental health experts don't know what causes it
genetic factors appear to play a role
if your family member has the disease then you are more likely to develop it
environmental events can trigger schizophrenia in people that are genetically at risk for it
it effects men and women equally
it usually begins in teen years or young adulthood
may have difficulty keeping friends or working, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thought or behaviors.
lack of emotion (flat effect)
strongly belief that aren't based on reality (delusions)
hearing or seeing things aren't there (hallucinations)
problems paying attention
thoughts jump between unrelated topics
bizarre behaviors
social isolation
Types of schizophrenia and symptoms:
paranoid:
anxious
angry or argumentative
false beliefs that others are trying to harm you
disorganized:
problems with thinking and expressing ideas clearly
childlike behavior
showing little emotion
catatonic:
lack of activity
rigid muscle and posture
odd expressions like grimaces on the face
doesn't respond much to other people
Undifferentiated schizophrenia symptoms can include symptoms of more than one type of schizophrenia.
There are no medical tests to diagnose it
psychiatrist should examine the patient to make the diagnosis
the diagnosis is made based on an interview of the family members and the person
Questions are asked about:
how long the symptoms have lasted
how the person's ability to function has changed
developmental background
genetics in family history
how well medications have worked
characterized by illusions, hallucinations and paranoia
Causes are unknown but, imbalance of chemicals in the brain is thought to be involved
relatives often share the condition
some cases are activated by drug abuse
mineral and environmental deficiencies are associated with some cases
excessive amounts of copper in the body has been linked with some cases of this disease
is a mental illness that effects 1% of the population
symptoms most frequently start in the teenage years or the twenties
most common features are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, loss of interest in social activities, lack of energy and drive, and problems of attention, memory and decision making.
Treatment
most patients will benefit a treatment with medicines
most commonly used medicine are known as anti-psychotics, sometimes called neuroleptics
They are divided into two groups, typical and atypical anti-psychotics
The two classes have some-what different chemical properties and have different disadvantages and advantages.
other medicines can also be helpful but it depends on the patient.
additional treatment along with medicine is also essential
Patients can benefit from groups, individual or family psychotherapy (counseling)
sessions usually emphasize practical and emotional consequences of the illness, and how the person or family can work to get control of it.
Patients also benefit from programs that emphasize practical skills and rehabilitation
Emphasis varies for different people and can range from self-care to finding and keeping a job
Lena
It was just another day of school. I stood up and stretched before heading over to my closet. I slowly pulled on my favorite pink and white Cami with lace on the bottom; Still trying to wake myself up. I slid into my capris before turning around to get my bag and shoes, and there she was, laying there on my bed with her hands behind her head. She grinned at me and sat up to stare at me with her mahogany eyes, her brown curly hair flopping forward. "Evelynn?... How?.... When?...What?" She had started laughing at me, I guess because of how shocked I must have looked. She pointed to the window "It was open." This time I was the one who smiled, because, Evelynn would be the one to choose to climb up to my window instead of taking the door. The next thing I know, I hear screaming from down the hall. Zane. Zane
"Wake up, come play with us." Zane rolled over in his bed, attempting to bury his head in a pillow. He didn't feel like hearing it today. "No. Can't you just leave me alone?"
"But Zaaaannnneeee, we want to play..." The voices got louder and louder as Zane tried to ignore them. "Stop it.... Stop...... STOP! CAN'T YOU EVER JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!!!!" He sat up and opened his eyes to throw a pillow at the person behind the voice, but nothing was there. He sighed in relief, after all, it was just a dream, and was just about to fall back asleep when the door slammed open. "ZANE?! Are you okay?!" The screeching of the door against the wood made Zane feel like nails were being driven into his ears. He sat up, and those same voices from his dreams came bubbling back to the surface. Their words swam around in his head as he tried to make sense of what they had meant when they asked to "play". "Ummmmmmmm... Zane? Are you okay?" Zane hadn't been concentrating on Lena, what she was saying seemed subordinate compared to the voices in his head. This was new for him, and it made him a bit scared since he figured it wasn't too normal to be hearing voices all the time. He finally pushed through all the debris in his head enough to mumble an answer: "I'm fine - it was just a nightmare." Lena
I didn't believe him; if it was just a nightmare, he seemed very, very intimidated by it. But, I shrugged it off, 'cause everyone has one of those type of nightmares at least once. It didn't seem like a big deal to me, since I have them every single night. I wandered back to my room, twirling my hair since I was anxious to go to school and get the day over with. But, as I leaned over and picked up my bag, I noticed Evelynn was gone, and the window was closed. Where did she go? I thought.
The smell of bacon brought me downstairs to my mother making eggs and bacon for breakfast. The T.V. was on so I watched for a couple of minutes before my mom put my plate of food in front of me. The bacon was great, but the eggs always tasted a bit on the funny side to me. I finished the bacon and the pile of yellow goo and brought my plate over to the sink. "The eggs tasted funny again," I sneered. "You should work on them." I can feel my mom's eyes trying to vaporize a whole in the back of my head as I walked away. Just as I was picking up my bag (I had set down my bag on my chair when I came downstairs), Zane came downstairs. Zane
"Good morning, son. Your breakfast is on the table waiting for you," their mother said to Zane.
"Oh, thanks," Zane said. As he was walking over to the table, he took a glance in the sink and saw that Lena's empty plate was already lying in the water, covered in bubbles. Mom must have slipped her medicine in the eggs again. he thought to himself.
Zane and his family had found out that Lena had schizophrenia a couple years ago. They had noticed that she had been having "difficulty sleeping", "problems paying attention" and "difficulty concentrating", among other things. Needless to say, they ended up taking her to the doctors when she starting yelling and screaming for help when a classmate picked up a scalpel to begin dissecting the frog in their Biology class, because she thought he was going to hurt her with it. The doctor had asked questions about things like "how long the symptoms have lasted" and had come to the conclusion that Lena had schizophrenia, and that he thought it was paranoid schizophrenia since she had been having "false beliefs that others are trying to harm" her and "anxious" behavior along with her being "angry" sometimes. The doctor had then told them that "most patients will benefit a treatment with medicines," but Lena didn't want to take them, so their mom started slipping them into her food to help her. Since "additional treatment along with medicine is also essential" Lena has been attending therapy sessions as well to help her.
Zane thought about this as he ate, and when he finished his breakfast and put his plate in the sink, he grabbed his backpack and his keys and called Lena to get ready to go to school. Everything was fine outside; it was nice enough out, and Zane thought it as just another regular day.
"Hey, Zane,come play with us." The voices started again. Then again. And again. Zane tried his best to ignore it, but he started to get a little paranoid. He began mumbling under his breath "Please just go away. Please."
"Did you say something?" Lena asked, looking confused.
"No, I was just thinking," Zane told his sister.
"Zaaaannnneeee... Come play with us." Zane didn't respond. Instead, he tried to focus on the road. Focus, focus, focus. "Zane, don't ignore us. We can't be ignored, Zane. DON'T IGNORE ME ZANE!"
The voices started to get louder and louder again, and this time it didn't stop.
"JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP IT AND JUST GO AWAY!" Zane screamed.
"You'll be sssoooooorrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyy, Zane. You'll be sorry."
"What's wrong Zane?"
"The voices... They won't go away!"
Zane couldn't take it anymore. He didn't know where the voices were coming from; He looked all over but still didn't see anything. He looked behind him and in the back seats, but there was still nothing. The voices just kept repeating that same sentence over and over, sending chills down his back in little waves. "ZANE. WATCH OUT!!" Lena screamed. He turned around and CRASH. The last thing he saw was the flash of a tall oak tree as they ran off of the peripheral of the road.
A FEW HOURS LATER.......
Lena
I opened my eyes to find myself in a white room. I could hear babies crying and doctors yelling. I looked around and saw my mom sitting beside my brother's bed, talking. Zane had a bandage around his head, and his left foot was wrapped up in a cast. I looked down to find my arm wrapped in a white piece of cloth with blood all over it. I tried moving it, but all that happened was that I got hit with an acute pain. It was sore and it hurt, bad. My arm was a piece of meat that had just been tenderized. What happened? I thought to myself. The last thing I remembered was Zane driving us to school and how he had said the "voices" wouldn't go away.
I flashed back to when we were in the car. I remember sitting next to Zane and seeing the ominous look on his face, just before we crashed. I remember seeing Evelynn sitting in the back seat of Zane's car with a screwdriver in her hands, smiling at me. Did she loosen something or was it actually just an accident? Just then the doctor came in (He was older, maybe in his late forties, with silver hair and a face that looked weathered, but still eager to work and help people) wanting to talk to my mom and Zane about something. I listened to their conversation from the hospital bed just because I had nothing better to do, and I didn't know if they'd let me get up.
"I'm very sorry to have to tell you this news, but when we checked out your son for any problems, we noticed some symptoms. After we asked you and Zane some more questions we came to the conclusion that your son has schizophrenia," the doctor said. "Again we are so sorry to have to tell you this news, but we will give him medication right away. He should also be put in some form of therapy, to help him." Their mother nodded, and the doctor said, "I'll check in on you two in a little while, and then you may go home." The doctor left the room.
"No!" Zane said. "No, this can't be happening. There's no way. I can't. I can't."
On the car ride back home, my mother was the one who did all of the talking (most of it was about schizophrenia). She said how everything was going to be okay and that having schizophrenia was nothing bad if Zane takes his medication. She told us that the doctor said that "relatives often share the condition", and that it "is a mental illness that effects 1% of the population". She also said how Zane wasn't allowed to drive anymore (not that he can because his car got ruined in the crash) and also how my mom was taking away his license until he graduates. "It is way too dangerous for you to drive now that you are schizophrenic and you have a cast on your left foot. You can't even walk right now," my mother said. "But when you graduate, I promise I will give you back your license." So now we are stuck with riding the bus to school everyday, which means that we would have to wake up earlier too. I hate that. There's nothing worse than an overcrowded bus packed full of people as if we were sardines. The rest of the ride home we were told fact after fact, because our mom had thought it was a good idea that she knew even more about schizophrenia. She said that "symptoms most frequently start in the teenage years or the twenties" and how "genetic factors appeared to play a role", and filled our heads up like balloons until we popped. When we were halfway home, Zane put in his headphones to escape mom. I didn't have that luxury, so I stared out the window at the bright, sky blue sky filled with birds that I didn't know the name of, and daydreamed.
When we got home, I went straight up to my room. I walked in, and there she was. Evelynn was sitting on the edge of my bed with a sly look on her face.
"Did you like my little surprise?" Evelynn asked me. I stopped, frozen in a place, because I knew something was wrong. I remembered Evelynn in the back of the car; The screwdriver in her hand.
"You did it, didn't you? You caused the crash?!"
"Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Oh, and you know how Zane mentioned the voices? I did that too," Evelynn beamed with pride.
Lena nodded. "Why would you do this to me? Why Zane?"
"He took you away from me. We weren't as close because of him."
"And what did I do exactly? I thought we were friends?!"
"Serves you right for pushing me away. You should have never been taking those pills." Evelynn began laughing as I stared at her in confusion. Her outline began to shimmer, and she turned around, fading as she walked away, her laughter bouncing off the walls and echoing across the room.
- make it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, think logically, have normal emotional responses, and behave normally in social situations
- mental health experts don't know what causes it
- genetic factors appear to play a role
- if your family member has the disease then you are more likely to develop it
- environmental events can trigger schizophrenia in people that are genetically at risk for it
- it effects men and women equally
- it usually begins in teen years or young adulthood
- tends to begin later in women
- it is more mild in women
The Symptom:- irritable or tense feeling
- difficulty sleeping
- difficulty concentrating
- may have difficulty keeping friends or working, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thought or behaviors.
- lack of emotion (flat effect)
- strongly belief that aren't based on reality (delusions)
- hearing or seeing things aren't there (hallucinations)
- problems paying attention
- thoughts jump between unrelated topics
- bizarre behaviors
- social isolation
Types of schizophrenia and symptoms:paranoid:
- anxious
- angry or argumentative
- false beliefs that others are trying to harm you
disorganized:- problems with thinking and expressing ideas clearly
- childlike behavior
- showing little emotion
catatonic:- Undifferentiated schizophrenia symptoms can include symptoms of more than one type of schizophrenia.
- There are no medical tests to diagnose it
- psychiatrist should examine the patient to make the diagnosis
- the diagnosis is made based on an interview of the family members and the person
Questions are asked about:- characterized by illusions, hallucinations and paranoia
- Causes are unknown but, imbalance of chemicals in the brain is thought to be involved
- relatives often share the condition
- some cases are activated by drug abuse
- mineral and environmental deficiencies are associated with some cases
- excessive amounts of copper in the body has been linked with some cases of this disease
- is a mental illness that effects 1% of the population
- symptoms most frequently start in the teenage years or the twenties
- most common features are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, loss of interest in social activities, lack of energy and drive, and problems of attention, memory and decision making.
TreatmentLinks:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001925/
http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/elibweb/elib/do/document?set=search&dictionaryClick=&secondaryNav=&groupid=1&requestid=lib_standard&resultid=1&edition=&ts=2BE093F30D76E2A4DE2194071E5130E4_1320672795863&start=1&publicationId=&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B104474260
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/schizophrenia/conditions.html
Shelbie Masa & Anna Lin
Mrs. Geurin- English 10 Honors
11/18/11
The Diagnosis
Lena
It was just another day of school. I stood up and stretched before heading over to my closet. I slowly pulled on my favorite pink and white Cami with lace on the bottom; Still trying to wake myself up. I slid into my capris before turning around to get my bag and shoes, and there she was, laying there on my bed with her hands behind her head. She grinned at me and sat up to stare at me with her mahogany eyes, her brown curly hair flopping forward. "Evelynn?... How?.... When?...What?" She had started laughing at me, I guess because of how shocked I must have looked. She pointed to the window "It was open." This time I was the one who smiled, because, Evelynn would be the one to choose to climb up to my window instead of taking the door. The next thing I know, I hear screaming from down the hall. Zane.
Zane
"Wake up, come play with us." Zane rolled over in his bed, attempting to bury his head in a pillow. He didn't feel like hearing it today. "No. Can't you just leave me alone?"
"But Zaaaannnneeee, we want to play..." The voices got louder and louder as Zane tried to ignore them. "Stop it.... Stop...... STOP! CAN'T YOU EVER JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!!!!" He sat up and opened his eyes to throw a pillow at the person behind the voice, but nothing was there. He sighed in relief, after all, it was just a dream, and was just about to fall back asleep when the door slammed open. "ZANE?! Are you okay?!" The screeching of the door against the wood made Zane feel like nails were being driven into his ears. He sat up, and those same voices from his dreams came bubbling back to the surface. Their words swam around in his head as he tried to make sense of what they had meant when they asked to "play". "Ummmmmmmm... Zane? Are you okay?" Zane hadn't been concentrating on Lena, what she was saying seemed subordinate compared to the voices in his head. This was new for him, and it made him a bit scared since he figured it wasn't too normal to be hearing voices all the time. He finally pushed through all the debris in his head enough to mumble an answer: "I'm fine - it was just a nightmare."
Lena
I didn't believe him; if it was just a nightmare, he seemed very, very intimidated by it. But, I shrugged it off, 'cause everyone has one of those type of nightmares at least once. It didn't seem like a big deal to me, since I have them every single night. I wandered back to my room, twirling my hair since I was anxious to go to school and get the day over with. But, as I leaned over and picked up my bag, I noticed Evelynn was gone, and the window was closed. Where did she go? I thought.
The smell of bacon brought me downstairs to my mother making eggs and bacon for breakfast. The T.V. was on so I watched for a couple of minutes before my mom put my plate of food in front of me. The bacon was great, but the eggs always tasted a bit on the funny side to me. I finished the bacon and the pile of yellow goo and brought my plate over to the sink. "The eggs tasted funny again," I sneered. "You should work on them." I can feel my mom's eyes trying to vaporize a whole in the back of my head as I walked away. Just as I was picking up my bag (I had set down my bag on my chair when I came downstairs), Zane came downstairs.
Zane
"Good morning, son. Your breakfast is on the table waiting for you," their mother said to Zane.
"Oh, thanks," Zane said. As he was walking over to the table, he took a glance in the sink and saw that Lena's empty plate was already lying in the water, covered in bubbles. Mom must have slipped her medicine in the eggs again. he thought to himself.
Zane and his family had found out that Lena had schizophrenia a couple years ago. They had noticed that she had been having "difficulty sleeping", "problems paying attention" and "difficulty concentrating", among other things. Needless to say, they ended up taking her to the doctors when she starting yelling and screaming for help when a classmate picked up a scalpel to begin dissecting the frog in their Biology class, because she thought he was going to hurt her with it. The doctor had asked questions about things like "how long the symptoms have lasted" and had come to the conclusion that Lena had schizophrenia, and that he thought it was paranoid schizophrenia since she had been having "false beliefs that others are trying to harm" her and "anxious" behavior along with her being "angry" sometimes. The doctor had then told them that "most patients will benefit a treatment with medicines," but Lena didn't want to take them, so their mom started slipping them into her food to help her. Since "additional treatment along with medicine is also essential" Lena has been attending therapy sessions as well to help her.
Zane thought about this as he ate, and when he finished his breakfast and put his plate in the sink, he grabbed his backpack and his keys and called Lena to get ready to go to school. Everything was fine outside; it was nice enough out, and Zane thought it as just another regular day.
"Hey, Zane, come play with us." The voices started again. Then again. And again. Zane tried his best to ignore it, but he started to get a little paranoid. He began mumbling under his breath "Please just go away. Please."
"Did you say something?" Lena asked, looking confused.
"No, I was just thinking," Zane told his sister.
"Zaaaannnneeee... Come play with us." Zane didn't respond. Instead, he tried to focus on the road. Focus, focus, focus.
"Zane, don't ignore us. We can't be ignored, Zane. DON'T IGNORE ME ZANE!"
The voices started to get louder and louder again, and this time it didn't stop.
"JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP IT AND JUST GO AWAY!" Zane screamed.
"You'll be sssoooooorrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyy, Zane. You'll be sorry."
"What's wrong Zane?"
"The voices... They won't go away!"
Zane couldn't take it anymore. He didn't know where the voices were coming from; He looked all over but still didn't see anything. He looked behind him and in the back seats, but there was still nothing. The voices just kept repeating that same sentence over and over, sending chills down his back in little waves. "ZANE. WATCH OUT!!" Lena screamed. He turned around and CRASH. The last thing he saw was the flash of a tall oak tree as they ran off of the peripheral of the road.
A FEW HOURS LATER.......
Lena
I opened my eyes to find myself in a white room. I could hear babies crying and doctors yelling. I looked around and saw my mom sitting beside my brother's bed, talking. Zane had a bandage around his head, and his left foot was wrapped up in a cast. I looked down to find my arm wrapped in a white piece of cloth with blood all over it. I tried moving it, but all that happened was that I got hit with an acute pain. It was sore and it hurt, bad. My arm was a piece of meat that had just been tenderized. What happened? I thought to myself. The last thing I remembered was Zane driving us to school and how he had said the "voices" wouldn't go away.
I flashed back to when we were in the car. I remember sitting next to Zane and seeing the ominous look on his face, just before we crashed. I remember seeing Evelynn sitting in the back seat of Zane's car with a screwdriver in her hands, smiling at me. Did she loosen something or was it actually just an accident? Just then the doctor came in (He was older, maybe in his late forties, with silver hair and a face that looked weathered, but still eager to work and help people) wanting to talk to my mom and Zane about something. I listened to their conversation from the hospital bed just because I had nothing better to do, and I didn't know if they'd let me get up.
"I'm very sorry to have to tell you this news, but when we checked out your son for any problems, we noticed some symptoms. After we asked you and Zane some more questions we came to the conclusion that your son has schizophrenia," the doctor said. "Again we are so sorry to have to tell you this news, but we will give him medication right away. He should also be put in some form of therapy, to help him." Their mother nodded, and the doctor said, "I'll check in on you two in a little while, and then you may go home." The doctor left the room.
"No!" Zane said. "No, this can't be happening. There's no way. I can't. I can't."
On the car ride back home, my mother was the one who did all of the talking (most of it was about schizophrenia). She said how everything was going to be okay and that having schizophrenia was nothing bad if Zane takes his medication. She told us that the doctor said that "relatives often share the condition", and that it "is a mental illness that effects 1% of the population". She also said how Zane wasn't allowed to drive anymore (not that he can because his car got ruined in the crash) and also how my mom was taking away his license until he graduates. "It is way too dangerous for you to drive now that you are schizophrenic and you have a cast on your left foot. You can't even walk right now," my mother said. "But when you graduate, I promise I will give you back your license." So now we are stuck with riding the bus to school everyday, which means that we would have to wake up earlier too. I hate that. There's nothing worse than an overcrowded bus packed full of people as if we were sardines. The rest of the ride home we were told fact after fact, because our mom had thought it was a good idea that she knew even more about schizophrenia. She said that "symptoms most frequently start in the teenage years or the twenties" and how "genetic factors appeared to play a role", and filled our heads up like balloons until we popped. When we were halfway home, Zane put in his headphones to escape mom. I didn't have that luxury, so I stared out the window at the bright, sky blue sky filled with birds that I didn't know the name of, and daydreamed.
When we got home, I went straight up to my room. I walked in, and there she was. Evelynn was sitting on the edge of my bed with a sly look on her face.
"Did you like my little surprise?" Evelynn asked me. I stopped, frozen in a place, because I knew something was wrong. I remembered Evelynn in the back of the car; The screwdriver in her hand.
"You did it, didn't you? You caused the crash?!"
"Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Oh, and you know how Zane mentioned the voices? I did that too," Evelynn beamed with pride.
Lena nodded. "Why would you do this to me? Why Zane?"
"He took you away from me. We weren't as close because of him."
"And what did I do exactly? I thought we were friends?!"
"Serves you right for pushing me away. You should have never been taking those pills." Evelynn began laughing as I stared at her in confusion. Her outline began to shimmer, and she turned around, fading as she walked away, her laughter bouncing off the walls and echoing across the room.
Works Cited
"Schizophrenia." Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. 2004. eLibrary. Web. 18 Nov. 2011.
"Schizophrenia - PubMed Health." PubMed Health. A.D.A.M. Web. 2 Nov. 2011. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001925/>.
"What Is Schizophrenia? - Johns Hopkins Hospital." Johns Hopkins Medicine, Based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins University. Web. 7 Nov. 2011. <http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org
/psychiatry/specialty_areas/schizophrenia/conditions.html>.