Schizophrenia is a major personality disorder, a distortion of thought. Those who suffer often have the feeling of being controlled by alien forces. They have delusions that they can be extravagant, with impaired perception, abnormal affect unrelated to the situation and understand autism as insulation.

The deterioration of mental function in these patients has reached a degree which markedly interferes with their ability to meet some ordinary demands of life and maintain adequate contact with reality. The psychotic does not live in this world (dissociation between reality and their world), since there is a denial of reality unconsciously. He is unaware of their disease.

Schizophrenic cognitive activity is not normal, there are inconsistencies, disconnections and there is great impact on language, for not thinking or reasoning as normal.

The onset of the disease may be acute, i.e. you can start from one moment to another with a crisis delirious, manic state, a depressive with psychotic content or a confused state of dreaming. You can also arise insidiously and progressively.

The average age of onset in men between 15 and 25 years and women aged 25 to 35 years. However, may appear before or after, although it is rare that arises before age 10 or after 50 Amos’s.

Symptoms of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia may have a variety of symptoms. Usually, the disease develops slowly over months or even years.

Initially, symptoms may not be noticeable, for example, a person may feel tense, have trouble sleeping or having trouble concentrating. People become isolated and withdrawn and have trouble making or keeping friends.

As the illness continues, psychotic symptoms develop:

* An appearance or mood that shows no emotion (flat affect)
* Bizarre motor behavior in which there is less reaction to the environment (catatonic behavior)
* False beliefs or thoughts that have nothing to do with reality (delusions)
* Hearing, seeing or feeling things that are not there (hallucinations)
* “Jumping” of thought between unrelated topics (disordered thinking)

Treatment.
Schizophrenia is not curable but it is a disease that can be treated and controlled with great success. Sometimes people leave treatment because of medicine side effects, their disorganized thinking or because they believe that madicine no longer work. People with schizophrenia who stop taking prescribed medication are at high risk of relapse into an acute psychotic episode.

* Hospitalization. People who have acute symptoms of schizophrenia may require intensive treatment including hospitalization. Sometimes you need to hospitalize a person to control severe delusions and hallucinations, serious suicidal thoughts, inability to care for yourself or serious drug and alcohol problems that worsen the symptoms.

Medications. The primary medications for schizophrenia are called antipsychotic. Antipsychotic help relieve the positive symptoms of schizophrenia by helping to correct the imbalance of brain chemicals necessary for communication between neurons. As with drug treatments for other physical illnesses, many patients who suffer from serious mental illness may need to try several different antipsychotic medications before finding the medication or combination of medicines that work better.

* New antipsychotic atypical. In the last decade, they have introduced new antipsychotic atypical. Compared with old antipsychotic “conventional” appear to be equally effective in reducing positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. However, new medicine may outweigh the former in relieving negative symptoms and detachment, problems with thinking and lack of energy. The atypical antipsychotic include risperidone (Risperdal), clozapine (Clozaril), olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel) and ziprasidone (Geodon).

* The current guidelines for medicinal recommend using one of the atypical antipsychotic (not clozapine) as first line treatment of patients who were newly diagnosed with schizophrenia. Although the shift to atypical antipsychotic may not be best for all people, currently taking conventional antipsychotic should ask their doctor whether they should switch to atypical antipsychotic, in part by the decrease in the risk of tardive present late. People who are thinking about changing medicines should always talk to your doctor to work together to determine the safest and most effective treatment possible.