Schizophrenia
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Schizophrenia is a type of mental illness. Schizophrenia causes problems with behaviour (the way people act), thinking, emotions, motivation and is linked to psychosis. People with schizophrenia are often thought to have 'lost touch with reality'.
The word schizophrenia comes from the Greek words σχίζω (schizo, break) and φρενός (frenos, mind) and means "shattered mind". Psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin was the first person to separate schizophrenia from other types of mental illness. He called it 'dementia praecox', and it was later renamed 'schizophrenia'.
While people of many ages can have schizophrenia, most often it starts in early adulthood. For many people, the symptoms of schizophrenia will return throughout their life, although some people will have only one or two episodes. The exact cause of schizophrenia is not known, although many things are known to influence the condition. Scientists have discovered that both life experiences and the biology of the brain and body are important. Schizophrenia is partly genetic (passed on within families) and can be triggered by trauma (disturbing experiences).
Schizophrenia is usually treated by the use of drugs which affect the brain, and by training people to understand their thoughts and behaviour with psychotherapy. About one out of every ten people with schizophrenia dies by suicide (killing self).
The famous mathematician John Forbes Nash had schizophrenia. John Forbes Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994. He got the prize for his contributions to game theory. His life is protrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind.
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[edit] Symptoms
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- Hallucination': Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling things, which are not there.
- Delusions: Thoughts that do not make sense.
- Improper behavior: Person does things that do not make sense.
- Formal thought disorder: Thoughts are confused and mixed up. This can cause a person to say things that do not make sense, and to think in illogical ways.
(Simple "schizophrenia", also called "schizophrenic" autism, negative schizophrenia(in other words, not schizophrenia), "schizoidia", or "schizoid" personality disorder, is an autistic disorder, has no schizophrenic symptoms, and is properly named neurotic intraversion)
[edit] Treatment
Treatment of schizophrenia is often very useful. Drugs called anti-psychotics can decrease the positive symptoms. The negative symptoms are harder to treat.
[edit] Prognosis
Many people with schizophrenia can live good lives. Keeping taking medicine is important to prevent relapses (symptoms suddenly returning). About one-third people with schizophrenia get totally healed, about one-third improve a lot, and about one-third remain sick.
