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Diseases & Conditions

Schizophrenia Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

what is schizophrenia? Are there warning signs of schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that distorts people’s behaviors, movements, perception of reality, and also distorts their relations with their family and social environment. In schizophrenia, which is a chronic disease, patients tend to lose their connection with reality, behave differently, believe in unreal events, and change their personality.

It is a lifelong disease, and it requires constant treatment. With proper treatment, the disease can be controlled in patients with schizophrenia. In this way, patients can have a healthy individual and can be successful in their social relationships and business life. Here, we will explain schizophrenia causes, symptoms, and treatment in the text below.

What Is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a serious brain disease that prevents healthy individuals’ flow of thought, emotion control, and normal behavior and causes patients to be unable to distinguish between real and unreal. It often develops slowly. Early diagnosis and treatment are essential, and it helps to control the disease before serious complications develop. The disease generally consists of distorted thoughts, hallucinations, fear, and paranoia. Patients with schizophrenia do not have a split or multiple personality status, and most patients do not have a tendency to violence, and if they are supported by treatment, they can survive in society, with friends, with their families, or alone.

Schizophrenia Causes

The cause of schizophrenia has not been established. However, it is known that disorders in the chemical structure of the brain and genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development of the disease. People with a family history of schizophrenia or a different psychotic disorder are more likely to develop it. In the neuroimaging studies conducted to investigate the cause of the disease, it was concluded that the brain and central nervous system structure of schizophrenia patients differed from healthy individuals. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine and glutamate are thought to cause problems in brain chemistry.

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Schizophrenia Symptoms

Like in many other diseases, the symptoms of schizophrenia are less severe at the onset of the disease, and during this period, relatives may realize that only something is not going well. Besides, the symptoms of schizophrenia are:

  • Patients with schizophrenia believe in unrealistic events. These can be described as dreams or delusions.
  • Patients can see or hear things that are not real ( hallucinations ).
  • Irregular thought and speech is another common symptom in schizophrenia. Patients cannot express themselves as they speak, their answers may be partly or completely irrelevant to the question, and they can use meaningless words and meaningless sentences when speaking.
  • Irregular motor movements and behaviors may occur in patients with schizophrenia. Examples include childlike movements, agitation, difficulty in focusing on a target, unnecessary and exaggerated movements, resistance to instructions, resistance to instructions, inappropriate, and strange posture.

Schizophrenia Diagnosis

The symptoms of schizophrenia are noticed by their relatives of patients, firstly. Since there may be many psychiatric disorders whose symptoms are similar to those of schizophrenia, it is determined by the experts that the disease is schizophrenia with the help of schizophrenia symptoms test, examination, and diagnostic tests. Symptoms of the disease may also occur due to drug addiction, alcohol use, and side effects of certain medications.

Physical examination and tests, psychiatric assessment tests, blood tests, and medical imaging methods can be applied to clarify the diagnosis. As a result of all these applications, the treatment process is planned for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia by considering the severity of the disease.

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Schizophrenia Treatment

Schizophrenia is a chronic disease and requires lifelong treatment even if the symptoms are eliminated with medication. Antipsychotic drugs used for the treatment, and they can eliminate symptoms by acting on dopamine neurotransmitters in the brain.

The main aim of drug treatment is to eliminate the symptoms caused by the disease and to ensure that individuals live a life closer to healthy individuals in social and psychological terms. The type, dosage, and frequency of use of the drug can be changed if necessary, by the psychiatrists.

For drugs used in treatment have serious side effects, they are generally not desired to be used by patients. At this point, considering the patient’s willingness to cooperate in the treatment, it may be preferable to inject drugs in patients who are resistant to not taking medication.

It is possible to maintain a healthy life with the help of additional therapies such as individual therapies, family therapies, social skills training, and occupational rehabilitation in addition to drug treatment.

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