What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a condition characterised by disturbances in a person's thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behaviour. It affects approximately one in every 100 people worldwide and first onset commonly occurs in adolescence or early adulthood. Schizophrenia is not a single illness. It is in fact a cluster of illnesses, which have overlapping signs and symptoms. It is therefore important to acknowledge the unique experience of each person living with schizophrenia.
While schizophrenia can be a devastating illness for the people who experience it as well as for their families, it is important to recognise that there is hope. Treatments, both medical and psychosocial, are becoming more effective. Recently introduced early intervention programs are demonstrating encouraging outcomes for people with early psychosis and the concerns of consumers and their carers, such as those relating to empowerment and quality of life, are being increasingly recognised.
Schizophrenia is a complex disorder with few generalisations holding true for all people diagnosed. In practice, there appears to be as many forms of schizophrenia as there are individuals experiencing the illness.

Signs and Symptoms.

A person diagnosed with schizophrenia may demonstrate auditory hallucinations, delusions, and disorganised and unusual thinking and speech. These may range from loss of train of thought and subject flow, with sentences only loosely connected in meaning. Social isolation commonly occurs for a variety of reasons. Impairment in social Congnition is associated with schizophrenia, as are symptoms of paranoia from delusions and hallucinations, and the negative symptoms of apathy or lack of motivation also know as avolition. In one uncommon subtype, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation. These are signs of catatonia. No one sign is diagnostic of schizophrenia, and all can occur in other medical and psychiatric conditions. The current classification of psychoses holds that symptoms need to have been present for at least one month in a period of at least six months of disturbed functioning. A schizophrenic-like psychosis of shorter duration is termed a schizofreniform disorder.
Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of schizophrenia. These are critical periods in a young adult's social and vocational development, and they can be severely disrupted. To minimize the effect of schizophrenia, much work has recently been done to identify and treat the pre-onset phase of the illness, which has been detected up to 30 months before the onset of symptoms, but may be present longer.
Those who go on to develop schizophrenia may experience the non-specific symptoms of social withdrawal, irritability and dysphora in the prodromal period, and transient or self-limiting psychotic symptoms in the prodromal phase before psychosis becomes apparent.

Common Schizophrenic Behavior

When a person has Schizophrenia there are a number of behavioral changes that they go through. Some include:
Substance Abuse
Nicotine Dependence
Disordered Thinking
Apathetic Personality
Changing "Normal VS Abnormal" Behaviors -These Changes in behavior can be the result of medication adjustments.

Schizophrenic patients should be carefully watched as suicide is a serious danger. If an individual tries to commit suicide or threatens to do so, professional help should be sought immediately.
People with schizophrenia have a higher rate of suicide than the general population. Approximately 10% of people with schizophrenia (especially younger adult males) commit suicide. Unfortunately, the prediction of suicide in people with schizophrenia can be especially difficult.