Schizophrenia

SCHIZOPHRENIA

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Schizophrenia is a condition that is widely misunderstood, the stigma attached to the condition is so great that most sufferers will attempt to disguise or mask the severity of the condition.

This is even worse is some ethnic sectors of our society, unfortunately people tend to view sufferers as mad people and very dangerous to themselves as well as others, in some communities families will hide the condition because of stigma from within their ethnic kinsmen

I interviewed a cross section of family members of sufferers and they explained to me, that one of the key factors of this behaviour is that within their community if they are stigmatised with schizophrenia their daughters will not find a spouse and will have to marry from outside their community.

What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a medical condition described as a biological disease of the brain that ebbs and flows.

 Sufferers experience acute periods called “relapses”; this is when a patient experience additional sensations to their usual repertoire of feelings.

These additional feelings are called “positive symptoms” Unfortunately they are not positive actions; they consist of hallucinations, delusions, and thought confusion.

These symptoms return periodically and can be triggered by a variety of factors including stress.

They respond to anti psychotic medication, calm interaction and decreased stimuli.

On the other hand, in between these acute periods are  various stages of “convalescence”, it is during these stage that patients will  frequently experience periods of “negative symptoms”  which are an opposite to the former.

These are subtractions from the normal repertoire of feelings, resulting in symptoms such as loss of energy, loss of warmth, loss of interest ,  loss of humour ,  these are more psychological symptoms but some medical treatment are available to assist the patient.

What are Hallucinations?

Hallucination is described as a false perception or inaccuracies that affect the senses and cause the patient to experience a range of characteristic behaviour, such as to hear voices and other sounds, smell things, see things and even believe they can physically touch and feel things that others cannot.

The degree to which these symptoms are perceived differently, sometimes they are experienced as very forceful and very important thoughts, emanating from external sources, and as such are heard as conversations between other people, ranging from, the reassuring voice to the voice of menace with commands to carry out actions, or simple compliments to the patient and in some cases insults to the patient.

Schizophrenia sufferers describe the experience as the sensation of having a broadcasting device implanted to their head and playing a command over and over.

Some will explain it as a supernatural occurrence and they are been given some sort of divine message

During periods of convalescence, patients are in control of these “voices”; they can often summon and dismiss them at will. In most cases they may learn to ignore them.

During acute periods, the hallucinations, usually the same ones over   and over, take control and the patient feels victimized and powerless to the voices.

Antipsychotic medication and reduced stress help during times of these episodes. Also keeping busy helps the patient “drown out” the voices

What are Delusions?

Delusions can be described as the misinterpretation of events or the significance of the event and false beliefs.

Schizophrenia patients may conclude that an accidental encounter such as a person bumping into them on the road is an assassination attempt on their lives.

There is an increased tendency to personalize and misinterpreted events especially in times of increased stress and fatigue.

Delusions are unreasonable interpretation of events. Creating unrealistic beliefs

The beliefs are tenaciously held, against all reason, and they are characteristically not shared beliefs. They are held only by the person himself and by no one else.

During acute periods these convictions become fixed and attempts to reason with the patient may lead the patient to even more distrust and anger and the belief that every one around them is part of the plot, or a wider conspiracy.

Talking Nonsense

Talking nonsense tends to occur at the more active phase of schizophrenia, this can be brought on by a stressful event or string of events, or when medication is skipped or too low a dose is taken.

The characteristics are an incomprehensible ramble, made up of unconnected sentences, a rampant change of topic of discussion at a frequency only understood by the patient.

Words seem to have a special meaning to a schizophrenia sufferer as they tend to identify with certain words and can even associate some words with evil. An example of this occurrence, For instance “psychiatry” may sound like “sigh Kaya tree” and the topic may switch suddenly from a discussion of psychiatry to a discussion about mystical trees.

Aggressive or Violent Behaviour

Contrary to popular belief, aggressive or violent behaviour are not classic symptoms, associated with schizophrenia, these occur more frequently with other mental health related disorders that are not linked to schizophrenia.

This behaviour when it does occur, can happen in conjunction with hallucination, delusion and jumbled thoughts.

This behaviour is triggered by stress and abates when anti psychotic medication is taken as prescribed.

Although violence is not common is schizophrenia, it may become a pattern with some schizophrenics

Restlessness, anxiety, tension & agitation are words describing similar states. None of these are positive symptoms of schizophrenia but, like aggressive behaviour, they tend to occur in conjunction with the positive symptoms. They may result from fear & apprehension, as a response to the frightening aspects of hallucinations & delusions

Tremor

This is a rhythmic contraction of muscles, usually seen in the extremities. The tremor is usually not particularly bothersome to the patient.