Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by abnormal behavior, strange conversations and a decreased ability to understand reality. Other symptoms may include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, hearing voices that do not exist, reduced social engagement and emotional expression.

Symptoms and signs of schizophrenia
Symptoms and signs of schizophrenia do vary depending on the individual.
Positive symptoms
Positive symptoms: Also known as psychotic symptoms, for example are delusions and
hallucinations.
– Delusions: the patient displays false beliefs which can take many forms such as delusions of persecution or grandeur. They may feel others are attempting to control them remotely.
– Hallucinations: hearing voices is much more common than seeing or feeling things which are not there; however, people with schizophrenia may experience a wide range of hallucinations.
– Unstructured speech: the patient may jump from one subject to another for no logical reason.
– Irregular behaviors: such as strange physical signs or inappropriate behavior.

Negative symptoms
Negative symptoms: are the absence or lack of normal behavior, such as poor expression of emotions, lack of motivation, lack of social relationships, lack of cleanliness in addition to neglecting the basics of life such as sleeping and eating.
Symptoms of confusion
Abnormal or incoherent speech, slurring words or having long pauses during speech, sudden changes in emotion.
Sub-types of schizophrenia:
– Paranoid Schizophrenia: A person with schizophrenia may have false beliefs or delusions that an individual or a group of people are conspiring to harm them. They may spend time thinking about ways to protect themselves from the people they believe are persecuting them.
– Disorganized schizophrenia: Disorganized thinking and behavior are features of schizophrenia. The person may have incoherent and illogical thoughts and speech.
– Strange behavior: Acting in an odd or repetitive way.
– Catatonia: Catatonia can also include decreased motion activity and engagement whch means that the patient virtually stops all movements.
– Undifferentiated schizophrenia: Your diagnosis may have some signs of paranoid, hebephrenic or catatonic schizophrenia, yet it doesn’t obviously fit into one of these types alone.
*Causes of schizophrenia:
Genetic inheritance, drug addiction, hallucinogenic pills and steroids, chemical imbalance in the brain, stressful experiences often precede the emergence of schizophrenia, in addition to suspect trauma before birth factor may contribute to the development of the disease.
Schizophrenia treatment
– Medications: Medications reduce the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, usually allowing a the patient to function more effectively and appropriately.
– Psychological and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: This type can help treat some of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, such a lack of enjoyment and teach that patient on how to replace this negative thinking with more realistic and useful thoughts.
– Electroconvulsive therapy: Known is a key point in the treatment of schizophrenia.
