Schizophrenia is a mental disorder, which severely impacts the way 1% of people worldwide think, feel, and act. The term comes from the Greek, schizo meaning ‘splitting’ and phrenia meaning ‘of the mind’. Therefore schizophrenia literally can be defined as a split mind or when modern day would say two sided person. This disorder makes it hard for a person to see the difference between real and imagined experiences. It weakens their abilities to think …show more content…
A psychiatrist should examine the person and make the diagnosis. The diagnosis is made based on an interview of the person and family members.Diagnosing schizophrenia is based on observing patients’ actions. But doctors use certain tests to make sure nothing else as at the root of the symptoms.
Some of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia include:
• Delusions- false, strong beliefs
• Hallucinations- hearing, seeing, or sensing something that is really not there
• Thought disorder- thoughts and speech are jumbled that a person thinks someone is interfering with their mind
Negative symptoms:
• Loss of drive- lack of drive and motivation which is part of illness and not laziness
• Blunted emotions- ability to express emotions are lost as well as lack of response or inappropriate …show more content…
A follow-up of ten children with this disease from fourteen to thirty-four years after its onset found them still diagnosed with schizophrenia but with relatively few delusions or hallucinations. Instead they tended to be quiet and withdrawn with poverty of thought and lack of drive. A minority of children with schizophrenia will recover can do quite well as adults, but what percentage this constitutes is uncertain. It is generally thought that the earlier the age of onset of schizophrenia, the worse the outcome is likely to be, but there are major exceptions to this