Schizophrenia

a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

Positive vs Negative Symptoms

Negative Symptoms:-Patient expresses little to no emotion-poverty of speech-inability to experience pleasure-lack of motivation (they stop taking as much care of themselves and tend to not feel the need to eat or drink or take showers.

Positive Symptoms:

-delusions-distorted thoughts and speech-usually respond well to antipsychotic medication-find facial perception difficult.

There are many subtypes of SCHIZOPHRENIA

Catatonic Schizo

Residual Schizo

Disorganised Schizo

Paranoid Schizo

Medication:It’s very hard for a psychiatrist to diagnose a patient of schizophrenia. This is because many other mental

disorders such as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) or Psychosis have similar symptoms.

In schizophrenia, antipsychotic medications is proven effective in treating acute psychosis and reducing the risk of future psychotic episodes. The treatment of thus has two main phases: an acute phase, when higher doses might be necessary in order to treat psychotic symptoms, followed by a maintenance phase, which is usually life-long. During the maintenance phase, dosage is often gradually reduced to the minimum required to prevent further episodes and control inter-episode symptoms. If symptoms reappear or worsen on a lower dosage, an increase in dosage may be necessary to help prevent further relapse.