(skit-so-FREN-ee-uh / skit-so-FREE-nee-uh)
Origin: Greek
The term schizophrenia translates roughly as "shattered mind" and comes from the Greek schizo, "to split" or "to divide" and phren, "mind".
Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances. Schizophrenia is associated with dopamine imbalanaces in the brain and defects of the frontal lobe and is cause by genetic, other biological, and psychosocial factors.
Diagnosis is based upon the self-reports by individuals of abnormal experiences in combination with secondary signs observed by a clinician. According to the American Psychiatric Assocation, a certain combination of specific symptoms must be present for diagnosis that cannot possibly be a result of organic disturbance. Individuals must also show continuous signs of the illness for at least six months where normal functioning has deteriorated and an acute period of active symptoms must be present for at least one week.
Positive symptoms are characterized as manifestations of psychosis, including delusions (irrational beliefs), hallucinations (sensory perceptions with no outside stimulus), and thought disorder (i.e. loosened associations).
Negative symptoms include flat affect, social withdrawal, lack of motivation and initiative, impaired judgment and speech, and difficulty in planning.
Combinations of these symptoms in co-occurrence are used to determine the type of schizophrenia at hand. Subtypes include paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual types.
if goes untreated, a person typically demonstrates grossly disorganized thinking as well as delusions or hallucinations
primarily affects cognition, but can also affect behavior or emotion.
because of the many possibly combinations of symptoms and the subtypes they produce, Eugen Bleuler deliberately called the disorder "the schizophrenias" (plural) when he coined the current name.
affectly approximately 1% of the population and the onset of schizophrenia typically occurs in late adolescense or early adutlhood with men showing earlier symptoms than women.
