Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia in recent reports have been found to be decreasing rather than increasing which is good thing in my own opinion. Personally I have never dealt with schizophrenia first hand, and I don't have any family or friends with schizophrenia either. I did a little research on this disorder and PsychCentral has given a really great description on the history of schizophrenia and what it is presently.

History of Schizophrenia:
People who suffered from this illness were thought to be possessed by demons. They were feared, tormented, exiled or they were locked up forever. People who imagine a person with schizophrenia as being more violent or out of control than a person who has another kind of serious mental illness.

What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is characterized by a broad range of unusual behaviors that cause profound disruption in the lives of people suffering from the condition, as well as in the lives of the people around them.


What does Schizophrenia conclude?

Delusions and hallucinations are common in schizophrenia. An obvious kinds of impairments that are caused by schizophrenia involves how a person thinks. They lose the ability to rationally evaluate their surroundings and interactions with others. They have trouble understanding what is true reality and what is not. And most of the things that they see, they believe to be their true reality when it really isn't.


This disorder reminds me of Criminal Minds. If any of you are familiar with that T.V show series should know what I am talking about, but for those that aren't I'll explain. In Criminal Minds special agent Dr. Spencer Reid's mother had schizophrenia, but there is an entire episode focusing on a person who has schizophrenia. The episode is called "with friends like these" which as I stated focuses on a person who is being manipulated. It has voices as actual characters was a convincing way of showing how afflicted and defenseless a schizophrenic who is constantly paranoid can be. You can see the part 1 of the clip here with friends like these part 2

People with schizophrenia act in an extremely paranoid manner. I had no idea that nearly 1/3 of people that are diagnosed with schizophrenia attempt suicide. I also didn't know that 10% of those will commit suicde  within 20 years of beginning of the disorder.

The relationship of schizophrenia and substance abuse is significant. According to the site I mention (PsychCentral) due to impairments in insight and judgement, people with schizophrenia may be less able to judge and control the temptations are associated with drugs or alcohol abuse.

The website has a lot of information that you can read dealing with Schizophrenia. To read up on it here is the PsychCentral website: All about Schizophrenia and Psychosis 

Here are just a few signs of schizophrenia:

Social isolation and withdrawal

• Irrational, bizarre or odd statements or beliefs
• Increased paranoia or questioning others' motivations
• Becoming more emotionless
• Hostility or suspiciousness
• Increasing reliance on drugs or alcohol (in an attempt to self-medicate)
• Lack of motivation 

Feel free to offer your own opinions and thoughts about schizophrenia, and I hope you guys enjoyed my post. 

psychcentral

Major Depressive Disorder

When I was in high school I had Major Depression. For a couple of years I was really withdrawn, and only had a small amount of people I considered friends, a long with at that time my boyfriend. Counseling never helped, and I never really liked talking to anyone because I had that mentality that those people were only doing their jobs and never really wanted the best for me. I would cry all the time at night, went days without eating, felt like a failure to my friends and family and insomnia was one of my greatest weaknesses. I literally could go days without sleeping and it even reached the point where doctors had to give me anti depressants to help me. However, I was forbidden to take those medications because my parents, well my mom did not want me to take them. I lost a majority of my friends because I tended to be kind of morbid, at that time all I would talk about is ways to die, or [I wonder how the world would be like if I wasn't around] or [would people be happier had I died when I was a baby and not survive being born prematurely].

Though shame followed me for a long time, I have small marks on my arms and legs to show that cutting was my way out of the unhappiness I kept feeling. It's a nasty road to go down because there is nothing worse in someone's life than feeling empty and surrounded by nothing but darkness all the time. I would like to blame the guy I was dating at that time for my emotional instability, because he would constantly tell me that [no one but him will ever love me] or that my family doesn't love me, because if they did they wouldn't [constantly shove losing weight down my back]. I was constantly given diet pills, constantly thrown in exercise programs, constantly having to work out, and constantly changing diets despite me being at a normal weight level. My unhappiness grew, and I became socially withdrawn. After awhile, I stopped caring that all my friends left me, because I still had my boyfriend [at that time] and I still had my best friend who was like my sister at my side. My depression got deeper the last semester of my senior year when that best friend betrayed me to the greatest extent, and after that with that boyfriend breaking up our relationship for stupid reasons. It felt like the remains of my world crashing and burning before me with no way of escape.

Today, presently, I don't feel like I am in that dark void. Did I seek help? I wanted to, but I didn't. I sought help from my church, and God. It took a while but eventually God paved a way for me to be happy, and though at times I am battling with a small side of my depression that has yet to leave me, and though there are times where I feel unhappy with myself, or I feel like everything is going wrong over and over again....I choose to think that God, perhaps is preparing me for something greater. It eases the pain somehow, and the whole I had/have tends to gradually fill up, thoughts of suicide turn to thoughts of life.

I don't believe in medication, and I probably never will. It's probably because of what I went though, that I made myself mentally stronger, but at the same time mentally weaker. I get emotional really fast, and I do blame myself for things I shouldn't, and I over think many-many-many things and that is probably why my stress is so high, especially with how things are with my family at the moment. But, even though I am physically tired, and the problems in my life are increasing, I don't think I'm in that state of Major Depression again, because I'm getting stronger when back then I wasn't.

Major Depression, according to PsychCentral in their article Depression and MDD talks about this disorder.

Clinical depression is characterized by the presence of the majority of these symptoms:

• Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feeling sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful). (In children and adolescents, this may be characterized as an irritable mood.)
• Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day
• Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day.
• Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day
• Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day
• Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day
• Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide 

here is a video that talks about MDD Major Depressive Disorder project

Panic disorders

I am sure there are many of you besides myself who have experience a state of fear or mild panic attacks. However, for those of you that have no experienced severe fear, anxiety or severe panic attacks, it is very difficult to know how to help someone struggling through that moment. During those moments of a state of panic that you yourself is not experiencing, and not knowing what to do or say can be just as equally devastating because it makes you feel hopeless. A panic disorder is what most books, doctors and psychologist categorize as a frequent period of anxiety and occasional attacks of rapid breathing, increased heart rate, sweating and trembling. It's an extreme arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. I have personally have had a panic attack, just not to the extreme, my mom on the other had has had very severe panic attacks. There was this one time, she was driving home after work, and all of a sudden her breathing became very loud, unsteady, rapid, her eyes got wide, her hands started shaking  and she hit one of those giant dumpster trash cans, and scratched the side of the car really bad, well when she got home her body was shaking so bad she crawled under our bread counter and stayed there for awhile hugging her knees. My dad had to try and talk her out of that state for about ten minutes, really it was crazy. 

 The WebMD website gave an awesome insight of panic disorders, the symptoms to look at. A few symptoms besides the ones I listed above include:

• "Racing" heart
• Feeling weak, faint, or dizzy
• Tingling or numbness in the hands and fingers
• Sense of terror, or impending doom or death
• Feeling sweaty or having chills
• Chest pains
• Breathing difficulties
• Feeling a loss of control

The website for this article, like I said you can find it at panic Attack Symptoms
What I found really interesting and fascinating was the fact that people who have panic attacks have a lot of fear because they never know when they might have another attack. I did not know however that it affects over 2 millions people in the U.S between 18 and 54.