One of the complex diseases is schizophrenia. For the patient, his friends and family, this is a devastating and bewildering condition. A person with schizophrenia is unaware of his own degradation, the loss of certain functions. Friends and family members do not understand what is happening. Often, others attribute the observed symptoms to depression or think that the person is simply lazy or has changed his worldview. For doctors, schizophrenia is a long-term and progressive disorder. The longer the duration of the disease, the worse the prognosis. In this regard, the question of how to determine schizophrenia in a person by eyes, appearance, behavior, speech, thoughts, mood is extremely important.
What is schizophrenia?
This is a chronic disease, a severe mental disorder. Often it proceeds with a disabling character. Schizophrenia occurs in all countries. Statistical information indicates that out of 1,000 people, 7 to 9 people experience this disease during their lifetime.
There are many myths about schizophrenia. For example, the essence of one of them is that the disease is inherited. This is incorrect information. It is not the disease itself that is inherited, but the predisposition to its occurrence. If in a married couple both the husband and wife are sick with schizophrenia, this does not mean that they will have a sick child. The baby can be born completely he althy.
Another myth is that people with schizophrenia are dangerous, crazy or inferior members of society. This is also not true. Modern medicine has in its arsenal ways to treat this mental disorder. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia lead normal lives.
Before considering how to determine schizophrenia in a person by appearance, eyes, behavior, speech, thoughts, mood, let's pay more attention to the causes of this disease. Psychiatrists can not identify any specific cause. Various factors and mechanisms are considered: heredity, autoimmune process, structural and functional damage to some brain structures, etc. The most popular among specialists is the biopsychosocial model of the development of schizophrenia. The disease, according to this model, develops due to the combined influence of biological, psychological and social factors on the body.
How to identify schizophrenia in a person?
Scientific researchshowed that both women and men are equally susceptible to this disease. How to determine if a person has schizophrenia or not? The disease can give out strange speech. People with schizophrenia report hearing voices. Some patients say that they have enemies who plot against them and are going to kill them.
Certain changes occur in appearance. How to determine schizophrenia in a person by appearance - this is the question that cannot be answered in one way. Patients may be different. At times they are calm, depressed, irritable, inappropriately angry, overly cheerful and active.
You can still determine schizophrenia by the eyes. As a rule, patients do not like to look into the eyes. The look seems detached, empty, cold. No friendliness, eye play. It seems that a person looks inside himself. He can't concentrate on anything.
Still a lot depends on the form of the disease. For example:
- In indolent schizophrenia, symptoms in women and men include subtle personality changes. There is no productive symptomatology characteristic of schizophrenic psychoses.
- In the paranoid form, the patient is dominated by delirium, hallucinations are detected, there is no incoherence of speech, significant disturbances in the emotional sphere.
- Hebephrenic schizophrenia is characterized by inadequate emotions, foolish behavior, broken thinking.
Classification of symptoms of schizophrenia
All the symptoms that appear in schizophrenia are usually combined into syndromes. Syndromes exist 3species:
- Positive. They include symptoms that were previously absent in the psyche and which normally should not be observed in a he althy person.
- Negative. These are symptoms that reflect a person's loss of certain functions.
- Cognitive. This is a deterioration in cognitive functions (complex brain functions).
Positive Syndromes
And how to determine schizophrenia in a person? Recognize positive syndromes. They are noticeable because they are usually associated with the loss of reality. These include hallucinations, delusions, thinking disorders, etc.
A hallucination is an illusion, a deception that does not exist in reality. Such hallucinations are dangerous for the patient and those around, in which commanding voices are heard. A person with schizophrenia may obey orders and commit a crime or commit suicide. Signs indicating hallucinations:
- the patient is talking to himself;
- laughs for no reason;
- pauses and listens or looks at something.
Speaking of suicides. A person suffering from schizophrenia decides to take such a step not only because of hallucinations. Often depression leads to this act, accompanied by suicidal thoughts, self-accusation. Statistics show that approximately 40% of people with a diagnosis attempt to commit suicide. In 10-20% of cases, an attempt results in death.
If treatment manages to numb some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, this does not mean that the likelihood of suicidebecomes zero. The patient, despite everything, may have suicidal thoughts. There are certain risk factors for committing suicide. These include:
- depression;
- presence of a history of suicide attempts;
- young age;
- male;
- drug use;
- predominance of positive symptoms over negative ones;
- poor social support, etc.
Now let's talk about delirium, because on this basis it can be determined that a person has schizophrenia. As a rule, this symptom is observed often. Delusions are persistent inferences or beliefs that are not true. The patient cannot be persuaded. Brad is different in content. For example, highlight:
- nonsense of a special relationship, when it seems to the patient that the people around him think negatively about him, treat him badly;
- hypochondriacal delusions, when a person with schizophrenia thinks that he has an incurable disease, but not mental.
With schizophrenia, some people have confused thoughts, lost memory. The patient, taking some object, may forget why he did it. With an unfavorable course of the disease, illogical thinking is observed.
Negative syndromes
There is another answer to the question of how to determine schizophrenia in a person. This can be done by identifying negative symptoms. Modern experts refer to it as passivity. The patient's volitional activity is weakened. He is less motivated to do something. The patient is notI want to go to work, go shopping. He longs to be at home. However, in his own home, a person does not want to do anything. The patient ceases to observe even the elementary rules of personal hygiene.
Another negative symptomatology is autism. Interests are narrowing, asociality is observed. The patient does not want to and it is difficult to communicate with people. Also, with schizophrenia, movements are inhibited, speech becomes poorer.
Cognitive syndromes
Chizophrenia cannot be determined by cognitive symptoms. As a rule, they are invisible. Neuropsychological tests help to detect them.
So, cognitive symptoms include:
- memory problems (a person loses the ability to remember recently received information and apply it in the future);
- problems with concentration (difficulty concentrating, lability, poor switching);
- weakness of "control functions" (the patient does not process and assimilate information well, cannot make the right decisions).
Cognitive symptoms interfere with normal life. They lead to severe emotional distress.
The course of teenage schizophrenia at the initial stage
Schizophrenia can develop not only in adult men and women, but also in adolescents. The disease that manifests itself in children is similar in its course to the disease in adults. However, adolescent schizophrenia is less common.
There is also childhood schizophrenia. Research has shown thatthe disease can occur in a young child (for example, at the age of seven). But at the same time, practice shows that in extremely rare cases, the disease begins to develop before puberty.
How to identify schizophrenia in a teenager is a rather difficult question for both parents and specialists. The disease does not always proceed in the same way. In some adolescents, its course is more severe, in others it is less. In some cases, there may even be improvements.
A number of signs are referred to by specialists as early manifestations of schizophrenia. Adolescents with this diagnosis become, as a rule, closed. Previously, they normally communicated with their relatives, they had friends. Because of the disease, children gradually become less sociable. They stop talking to their parents, avoid contact with siblings, and lose friends.
Against the background of isolation, the interests of patients narrow. Children begin to study worse. Narrowing of interests, deterioration in academic performance are the initial signs of schizophrenia in adolescents, which do not arise because of laziness. Quite often, the following picture is observed: the child is intensively preparing for classes, but the learning outcomes do not improve, but only worsen. It is not laziness that is to blame, but illness.
Progression of disease in children
With further progression of schizophrenia, adolescents stop taking care of themselves. Some patients get into bad companies, under the influence of other people, they begin to commit various offenses. These teenagers don't regretabout sinking to the bottom of life. They do not realize this, consider other people backward and try to show others that they have a different understanding of life.
With the further development of the disease, symptoms such as hallucinatory and delusional disorders may occur:
- Auditory hallucinations are recorded in many cases. They are divided by specialists into different types - into command, dialogue, religious, haunting, etc. For example, with haunting hallucinations, children hear threats, someone tells them that something bad will happen to them. 40-60% of children with schizophrenia have visual hallucinations.
- An example of a delusional disorder is a case study that shows how to identify behavioral schizophrenia. The boy was admitted to the hospital. He was sure that he was a dog. The department seemed to him like a veterinary clinic. The patient demanded to be muzzled and given an injection.
The end phase of schizophrenia is a condition with catatonic hebephrenic disorders and apathetic or goofy dementia.
Psychopharmacotherapy
Unfortunately, schizophrenia is currently an incurable disease. However, therapy is still prescribed to eliminate symptoms, achieve remission, improve life.
If it was possible to recognize schizophrenia in a person, how to treat this disease? With this question, you need to consult a doctor. The treatment of schizophrenia is a complex process. One of the stages ispsychopharmacotherapy. Patients are prescribed antipsychotic drugs (neuroleptics). Medicines are selected by doctors, taking into account the severity of the condition, the duration of the disease, the stage of therapy, the individual characteristics of a particular patient, the severity of schizophrenia syndromes.
One example of an antipsychotic drug is Aripiprazole. This drug is used in the treatment of schizophrenia, manic episodes in severe and moderate type I bipolar disorder. Also, the drug is effective in the prevention of new manic episodes, and can be used as an adjunct to antidepressant therapy. Side effects are possible. At the initial stage, some patients experience sleep disturbances, nausea, and vomiting.
Another example drug is Olanzapine. It is highly effective against negative and positive symptoms, as well as against affective (emotional) syndromes (mood disorders). In the process of using this drug, side effects may occur - a sedative, hypnotic effect, increased appetite, increased blood sugar levels.
Doctors do not always manage to find the right drug the first time, because all people are different. For one patient, a particular medicine helps, and for another it turns out to be ineffective. Sometimes you have to try several drugs.
Psychosocial Therapy
An important role in the treatment of schizophrenia is played by psychosocial therapy. It is carried out after stabilization of the condition with antipsychotic drugs. The patient is provided with psychological assistance, which helps him to cope with communication difficulties, gain motivation, understand the importance of adherence to the medication regimen. Patients through psychosocial therapy begin to attend school, work, socialize.
Psychosocial therapy also includes family he alth education. It is very important that relatives are not left alone, do not abandon, do not aggravate the situation. In the course of he alth education, recommendations are given to family members:
- Relatives must be patient. The recovery process is very long. It is also important to understand that the patient may relapse. Schizophrenia is a chronic illness with no cure.
- It is important to make sure that the patient takes the medicine correctly. Improper use of funds negatively affects the effectiveness of treatment.
- You can not swear with the patient, raise your hand to him. It is recommended that you always behave calmly.
- It should be easier to communicate with patients. You should not argue with him, convince him of the unreality of everything he talks about.
- It is important to improve the patient's social skills so that he can live and work normally. You can not close yourself in the circle of illness. You should keep in touch with relatives, get together more often and communicate.
Placement of a patient in a boarding school
Caring for someone with schizophrenia can be a very heavy burden in some cases. There are some patients whose remission periods are very short and superficial. It's hard with people like that.live under one roof. They absolutely do not obey, they do whatever they want. In such cases, there is one way out - placing the patient in a psycho-neurological boarding school (PNI).
How to identify a person with schizophrenia in a boarding school? The basis for admission to this institution is the personal application of the patient. If a person is recognized as incompetent, then he must still write a statement himself. The conclusion of the medical commission with the participation of a psychiatrist is additionally attached to this document. If the patient, due to his condition, cannot submit a personal application, then the decision on placement in a psycho-neurological boarding school is made by the guardianship and guardianship body, taking into account the conclusion of the medical commission with the participation of a psychiatrist.
The question of how to determine whether a person has schizophrenia or not is extremely important, because the sooner the treatment of this disease begins, the better the further prognosis. According to statistics, 1 out of 4 people with this diagnosis recovers within 5 years of therapy. For others, treatment improves symptoms and prolongs remissions.
