Schizophrenia Research: Biology Genetics Environment

Schizophrenia Research Paper
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Schizophrenia Research Paper
Schizophrenia is a condition whose clinical signs, symptoms, causes and cognitive characteristics have been described. There are pharmacological treatments for this condition though they are likely to be palliative. However, the available literature and knowledge about this condition has not explained its pathophysiology or etiology. Scientists have discovered that the risk factors for the illness are genetic and they anticipate that the contributions from the new genetic information in the human genome will help in progressing towards discovering the mechanism of the condition. There are current efforts such as brain-imaging that are aimed at helping to understand the problem well. The brain-imaging techniques have opened up the schizophremic brain for direct inquiries, in terms of structure, neurochemistry, and function.
Definition
Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness that starts at young adults and can last for a life time. The prodromal symptoms precede the acute psychosis involving cognitive and negative symptoms. However, it is still unknown to whether the condition presents a single illness or a syndromal diagnosis thus the need for enough literature that well help to define disease subgroups. Since the disease has been around enough, clinicians have enough knowledge on the characteristics, intervention programs and response to people who have started to develop the characteristics of the disease (Myers, 1998).
Symptoms
The disease changes how one thinks, feels, and acts. Therefore, its symptoms vary in the patients who have suffered from the disease. The symptoms are seasonal (they come and go) and no one will have all of them at the same time or all through. Generally, the symptoms are classified into three kinds:
* Positive Symptoms
* Negative Symptoms
* Cognitive Symptoms
These symptoms usually begin in young adults of between 16-30 years old. Men tend to get them earlier than women.
When the condition is at its peak and symptoms are severe, the patients are not able to tell which is real and which is not though it happens less often as they are getting old. Those who have suffered from this condition are not aware that they are suffering from it until a doctor tells them. Also they are not able to realize that something odd is happening to them. Those who are able to notice this chokes it up and associate the symptoms with stress or tiredness (Berger, 2015).
* Positive Symptoms.
These changes to the patients are "add-ons" to their normal behavior. They start thinking or doing things they never did or thought of before. They include:
Hallucinations: These are virtual voices (hearing voices that are not there). The patients will start hearing seeing, smelling or hearing things that other people are not. Most often they will hear voices in their heads. These voices might tell what they are supposed to do, give them warnings of any danger, or say mean things. They voices might be talking to each other or talk directly to them.
Delusions: These are beliefs which are not true. These beliefs are strange to the patients are they are easy to be proven wrong. The affected...