Living With Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, like many other disorder may have persistent symptoms while also having really bad attacks or episodes. These episodes may be hard to control and most of the medications and procedures to manage it rely on predicting when a bad episode is going to start so that emergency medications can be administered. One of the most significant markers is that of confused or garbled speech which makes no sense.

While patients with schizophrenia can have both visual and auditory hallucinations, the latter tend to be far more common and a warning sign for an impending episode of severe schizophrenia. The biggest problems with auditory hallucinations are that it makes the person act in such a way that can have adverse outcomes such as violent and aggressive behavior. If any of your loved ones is coping with this psychologically debilitating disorder and has started hearing voices and acting on them by doing illogical things, this may be a clear sign that they are on the brink of facing a severe episode.

While genetics may play a role in the development of schizophrenia, it is a very small proportion compared to the number of people who develop it without any genetic predisposition. If anyone in your family has this disorder, the chances of you developing it are only about 10%. Most of the schizophrenic patients however, don t have any family history of the disorder. Over 60% of the Schizophrenic patients have no one in their family with this disorder.

This is a very common misconception that Schizophrenics can harm others when having a psychotic or delusional episode. While their behavior can be aggressive and violent, the tendency is to break stuff around the house rather than hitting people. However, the tendency to harm themselves is much higher as many schizophrenic patients have committed suicide when having a severe episode. If you are close to such a person, it is important to monitor their activities from a distance to stop them from harming themselves.