Schizophrenia is a mental disease that generally appears in a person in early childhood or late adolescence. This mental disorder is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and several other cognitive impairments. Schizophrenia can be a lifelong struggle for people affected with this disease. People suffering from this mental disorder may hear sounds and voices that are not there in reality. Some patients suffering from schizophrenia can feel and even convince themselves that others are reading their minds, plotting against them or controlling how they are thinking.
Schizophrenic patients often remain withdrawn and feel distressed or even act fanatically at times.
People living with schizophrenic patients often find hard to understand what the patient is talking about. In certain instances schizophrenic patient’s remains completely still, without taking for days. On other occasions, schizophrenic patients, when they seem to feel fine, may start explaining what they are truly thinking about. It is a very true fact that the effects of this mental disease reach far beyond the patients themselves. It also affects their friends, families and the society. A sizable proportion of schizophrenic patients have to rely on others for their daily sustenance, since they often become unable to hold any job or take care of themselves. Many schizophrenia patients also resist their treatments as they feel that they are normal, and there is nothing wrong with them.However, with proper treatments schizophrenic patients can also lead a productive life. But they are very few, since most of the schizophrenic patients have to cope with their symptoms throughout their lives. In many cases this mental disorder develops so slowly that the patient doesn’t even get the chance to know it, that they are schizophrenic for many years. Nevertheless, there are also many sufferers of this illness where they have schizophrenic all of a sudden. This disease affects approximately 1% of the global population. Experts on this disease say that this mental malady is probably several illnesses masquerading as one. Many others also say that schizophrenia may be the result of impaired neuronal development in the fetus’ brain, which later on in their lives emerges as full blown illness.
There are several evidences that suggests that environmental factors and genetic factors both acts together in bringing about this tragic and interminable disease. Which means, that the condition has and congenital inherited element, but it is also significantly triggered by environmental factors upon the patient. People who have no history of schizophrenia in their family, have less than 1% chance of getting affected by this illness, compared to people with a history of schizophrenia among their patients, where the risk is as high as 10%.
Some of the experts on this disease suggest that imbalance of a neurotransmitter known as dopamine, is involved in the onset of this mental disease. However, other neurotransmitters such as serotonin can also be involved in heralding this disease.