Mental Illness Paper (Schizophrenia)

Mental Illness (Schizophrenia)

Schizophrenia is a debilitating brain disorder characterized by a range of emotional and cognitive dysfunctions that affect thought, feelings, communication, perception, attention, behavior monitoring, mood or affect, speech, drive, and the ability to make decisions (March and Schub, 2011). Schizophrenia disorders are complex illnesses characterized by psychosis or a loss of contact with reality accompanied by severe disturbances in social functioning, bizarre thoughts, changes in affect or emotional state, withdrawal from social relations, and unpredictable behavior.

The word schizophrenia is less than 100 years old. However, the disease was first identified as a discrete mental illness by Dr. Emilie Kraepelin in 1887. Back in that time anybody who were considered “abnormal,” whether due to mental illness, mental retardation, or physical deformities, were largely treated the same. Early theories were that mental disorders were caused by evil possession of the body and the appropriate treatment was exorcising these demons, through various means, ranging from innocuous treatments, such as exposing the patient to certain types of music, to dangerous and sometimes deadly means such as releasing the evil spirits by drilling holes in the patient’s skull. Then they would put these patients in an insane asylum because they did not know any ways to treat this disorder. While these patients were in these asylums they were given electric shock therapy which was very invasive and only helped for a little while until they had to be shocked again.

The onset of schizophrenia is mostly noted in late teenage years or early adulthood when family and friends observe that the patient has no regard for daily life activities such as work, education, socialization, and self- care. Symptoms a person with schizophrenia would have a gradual withdrawal from people, activities and social contact, with...