Schizophrenia is characterized by symptoms include distorted thoughts, auditory and visual hallucinations and feelings of fright, fear and extreme paranoia. People suffering from this disorder are often discriminated against unfairly and shunned by society. Many more are locked down in psychiatric hospitals, jails and prisons.
Of all the major mental illnesses “schizophrenia” is perhaps the worst to have to deal with.
It’s also one of the hardest and most expensive to diagnose and treat.
For example there is no single laboratory or brain imaging test for schizophrenia – which seriously interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage emotions and make rational decision making abilities.
Schizophrenia is a cognitive mental disorder that impairs a person’s ability to function in terms of everyday life.
In addition doctors must often times rule out other factors before they can properly diagnose the disorder, such as brain tumors, medical conditions and other psychiatric diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder.
Needless to say this is very expensive and time consuming – so many doctors don’t bother doing it. In such cases however they are only passing the buck – so to speak – to someone else or another provider network down the road.
Making matters worse schizophrenia varies wildly in terms of individual expression, according to the uniqueness of the person involved.
As such no two people suffering from schizophrenia are exactly alike, although they may share similar psychiatric symptoms. They must therefore be treated as individuals not subsets or groups.
In more extreme cases people suffering from symptoms of schizophrenia may hallucinate or hear and see things that are not real or seen by others. Making them social outcasts within society.
Some people who suffer from schizophrenia may also be prone to violent or emotional outbursts which make them appear as threat to themselves or others.
Another difficulty is that many people who suffer schizophrenia can’t put a “voice” to what is happening inside them, as the disorder is often characterized by a general disorganized speech pattern exhibited as an inability to generate a logical sequence of thoughts and ideas.
This is greatly frustrating to the individual who suffer from schizophrenia – as you can imagine. This in turn leads to other problems such as an increase risk of suicide.
You can also experience trouble in terms of prioritizing tasks, memory and organizing thoughts…
As a general rule, if you have symptoms of schizophrenia you should, by all means seek out medical attention through a psychiatrist and/or primary care doctor as soon as possible.
Plus there is no guarantee that you will be diagnosed or treated properly if you do seek out treatment.
If you are offered treatment a combination is best, such as taking medication and seeking mental health therapy like CBT (or “Cognitive Behavior Therapy”).
In addition to those treatments already mentioned “psycho-social rehabilitation” also works well, especially in terms of that person attaining life goals and basic living skill.
Psycho-social rehab employs strategies that help people live in independent housing situations and pursuing educational pursuits and eventually perhaps employment goals. But this takes time – a lot of time in some cases.
Unfortunately treating people with schizophrenia is very expensive – medically speaking and insurance companies as a rule don’t like to pay for it – so many people go un- diagnosed and untreated.
As a result many people suffering from schizophrenia wind up going to jail or are locked down in a psychiatric hospital somewhere.
I should say that jail and psychiatric hospitals and institutions are 10 times to 50 times more expensive over the long run than simply treating and diagnosing people for schizophrenia in the first place.
Until society realizes that the cost for not dealing with this problem will continue to rise the longer treatment is delayed or denied – the situation will not change.
For more complete information on schizophrenia see website: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml?utm_source=publish2&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=www.kpbs.org
See interesting research on the treatment of schizophrenia http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579451353299820192?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303802104579451353299820192.html