Schizophrenia is a brain health disorder that disturbs the way an individual sees, thinks and acts in the world around him or her. People with schizophrenia have often a significant loss of contact with reality and an altered perception of reality.

With such a blurred line between the real and the imaginary, people with schizophrenia have difficulty (or even frightened) to engage in activities of daily life. In response, people with schizophrenia may pull out from the outside world or act out in confusion and fear.
Schizophrenia typically has its onset in late adolescence or early adulthood.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA:

Hallucinations (Disturbances in perception):

Hallucination – perceiving things that are not there for e.g things a person sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels that no one else can see, hear, smell, taste or feel.

• Auditoryhallucination (hearing voices of people commenting about their behaviour)
• Visual hallucination (seeing the god or the devil)
• Tactilehallucinations (feeling that insects are crawling under the skin)
• Olfactory hallucination (smelling odours that no one else senses)
• Gustatory hallucination (tasting something that isn’t really there, typically an unpleasant flavour)

Among these, the most common type is auditory hallucination.

Disturbances in thought:

Thought broadcasting/insertion/blocking:

A person with schizophrenia may believe that their thoughts have been taken from them and is being broadcasted to other people (thought broadcasting). They may also believe that someone is using a secret equipment to insert thoughts into the mind (thought insertion) or that someone is stealing or blocking the thoughts and so while speaking the person becomes blank (thought blocking).

Delusions:

Believing things that are not true – this is a particularly common symptom. A person with schizophrenia may believe that the neighbours are plotting against or planning to kill them (persecutory delusion). Everything will be interpreted in the context of delusion, even things that are meant to help, such as medication will be misunderstood as poison. The person may also feel that they are being watched and followed by someone (paranoid delusion) and may also believe that some of their neighbours are talking about him from a distance (delusion of reference).

COURSE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA:

Schizophrenia is a chronic psychological disorder. Although some people have brief episodes of schizophrenic like behaviour, most people with psychological symptoms of schizophrenia suffer from indications for their entire lives.

The manifestation of symptoms can also take a number of different forms. E.g., some people may be delusional but may still be able to take basic care of them, carry on a conversation and succeed in school and work, whereas others may be completely weakened by the disorder.