Schizophrenia

What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental illness and with all mental illnesses, it affects the person’s behaviour, thoughts or emotions. It can affect anyone in any culture globally and usually first appears during late adolescence or early adulthood.
Its specific causes are unknown but contributing factors are believed to include genetic predisposition, abnormalities in brain chemistry and stressful environmental conditions. The person who does not receive appropriate treatment may have much more difficulty engaging in work, leisure activities, interpersonal relationships and self-care.

What is Mental Wellness

What is Mental Illness

Useful Resources

Overview

Common Misconceptions

Schizophrenia is a widely misunderstood illness. As a result, people with schizophrenia are often discriminated against. This can greatly discourage persons with schizophrenia to seek help, thus lengthening unnecessarily suffering on the individual and his/her families.

Myth
Schizophrenia refers to a “split personality” or multiple personalities.

Fact
Schizophrenia came from the Greek words meaning “split” and “mind”, where persons with schizophrenia have difficulties differentiating what’s real or not when they are unwell. It is different from “split personality” which is known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Myth
Schizophrenia is a rare condition.

Fact
Schizophrenia is not rare; it affects about 1% of the population globally.

Myth
People with schizophrenia are dangerous.

Fact
Most people with schizophrenia are not violent or dangerous to others.

Myth
People with schizophrenia cannot be helped.

Fact
On the contrary, persons with schizophrenia can recover and resume meaningful roles within their families and communities.

Symptoms

What Are The Common Symptoms?

Hallucinations
Distortion in the five senses, namely touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste
Delusions
Firmly held false beliefs not shared by others, e.g. believing that other people are reading their minds or conspiring to harm them
Negative symptoms
Disruptions to normal emotions and behaviours, e.g. lack of desire to
engage in activity or lack of expression and emotion
Disorganised thought and behaviour
Disorganized or incoherent speech, strange mannerisms

What Is The Usual Course?

Prodromal phase
People with schizophrenia may gradually lose interest in their usual activities and withdraw from social contact. They may also become intensely preoccupied with certain topics or have trouble concentrating, neglecting their appearance and hygiene
Active phase
Hallucinations and delusions become prominent and cause significant distress and dysfunction. This phase is often the most frightening to the person with schizophrenia and to others
Residual phase
As treatment takes effect, acute symptoms start to diminish. After an active phase, persons with schizophrenia may have more negative symptoms such as avolition: which may be misinterpreted by others as being lazy, lack of emotion and social withdrawal

Treatment

What Treatments Are Available?

While the term “recovery” means different things to different people, it is now more commonly viewed as a process, rather than an outcome (e.g. permanent elimination of symptoms). In other words, people are in recovery when they are striving to live a meaningful and satisfying life of their choice, in spite of the limitations of the illness.

Medication
The use of antipsychotic medications aims to eliminate the symptoms of the illness
Psycho-social treatment
Psycho-social rehabilitation such as counselling, social and vocational training focuses on empowering and equipping people with schizophrenia to achieve their goals in life
“Personal medicine”
“Personal medicine” is not referring to the medication that one should be taking, but the activities that one can do to promote wellness.