This is an old revision of the document!
====== Schizophrenia ====== The term Schizophrenia means ‘a splitting of the mind’ and is a mental disorder that affects about 0.5% of the population (van Os & Kapur, 2018). It is said to be chronic, which means that it lasts for an extremely long time and can recur frequently. Patients with Schizophrenia often experience altered realities, affecting the way they feel, behave and act. Patients can experience positive symptoms or negative symptoms or both. Positive symptoms are ones that healthy patients do not experience, while negative symptoms are deficiencies in emotions and behaviours (NIMH, 2018). This disease is extremely debilitating, and no known cures are present at this time. Official diagnosis is usually made from medical personnel observing the patient; however, differing cultures may lead to misdiagnosis. The DSM-5 or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is usually used as reference for practitioners. It is common for diagnosed individuals to also have other mental health conditions, such as: anxiety, substance-use or depressive disorders (Schizophrenia Society of Canada, 2018). Antipsychotic medication and psychosocial therapies are generally the most common forms of treatment currently (CMHA, 2018).
History
Emil Kraepelin classified schizophrenia as a mental disorder in 1887. He first named the disorder “dimentia praecox” which means early dimentia in order to distinguish it from other forms of dimentia which occur later on in life (Jablensky, 2010). Kraepelin first isolated schizophrenia from other forms of psychosis 1887 but this is not to say that this form of mental illness did not exist before Kraepeli’s day (Burton, 2012). In 1911 a swiss psychiatrist by the name of Eugen Bleular created the term schizophrenia. He was the first person who described these symptoms as both “positive” or “negative. He decided to change the name to schizophrenia because Kraepelin’s name was misleading due to the fact that this illness was not a dementia as it did not always lead to mental deterioration (Burton, 2012).
The word “schizophrenia” is derived from the Greek roots schizo which means split and phrene which means mind. This is to explain how, individuals with schizophrenia fragmented thinking not the common misunderstanding that states the idea of a split personality (Jablensky, 2010). Bleuler and Kraepelin both further grouped schizophrenia into categories based on the symptoms and prognosis. Five types of schizophrenia are outlined in the DSM III: disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated (Jablensky, 2010).
