Exploring Schizophrenia Essay -- Psychology Mental Disorders Neurology

Exploring schizophrenic disorderSchizophrenia which affects approximately 1 percent of the population, usually begins before age 25 and persists throughout life. The illness is a life grand debilitating condition for about 40% of patients and is enormously costly in both social and economic terms. Despite the presence of delusions, hallucinations and cognitive impairment which condition the illness, overall life expectancy is not altered (although there is a significantly increased risk-of suicide in the early years). Schizophrenia is usually viewed as a functional psychosis, a label which implies that the symptoms arise from the disorderly activity of neurons without accompanying anatomical and pathological alterations of brain structure. This view is due to the failure of pathologists to amaze convincing pathological changes associated with the disease in the first seven decades of the century. Over the last ten years things have changed considerably. Recent CT and MRI scan, and overly postmortem studies show that various brain areas of schizophrenic patients are altered. HISTORY The two key people in the history of Schizophrenia were Emil Kraepelin and Eugene Blealer. Kraepelin organized the hard mentally ill patients by three diagnostic groups dementia praecox, manic depressive psychosis, and paranoia. Kraeplin?s description of dementia praecox emphasize a chronic deteriorating course, in concomitant to including such clinical phenomena as hallucinations and delusions. Kraepelin reported that approximately 4% of his patients had complete recoveries and 13% had significant remissions. The term manic depressive psychosis identified patients who experienced episodes of illness garbled by virtually complete remissio... .... C., Caroff, S.. Dann, R., Silver, F. L., Saykin. A/ J., Chawluk, J. B., Kushner, M., Reivich, M. Regional brain function in schizophrenia. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry, 44119, 1987- Grebb, J. A., Weinberger, D. R. and Wyatt, R. J. Schizophr enia. In Diseases of the nervous system, A. K. Asbury, G. M. McKhann, W. I. Mcdonald, editors, Vol. 2. W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia, 1986. Hamilton, M. Fish?s Clinical Psvchopathology, ed. 2, Wright, Bristol, 1985. Henn, F. A., Naerallah, H. A,, editors Schizophrenia as a Brain Disease. Oxford, New York, 1982. Naerallah, H. A., Weinberger, D. R. The Neurology of Schizophrenia, In Handbook of Schizophrenia, H. A. Nasrallah, editor, Vol. 1., Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1986. Roberts, G. W. and Bruton, C. J. Notes from the graveyard neuropathology and schizophrenia. Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology, 16 3-16, 1990.