Understanding Schizophrenia

Introduction

Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders that interfere with thinking and responsiveness. It is a disease of the brain, just like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The term schizophrenia, which means "split mind," was first used in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to categorize patients whose thought processes and emotional responses seemed disconnected. Despite its name, the condition does not cause a split personality.

Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders characterized by disturbances in perception, behavior, and communication that last longer than 6 months. (This includes psychotic behavior.) A person with schizophrenia has deteriorated occupational, interpersonal, and self-supportive abilities.

Schizophrenia is characterized by the following symptoms:

• Delusions
• Hallucinations
• Disordered thinking
• Emotional unresponsiveness

Because symptoms of schizophrenia arise from various physical processes and respond differently to treatments, some experts recommend classifying the disease based on the presence of the following symptom groups:

• Negative symptoms (including apathy and social withdrawal)
• Psychotic symptoms
• Disordered thinking

Some experts group psychotic and disordered thinking into a single category called positive symptoms.

The disease is complicated by the fact that although a schizophrenic patient may have more than one symptom, he or she rarely has all of them. Symptoms also often go into remission.