Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (difficult of detection what is real and what is imagination)

I noticed that my brother is talking to himself, my sister is talking to his dead father, my sister sees things that we can't see, Help….. They are going to kill me, all people hate me, and they want to kill me.

All of the above are examples of the words that is always said by the relatives of the schizophrenic patient, and also examples of what can be said by the patient himself, so let's know what is exactly schizophrenia means, and what does the patient feel? And, how we can help him?

Schizophrenia:

is one of the most popular mental disorder, you can say that it is the most strange mental disorders because it can affect anyone whether he is educated, illiterate, intelligent, low social class, high social class and others, the person whose actions are odds, or his talking is strange, we say that person is crazy and we can't imagine that he may be intelligent, or normal person. But this is the fact. As the schizophrenic patient is a normal person who can talk rationality, can solve problems, know and understand his needs and your needs, except in things related to his illness. And a big example about that is John Nash who was an American scientist, he was so intelligent and he won Nobel Prize, although he suffered from schizophrenia.

So let's see what are the symptoms of schizophrenia? To know what patient feel:

- You will notice that the patient has abnormal behavior and he can't know what is real, as his mind will give him an imaged stories, people, and experiences, he can't differentiate between what is real and what is not real, He reacts normally to the real events and to the imaged events as real.

- From the most common symptoms is that false beliefs, for example, he may believe that someone want to kill him, someone is watching him, he has a relationship with famous person (singer, president, etc),he may believe that he is a powerful person ( god, prophet, superman, etc), and he may believe the persons in the streets or in TV are talking about him, and of course all of these are false beliefs, but the patient believes in it strongly and whatever you made you can't remove these beliefs from him as it is a part of his mental illness, and these false beliefs are called in psychiatry (delusion).

- Also from the most common symptoms is that the patient sees something we don’t see, he may talk to person not really present, he may hear voices not presents, he may feel something crawling on his body, he may ,smell or test something not presents, so a part of his five senses have a false feeling. In the psychiatry, it is called (hallucination).

- The patient may begin to social withdrawal.

- Confused thinking.

- No, or lack of motivation.

- There are other symptoms, but that are the most prominent and evidence that the patient is suffering from schizophrenia.

Now I am going to put you on inside the feeling of schizophrenic patient, and let's see how badly that person is suffer

I am going to ask you some questions and answer me.

Do you have friends?

Do you go to college?

Is your father still alive?

Let's say that the answers of all questions above for you is yes, as you have friends you go and come with them, you are educated and you go to college, your father is still alive and you talk to him daily.

Look…

You say that you have friends because you see them and also schizophrenic patient see people not present, so he react with that and, then his actions you will see it abnormal, you also answered that you go to college because you are educated and you see your teachers and you react with all of this and you are normal, but schizophrenic patient may see that he goes and come from college and react with that even it is imagined, also he may see his father that isn't alive and react with that as the normal person do, so the summary is that the difference between normal people and schizophrenic is the reality as he can't maintain a contact with reality.

In another topic we are going to explain to you how to deal with the patient with schizophrenia and how to treat him.