Schizophrenia - Types, Symptoms, Causes & Treatments

A type of mental disorder, people with schizophrenia or psychosis susceptibility syndrome have extremely confusing thoughts, sounds, and images as they tend to lose touch with reality. In addition, it impairs daily life activities as psychotic episodes tend to alter their behavioural patterns.

Please read this article to learn about schizophrenia or psychosis susceptibility syndrome, its types, causes, and treatments.

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What Is Schizophrenia?

A severe mental disorder, schizophrenia, affects the way you think, express, act and relate. For example, you are unable to differentiate between the real and the imaginary; thus, confusing thoughts hurt your mind. It is a chronic mental disorder, and the one diagnosed with the same is often frightened and keeps themselves withdrawn from society.

Although this disorder is not curable, people with severe issues sometimes require lifelong therapies. However, doctors believe early treatment often helps prevent this situation from becoming too complicated. This is why proper care, therapy, and treatment are necessary to manage it.

What Are the Different Types of Schizophrenia?

The types of schizophrenia are as follows:

Paranoid Schizophrenia: Often developing in the later stages of your life, paranoid schizophrenia comes with symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations, behavioural impairment, and disorganised communication.
Disorganised/Hebephrenic Schizophrenia: This trait of schizophrenia occurs when you are about 15 to 25 years of age. There is little or absolutely no emotion in the voice tone, behaviour or facial expression of people diagnosed with such traits. Short-lasting hallucinations and delusions, unorganised speech, and inability to communicate are specific symptoms of this trait.
Catatonic Schizophrenia: A rare trait, this form of schizophrenia features sudden or limited movements. You either become too active or remain extremely calm. Also, you might mimic someone else’s speech and movement in this trait.
Residual Schizophrenia: If you have a case history of psychosis, the chances for you to develop residual schizophrenia are higher. This is because it comes with many 'negative symptoms' where the body movement is slow. Additionally, lack of concentration, loss of memory and almost poor hygiene are related symptoms of this trait.
Undifferentiated Schizophrenia: When the behavioural patterns are similar to one or more traits of schizophrenia, it is undifferentiated Schizophrenia. So, for example, if you have symptoms of catatonic schizophrenia, you can also show symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
Simple Schizophrenia: This trait comes with negative symptoms such as lack of memory, concentration, hygiene and slow movement. The positive symptoms(thoughts not based on reality) include delusions, hallucinations and a confused state of mind.
Cenesthopathic Schizophrenia: If you are diagnosed with such a trait, you might experience sudden and unusual sensations in your body. This affects the mind as well and hampers daily activities.
Childhood Schizophrenia: A trait seen in children and usually uncommon, this type is severe, as happens to children aged between 13 to 18 years. Autism, ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are certain developmental disorders that come with it. Additional symptoms include social withdrawal, delay in speaking, and unusual and abnormal movements.

What Are the Symptoms of Schizophrenia?

The different symptoms of schizophrenia are as follows:

Schizophrenia comes with many symptoms that include cognitive, positive, behavioural, and negative symptoms. These signs vary from person to person. However, most people diagnosed with this disorder have hallucinations, delusions, unorganised speech, and slow body movement. Here are the symptoms in detail:

Hallucination: This symptom includes viewing and experiencing things that never exist. However, if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia, you tend to hallucinate as things appear normal to you.
Delusion: These are false beliefs and imagined thoughts that are not real. For example- you believe that someone loves you, or someone has hurt you, etc.
Unorganised Speech: As you have a confused state of mind, this also affects your speech. Therefore, you tend to provide incomplete or partial answers to your questions. Sometimes you also utter meaningless phrases that the other person finds difficult to comprehend.
Abnormal Motor Behaviour: Childlike behaviours and abnormal appearances are the symptoms that you are disorganised and do not have any goal. Thus, you find it difficult to complete your tasks. This behavioural pattern includes a lack of response, excessive and unusual movements, and inappropriate posture.
Negative Symptoms: This includes abnormal functionality, poor hygiene, lack of emotion, and a low and under confident tone. You may also lose interest in performing daily activities with these symptoms.

Although certain symptoms tend to reduce with care, some even stay forever in you. Well, for teenagers who have been diagnosed with this disorder, the signs are almost similar to that of adults. Certain specific early signs are:

Performance drop in school.
Withdrawal from friends, family and society.
Speech impairment.
Trouble sleeping.
Loneliness, depression and mood shifts.
No motivation.

What Are the Causes of Schizophrenia?

The exact reasons for schizophrenia are unknown. However, here are some causes of schizophrenia:

Heredity: If any of your family members have this disorder, you are likely to develop it. This trait passes from parents to children and is hereditary.
Emotional Turmoil: The loss of a loved one, the breaking of a relationship and a stressful event can sometimes lead to this disorder. Since it impacts the brain, you tend to get affected by the stream of events.
Brain Chemistry: If you have this disorder, you might not be able to regulate the neurotransmitters or the brain chemicals that control the nerve cells. Thus, it will drastically affect your behavioural and thinking patterns.
Infections: Exposure to toxins and viral infections triggers this disorder leading to delusions and hallucinations. You are unable to control your body movement as well.

What Are the Risk Factors of Schizophrenia?

The risk factors of schizophrenia are listed below:

Pregnancy and complications during birth, such as exposure to toxins and poor nutrition, affect the development of the brain.
Suicidal attempts and thoughts of the same lead to harming and hurting yourself frequently.
Depression and stress lead to loneliness and social isolation.
Anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Drug and alcohol abuse.
Inability to perform well in school or work.
Severe health issues.

How to Diagnose Schizophrenia?

As soon as your doctor finds certain symptoms of schizophrenia, here is how they diagnose and confirm the disorder:

Physical Examination: Your doctor will conduct a thorough medical check-up to rule out other complications.
Tests and Screenings: They will ask you to do blood and brain imaging tests, such as MRI and CT scans, as there are no specific tests to diagnose this disorder.
Psychiatric Test: After ruling out the chances of other diseases, they will recommend you to a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist will ask you about your family history and try to comprehend and confirm if the disorder is genetic by asking you about your mood swings, behaviours, thoughts and hallucinations.

Your doctor will confirm you have the disease through certain tools and techniques. Then, you will be prescribed therapies and medications as required.

How to Treat Schizophrenia?

Your doctor mostly prescribes medicines such as antipsychotic drugs as they control your brain's neurotransmitter dopamine. Well, your doctor might experiment with various medications and combinations of such medications until they get the required results. After noticing the improvement, the doctor will only move to the next procedure. Here are some medications and therapies used for the treatment of schizophrenia:

Medications

Second-generation medications lower the side effects caused after consumption of the same. They are – asenapine, aripiprazole, lurasidone, clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, cariprazine, etc.
First-generation psychotics come with side effects such as movement disorder or tardive dyskinesia. These include – haloperidol, fluphenazine, chlorpromazine, and perphenazine.
Certain medications can be given as injections, too, and as per the doctor's prescription, they are given every two to four weeks. These include – haloperidol decanoate, aripiprazole, paliperidone, fluphenazine and risperidone.

Therapies and Training

As the psychosis reduces after consuming medications, doctors prescribe certain therapies and training to tactfully manage the symptoms.

Individual Therapy: These sessions help you to cope and control your stress. As the learning process progresses, you can understand the early symptoms of your illness and identify the warning signs.
Family Therapy: Your doctor teaches your family members the causes and ways of this disorder so that they can identify the signs and symptoms and help you manage the illness.
Social Skills: Through this training, your hobbies, skills and talents are polished through regular activities. This improves your communication and allows you to interact socially and participate in daily activities.
Electroconvulsive Therapy: This is the last option when drugs and therapies fail to reduce the traits. This is mainly helpful if you have stress and depression.

Apart from that, learning about the disorder in detail, avoiding the consumption of drugs and alcohol, seeking assistance and trying to indulge in regular activities, and learning stress management help reduce and manage schizophrenia to some extent.

When to See a Doctor?

You must immediately consult a doctor in case you find that there are severe complications arising as days pass. Here is when you must consult your psychiatrist:

Sudden aggressive behaviour that turns violent, often harming someone.
Suicidal attempts or hurting oneself.
Hampering relationships and workflow due to specific behavioural patterns.
Lack of control over behavioural patterns.

How to Manage and Prevent Schizophrenia?

There is no specific way to prevent schizophrenia. But doctors suggest that you stick to the treatment plans and attend therapy sessions to help you manage the disorder. Well, it is best if the disease is diagnosed and treated at the earliest.

Here you have a detailed article on schizophrenia. In case you find someone with similar symptoms as mentioned above, be sure to help that person by speaking to their family members and taking that person to a doctor.

FAQs About Schizophrenia

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Are split personality disorder and schizophrenia similar?

No, they are not the same. Although people confuse these mental disorders, they come with different symptoms and treatments. 'Schizo’ means split, but patients who have schizophrenia do not have split personalities.

What is the most common hallucination in schizophrenia?

You tend to hear voices that affect your behavioural patterns. Hearing voices is the most common hallucination in this disorder which instructs you to do certain things or behave in a certain way. Also, you tend to imagine people in front of you, although they are not present there.