Schizophrenia :: science

This mental disorder. However, it is proven that one is more apt to obtain schizophrenia if there is a member in their family that has had this disease already leaving those who do not have a family member with schizophrenia to be very unlikely to acquire it. Another way of acquiring schizophrenia in the inherited sense is through a dietary factor. This would mean that a certain food would trigger schizophrenia in a household present in the member of the family that eats that food (Torrey 80). Early in this disease, there may be obsession with religion, matters of the supernatural, or abstract causes of creation. Speech may be characterized by unclear symbolism’s. Later, words and phrases may become puzzling, and these can only be understood as part of the person’s private fantasy world. People who have been ill with schizophrenia for a long time often have speech patterns that are disoriented and aimless and deficient of meaning to the casual observer. Sexual activity is frequently altered in mental disorders. Homosexual concerns may be associated with all psychoses but are most prominent with paranoia. Doubts concerning sexual identity, exaggerated sexual needs, altered sexual performance and fears of intimacy are prominent in schizophrenia. The process of regression in schizophrenia is accompanied by increased self-fixation, isolation, and masturbatory behavior. The schizophrenic person finds himself or herself in a painful dilemma. He or she retreats from personal intimacy or closeness because of the intense fear that closeness will be followed by rejection or harm. This retreat from intimacy leaves the person lonely and isolated. This dilemma often becomes the care-taker’s dilemma. The care-taker wishes to form a productive emotional bond but at the same time seeks to lessen the person’s anxiety. The schizophrenic person, who moves toward emotional closeness, will eventually increase anxiety. The dopamine theory of schizophrenia is based on the action of the neuroleptic drugs, better known as antipsychotic drugs. Neuroleptics are the drugs of choice for treating the symptoms of schizophrenia. The neuroleptics are believed to block the dopamine receptors in the brain, limiting the activity of dopamine and reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia. Amphetamines, just the opposite, enhance dopamine transmission. Amphetamines produce an excess of dopamine in the brain and can provoke the symptoms of schizophrenia in a schizo phrenic client. In large doses, amphetamines can simulate symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in a nonschizophrenic person. Some symptoms of schizophrenia are due basically to hyperdopaminergic activity.