schizophrenia
Amanda Atkins Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. ... Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, illusions, disorganized thinking and speech, heightened perceptions and hallucinations, and inappropriate affect. ... Sometimes the delusions experienced by people with schizophrenia are quite bizarre; for instance, believing that a neighbor is controlling their behavior with magnetic waves that people on television are directing special messages to them; or that their thoughts are being broadcast aloud to others. Hallucinations and illusions are disturbances of perceptions that are common in people suffering from schizophrenia. ... People with schizophrenia often display alogia, a decrease in speech or speech content. ... There is no known cause for schizophrenia. Many diseases such as: heart disease, result from an interplay of genetic, behavioral, and biological factors; and this may be the case for schizophrenia as well. Scientists do not yet understand all of the factors necessary to produce schizophrenia, but all the tools of modern biomedical research are being used to search for genes, critical moments in brain development, and other factors that may lead to the illness. It has been known by scientists and doctors that schizophrenia runs in families. The genetic view has been supported by studies of 1) relatives of people with schizophrenia who are adopted, 2) twins with this disorder, 3) people with schizophrenia that are adopted, and 4) chromosomal mapping. ... Studies of relatives show that scientists found repeatedly that schizophrenia is more common amount relative of people with the disorder. The more closely related that relatives are to the person with schizophrenia, the greater the likelihood of developing the disorder. Twin studies show that twins that are among the closet of relatives have received particular study by schizophrenia researchers. If genetic factors are t work schizophrenia, identical twins (who share identical genes) should have higher concordance rate for this disorder than fraternal twins should. If one fraternal twin has schizophrenia in contrast, the other twin has approximately a seventeen percent (17 %) chance of developing the disorder. ... Because they were reared apart from their biological relatives, similar schizophrenia symptoms in those relatives would indicate genetic influences. Clearly the biological relatives of adoptees with schizophrenia were most likely to develop the disorder. More recent adoptions studies in other countries have convinced many researchers that the genetic factors of schizophrenia is at least as important as that found in other illnesses with a clear genetic component, such as diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. Researchers have conducted chromosomal mapping research to identify more precisely the possible genetic factors in schizophrenia. ... Varied findings indicate that some of the suspected gene sites do not contribute to schizophrenia after all. Alternatively, different kinds of schizophrenia may be traced to different genes. Research has pointed to two kinds of biochemical abnormalities that apparently contribute to schizophrenia and could conceivably be inherited - biochemical abnormalities and abnormal brain structure. Basic knowledge about brain chemistry and its link to schizophrenia is expanding rapidly. Neurotransmitters substances that allow communications between nerve cells have long been thought to be involved in the development of schizophrenia, although not yet certain, that the disorder is associated with some imbalance of the complex, interrelated chemical systems of the brain, perhaps involving the neurotransmitters dopamine and glutamate. ... Many studies of people with schizophrenia have found abnormalities in brain structure or functions. It should be emphasized that neither these abnormalities are subtle and are not characteristic of all people with schizophrenia nor do they occur only in individuals with this illness. Micrographic studies of brain tissue after death have also shown small changes in distribution or number of brain cells in people with schizophrenia.