The Life With Diagnosis Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that is not talked about enough in today’s society. Barely anyone knows about the procedures to help them or even what the illness does. Schizophrenia is an illness that makes your contemplations “off”. This means there is a constant disruption throughout your life, the way you feel, act and think. Schizophrenics may seem upset, lethargic, or even feeling dreadful every day. The way doctors help these patients with schizophrenia is with prescribed drugs which personally I don’t think is very efficient since drugs have a lot of effects on the brain. And, since this mental illness affects the brain I want to know how can an organization help doctors lean more to the holistic side of helping schizophrenic patients instead of using drugs.

Living with schizophrenia comes with endless obstacles these obstacles make it sometimes impossible to function. Schizophrenics deal with delusions which are unreal beliefs that are not in their reality, hallucinations that make them see or hear things that don’t exist, and abnormal behavior which make them act like a child or lack the ability to act “normally. People with schizophrenia can not cogitate fully, so they don’t always know how they affect others or themselves. Schizophrenia ranges from 3-60+ years and can affect anyone. According to the National Alliance on Mental Health, they Clarify that schizophrenia happens because of genetics, the environment, brain chemistry, and substance use. Schizophrenia in genetics comes through from heredity and complex genes. The environment can expose you to a variety of viruses before birth and this has been shown to risk the chances of being born with schizophrenia. Since schizophrenia is a mental illness and has to do with the brain, the brain chemistry can contribute like the chemicals dopamine and glutamate these neurotransmitters can become problematic and be a part of the reason you develop schizophrenia. Last is substance use, doing drugs can damage the brain cells and cause a major risk in psychotic behavior developing into becoming schizophrenic. Usually, patients that have schizophrenia go to a mantels institute to get help from themselves and thoughts.

When a person who is diagnosed with schizophrenia goes into a mental institution doctors give them a lot of “drugs” to help them cope and make them less discomposed. The types of drugs they use are anti-tremors and antipsychotics these medications reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia conditions. The most common anti-tremor doctors use for schizophrenic patients is Benztropine. Benztropine is a drug that helps with schizophrenia because it restores the chemical balance between dopamine and acetylcholine which are two chemicals in the brain. This drug keeps schizophrenics muscles in contact without being unbalanced causing slack in the muscle tone. Another type of drug is the antipsychotic and there are three types of this medication doctors use on schizophrenics. The first one is called Olanzapine. Olanzapine also works in the brain, this drug balances dopamine and serotonin. Balancing these chemicals improve schizophrenics’ thoughts, mood, and behavior. The drug lowers their hallucinations and delusions. The next drug that is given is called Thioridazine. This drug is to relax the patient and make them feel less uneasy and nervous. Thioridazine reduces aggression in the patients and lets them feel “free” in their unordinary life. The last drug that is used is fluphenazine. This drug does the same thing as the last two that I just described but it blocks the action of dopamine instead of balancing it out with another chemical. This drug happens to improve the thinking of a schizophrenic and their abnormal behavior.

However, these drugs help schizophrenics their side effects and symptoms show that using prescribes drugs isn’t the best for mental illness patients. The anti tremors and antipsychotics help schizophrenic patients but they can also make them worse. Using these drugs affects patients differently. Taking these can cause schizophrenics with more shakiness and stiffness with their muscles and cause them to get tardive dyskinesia. Another side effect that these drugs can do to schizophrenics is caused their vision becomes very blurred resulting in sometimes losing their vision. Also, the last common symptom is getting neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Which is a critical disorder. It occurs in schizophrenic patients when they take their dopamine medications and it doesn’t balance their chemical and the medication becomes an antagonist towards them. Leaving them in a worse state than they were before.