Whitney Leverette
Professor Ryan Jenkins
English 101
5 December 2011

The Understanding of Schizophrenia

People often like to discriminate against schizophrenics. When people hear the word schizophrenia, they automatically assume “crazy, psycho, or out of their mind!” Yes, these sick people can be crazy but so can any other normal person. Yes, they can be psycho but so can others when they are not in their right state of mind or very angry. Yes, they are usually out of their mind but that doesn’t give people the right to judge them, criticize them, or treat them any different than others. So I said all this to say that people with a mental illness are the same as any other person walking this earth. “Different myths about schizophrenia endorsed by clinicians maintain the pessimism about outcome thus reducing chances of improvement. There are no recent North American studies on the long-term outcome of first-episode schizophrenia to clarify if these beliefs are myths or reality” (Abdel-Baki et al 1). Schizophrenia, which is also sometimes called split personality, is a chronic, severe, mental illness that affects about one percent of the population corresponding to two billion people in the United States. Schizophrenia can lead people to believe that others are out to harm them; they think people can read their minds, they hear voices that other people don’t hear, they even believe that people are controlling their thoughts, and there are many more symptoms that haunt them day by day. All of these symptoms can scare a person with the illness and make them very agitated. Most of the time, people with this illness does not make any sense when they talk. For example: one minute they will be talking about God and the next minute they will say “no don’t get me, don’t do it.” This is normally the things they are thinking about in their head. Schizophrenics will sit in one spot for hours and hours without even moving. There are different types of schizophrenia including, paranoid schizophrenia, disorganized schizophrenia, catatonic schizophrenia, residual schizophrenia, and undifferentiated schizophrenia. All of these types are based on what kind of symptoms the person is experiencing at that exact moment. The first and most common type is: paranoid schizophrenia. The symptoms included in this type are delusions and hallucinating. People with this type of disorder usually do not experience disorganized behavior or thought disorder. The hallucinations that they have consist of hearing voices that no one else can hear (in their own head). These voices sometimes can tell them to do things, comment on others behaviors, and etc. People suffering with paranoid schizophrenia usually would rather be left alone and are usually not prone to violence. The second type of schizophrenia is disorganized schizophrenia; someone with this type may have a hard time organizing their thoughts. It is also hard to understand what that person is saying due to thought blocking. According to dictionary.com, thought blocking is where the person will be thinking about something but all of a sudden they forget what they were thinking. Third type of schizophrenia is catatonic. People with catatonic schizophrenia are uncoordinated and often clumsy. They also may repeat their movements over and over and over until they seem to think it is right. People with this type also show some horrible, disgusting manners. Fourth and least common type is residual. This type of schizophrenia does not occur in most people but has shown up quite a few times. It’s a type that only occurs once in someone life. Someone with this type has had at least one episode of schizophrenia in their lifetime history. This person currently shows no positives signs of schizophrenia which includes: hallucination, delusions, disorganized speech and behavior. Residual schizophrenia could be the transition to a full-blown episode or it could last like