Schizophrenia is a serious brain disease that affects multiple psychological functions.
How do I know if I have schizophrenia?
The symptoms of schizophrenia vary widely. Not all patients present the same clinical picture and even the same patient may experience substantial changes throughout the course of the disease.
Some of the main alterations are:
- Perception: hallucinations, especially auditory.
- Thought and speech: delusions of persecution, self-reference, grandiosity, etc. Peculiar, strange, incongruous, sometimes incomprehensible forms of language and expression.
- Emotions: anxiety, fears, excitement, distrust, affective flattening, apathy, depression, emotional “hypersensitivity”.
- Cognition: problems with attention and concentration, memory, planning; lack of awareness of illness.
- Social behavior: isolation and withdrawal, inability to adapt to new situations, difficulty in making friends and mating, difficulty in getting and keeping a job, hostility and aggressiveness, bizarre behaviors.
When does this disease appear and what consequences does it have on the person’s life?
It usually appears in adolescence or youth and has a chronic evolution. It causes serious problems in the social adaptation and in the degree of autonomy of the person.
The name “schizophrenia” probably hides several different diseases, with different causes, clinical picture and prognosis.