Mental Illness Paper

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Mental Illness Paper HCA/240 Brian Eigelbach 09/07/12 Mental Illness Paper Schizophrenia is a very serious disease. This disease is a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of the ability to function in everyday life. Some people feel delusional; have hallucinations, and disintegration of personality. The disease was first identified as a discrete mental illness by Dr. Emile Kraepelin in the 1887 and the illness itself is generally believed to have accompanied mankind through its history (Schizophrenia.com, 2010). The name schizophrenia comes from the Greek word “schizo-phrene”. The Greek word means “split mind”, which refers to the thinking pattern of a person with this disorder. There are many myths about schizophrenia; so many…show more content…
This is usually because the person was fine, then they started to act noticeably different. They are different to the point where it’s almost like they are another person. For example: a person could have been a social butterfly in their adolescent and early teen years, and then gradually they start to withdraw from people like friends, social events, and family. Sometimes, the symptoms may start off slowly then start to increase as the mental disorder progresses. Let’s say that at age 20, a person was diagnosed with schizophrenia and they just had symptoms of lack of motivation and withdrawing from friends and family. By age 30, the disorder may get worse. They could have symptoms that include inappropriate emotional outbursts, delusions and thinking everyone is against them, and inability to organize their thoughts. This is what happened to my brother. He didn’t start off where he is now, the mental disorder got worse over time. According to Gelder 1989, for the longest time, schizophrenia was seen as a “functional disorder,” with some doctors calling it a sociological phenomenon, meaning that patients with the disease are normal people driven insane by the insane world. Things have definitely changed due to the efficiency of mental health medication and a lot of biological research. Schizophrenia is estimated to affect as many as one in every…show more content…
References WebMD.com schizophrenia information page 2002, McCreadie retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/ schizophrenia Mulvihill 2006 retrieved from http://local.healthywomen.org/Schizophrenia_Picayune_MS-r1355132-Picayune_MS.html treatment tab Schizophrenia.com in-dept tab Saha s, Chant D, Welham J, McGrath J, (2005) Retrieved from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020141 Gelder 1989 retrieved from
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