Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Prevalence, and Treatment

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
PSY10006 Psychology Fundamentals
TP1 2018
Assignment 2
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction
Psychotic disorders refer to a group of serious diseases or illnesses that are found to
affect the human mind. These psychotic disorders often make it difficult for the individuals to
make good judgments, think apropriately, communicate effectively, respond emotionally, behave
appropriately, and understand reality. Presence of severe symptoms, results in extreme
difficulties for the people to remain in contact with the reality. This in turn leads to severe
impairment in carrying out daily activities (Heckers et al., 2013). Major psychotic disorders
result in an abnormal condition of the state of mind that makes it difficult for the individuals to
distinguish between things and events that are real and not real.
Major symptoms include false belief, observing or hearing things that others fail to
perceive, incoherent speech, sleep difficulties, social withdrawal and lack of motivation. The
most common psychotic disorders include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, general anxiety
disorder, and postpartum psychosis. This report will elaborate on schizophrenia, a prevalent
psychotic disorder.
Schizophrenia is a highly prevalent psychotic disorder that is primarily characterized by
manifestation of an abnormal social behavior that makes the individuals display a failure to
understand basic reality (Hallak et al., 2013). The major symptoms of the disorder include
confused or unclear thinking, false beliefs, auditory hallucinations, lack of emotional expression,
reduced social engagement and complete loss of motivation. Furthermore, the individuals
suffering from schizophrenia report additional mental health problems namely, depressive,
anxiety, or substance-use disorders (Shinn et al., 2013).

2PSYCHOLOGY
Distortions of self-experience that manifests in the form of one’s feelings or thoughts
lead to passivity phenomena, one of the most common symptom of schizophrenia. Social
isolation also occurs. This in turn leads to difficulties in long-term and working memory,
executive functioning, processing speed and attention. Furthermore, visual and auditory
hallucinations are the most commonly reported symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms are
also accompanied by delusions, persecutory or bizarre thinking and disordered speech.
Schizophrenic disorder is found to affect individuals during their early childhood and late
adolescents that act as crucial years in the vocational and social development. Research studies
have provided evidence that correlates occurrence of schizophrenia among people aged above 19
years of age. In other words, it affects young adults. The psychotic symptoms related to
schizophrenia are commonly found to emerge in individuals in early 20s and late teens, primarily
in their mid-20s to their early 30s (Agnew-Blais & Seidman, 2013). In addition, schizophrenia
seldom occurs after before puberty or after the age of 45 years. However, researchers have
provided evidence for the onset of schizophrenia related symptoms among children, as young as
5 years. The high prevalence of the psychotic disorder in adolescents are generally manifested in
the form of first signs that include drop in grades, change of friends, irritability and
sleep problems. Hence, unlike other psychotic disorders, schizophrenia occurrence is fairly
unique in young adulthood (De Herdt et al., 2013). Hence, the age group of 19-26 years can be
considered at an increased likelihood of suffering from this condition.
Sex differences do exist in the aforementioned psychotic disorder that is more commonly
found in men, compared to women. The male to female ratio of schizophrenia is found to be 4:1.
Women exhibit more susceptibility to experience range of symptoms that pertain to this
psychotic disorder in their life (Eranti et al., 2013). More emotional and psychotic problems are

3PSYCHOLOGY
displayed by women, than men. Furthermore, women diagnosed with schizophrenia also have
fewer offspring, than females who are not affected (Wischhof et al., 2015).
Treatment of the disorder should involve administration of antipsychotic medications to
the individuals, in combination with social and psychological support. This might also require
voluntary or forced hospitalization. Antipsychotic medications are considered as the first-line
psychiatric treatment for schizophrenic symptoms. They play a crucial role in reducing the
positive symptoms related to psychosis in approximately 7-14 days (Leucht et al., 2013).
Furthermore, the antipsychotics also bring about significant improvements in cognitive
dysfunction and negative symptoms. Thus, continuous administration of antipsychotics reduces
the risks of relapse. However, prolonged use of antipsychotics often result in dopamine
hypersensitivity, which in turn increases the risks of recurrence of major psychotic symptoms,
upon stopping the medicines (Mueser et al., 2013). The major antipsychotics that are used for
treating schizophrenic individuals include olanzapine, riserpidone, clozapine and amisulpride. In
addition, certain psychosocial interventions that include family therapy, supported employment,
cognitive remediation and assertive community treatment are also considered useful (Morrison et
al., 2014).
Research hypotheses refer to statements that are created by researchers for the purpose of
speculating upon the direct or indirect outcomes of an experiment or research. The current study
involved two hypotheses that are given below:
 H1- Antipsychotic medications will improve the symptoms that are associated with high
prevalence of schizophrenia among young adults aged 18-26 years.
 H2- Women belonging to the young adult age group, suffering from schizophrenia will
benefit more from the antipsychotic treatment, upon comparison to men