Understanding Schizophrenia: From Its Discovery to Symptoms and Causes

The disease schizophrenia was discovered in 1887 by Dr. Emile Kraepelin. It was first classified as “dementia praecox” to distinguish it from forms of dementia that occur later in life. The term “schizophrenia” from schizo (split) and phrene (mind), was created in 1911 by Eugene Bleuer (Gregg, 2014). This was done because Kraeplin’s name for the disease had become misleading when researchers discovered schizophrenia did not cause mental deterioration as they had known dementia would. The mental illness was then subdivided into categories based on the symptoms that were present. Disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated were the first types of schizophrenia identified. Soon after, Bleuer introduced a distinction between basic and accessory symptoms. Accessory symptoms consist of delusions and hallucinations, while basic symptoms show apathy, diminished speech, and a lack of emotion. The primary symptoms are what have given this disease such a distinct diagnosis profile.

The topic of this mental health disorder is insanely interesting because everybody seems to know the term “schizophrenia, but I do not believe that many have researched and learned about the disorder and all that it entails. Many in society just associate the term with craziness and insanity. Not only does this disease affect the individual diagnosed internally, but also their relationships with other people due to the paranoia they have developed. This paranoia often comes from a schizophrenic withdrawing and isolating themselves from any type of social activity. Absurd and suspicious beliefs begin to disrupt their abilities to interact with others. It is hard to reason with individuals with schizophrenia because they are incapable of thinking rationally.

The common signs and symptoms they have are delusional thoughts, anger, a tendency to argue, intensity when interacting with others, and violent behavior. Schizophrenics are unable to carry out daily routine activities because of these symptoms they face around the clock. According to “How Does Schizophrenia Affect People? Here’s what you need to know” (2018), Schizophrenia disables an individual from keeping up with their personal hygiene due to their symptoms being so severe. Other signs and symptoms include impaired communication skills, incomprehensible or illogical speech, emotional indifference, and infantile behavior. Because of this, they lose focus and train of thought on how they are supposed to carry out their duties for the day.

Several studies have been done in an attempt to find more answers for the mental illness schizophrenia. The similarities in the physiology of a human and monkey allowed researchers to study the animal and see how the monkey’s behavior relates to schizophrenics. This research study, done by a group of psychologists, aimed to investigate the effects of prenatal damage by exposing monkeys to radiation and whether brain damage was a factor in the development of schizophrenia.

Half of the monkeys were exposed to radiation at 70-80 days gestation, while the other half were exposed at 33-40 days.The doses were either high (3 to 6 times with 100 rads) or low (4 times with 50 rads). The results showed that irritated monkeys developed hallucinations and had difficulty remembering and solving problems. Ones that suffered damage between 70 and 80 days into metal development had more noticeable abnormalities. This shows that schizophrenia in humans can be caused by damage to neurons in the cortex during fetal development, and brain damage, in conjunction with life events around puberty time, can allow expression of the disease’s symptoms (Damani, 2011).

Works Cited

Gregg, C. (2014). Schizophrenia at the Synapse. Science Translational Medicine, 6(222), 222ec24.

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