Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia can be diagnosed if the person has deterioration of everyday functioning for 6 months, this consist of taking care of your self, work, relationships, etc. to fall under this disorder according to the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) you must show at least two symptoms of the following. 1. Delusions- Unjustifiable beliefs, like thinking you are controlled by aliens. 2. Hallucinations- False sensory experience, like hearing voices or seeing things when they are not really there. 3. Disorganized speech- rambling or talking incoherently. 4. Grossly disorganized behavior- doing things in a non-understandable manner. 5. Weak or absent signs of emotion, speech, and socialization. Schizophrenia has positive symptoms, which are behaviors shouldn’t be there but are like hallucinations, delusions, etc. and negative symptoms, which are behaviors that should be there but are not, like absent speech, emotion, and socialization. Schizophrenia has an early onset for men it usually occurs around their teen’s to early 20’s while for women it occurs on their mid to late 20’s.

In this article schizophrenia is explained in more detail here are some of the things provided. Symptoms like irritability or tense feeling, trouble concentrating; Causes and risk factors like having a family member that also have schizophrenia; Signs and test including how long symptoms have lasted or how has the ability to function in everyday life changed; Treatments that are provided by antipsychotics, but it does come with a price, side effects, dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, and tremors; Complications which can be caused by drug abuse which can cause symptoms to worsen, etc. Here is a video that shows you the world through the eyes of a schizophrenic.

Are antidepressants being handed too easily

I find mood disorders very interesting, what I find more interesting is why doctors hand out antidepressants like it’s no problem, when they have so many side effects.

In my perspective psychotherapy is much better than drugs, but then again sometimes psychotherapy can’t do the job, and that’s when I believe that antidepressants should be administered, and even then I feel it should be as minimal as possible. Studies have shown that antidepressants are virtually ineffective when patients have multiple psychological disorders and/or suffered abuse or neglect during early childhood, while psychotherapy does work. Other benefits of psychotherapy over antidepressants are that drugs are usually used for long-term problems or life-long conditions of unhappiness. Psychotherapy also shows long term benefits, in reducing the likelihood of relapse over months or even years after the treatment has ended.

I believe that the over prescribing of antidepressants has become a problem, according to this article, many doctors who are not psychiatrist are prescribing antidepressants, in fact most of the prescriptions come from them. I feel like doctors are not trained well enough on the field of psychology to be prescribing antidepressants, I believe that they should refer the patients to either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, more so a psychologist and they can evaluated the patient and see it medication needs to be implemented into their lives; Other things to consider is the patients health, some people may not react well to the medication, specially to thoughts of suicide, and a patient’s health should come first. I leave you with this commercial of antidepressants, pay attention to all the side effects.

Aggression

Aggression, I believe aggression is a very interesting topic. There are many reasons to why we feel angry and sometimes are aggressive, it could be because a situation, at something, or someone. Anger helps us express how we feel, can you imagine a world in which people would have other emotions except for anger, what would that be like, but anger taken too far may lead to aggression.

Anger affects our bodies in many ways, according to this article, anger increases blood pressure, testosterone, while on the other hand cortisol decreases, and much more. Studies in similar fields like aggression, have shown with hamsters that if a hamster sniffs out an intruder (another hamster) it will eventually attack it, and if a second intruder shows up within the next 30 minutes or more the hamster will attack more vigorously and faster than before, when this happens the activity in the corticomedial area of the amygdala builds up. This study has been shown in humans too.

Of course violence and aggression are not only environmental, there is genetics involved in it. Studies with monozygotic twins (the same egg split in half, almost exact same genetics) have shown that when the twins are raised in different environments, one in a aggressive and the other in a nonaggressive environment, if they have the required genetics, then the one raised around aggression will most likely be aggressive. For now no specific gene has been found for aggression, which means it is something that can not be turned off, but counseling maybe one of the best ways to reduce it. Here is an interesting video on aggression, its about 7 minutes long.