What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage their emotions, make decisions, and relate to others. It is a complex and long-term disorder that affects about 1% of Americans. Although schizophrenia can occur at any age, onset tends to happen in the late teens to the early 20’s for men and the late 20’s to early 30’s for women. Individuals with schizophrenia may have thoughts or experiences that seem out of touch with reality. Commonly, people with schizophrenia also have something called anosognosia, which is also known as “lack of insight.” This means the person does not know they have the illness, which can make treating or working with them much more challenging. As many of our clients have proven that it is entirely possible to live a happy, fulfilled life with schizophrenia.
Symptoms
For a diagnosis of schizophrenia, some of the following symptoms need to be both present and contributing to a person’s reduced functionality for at least 6 months. The symptoms of schizophrenia fall into three categories: positive, negative, and cognitive.
Positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors that are not generally seen in healthy people. These may include:
- Hallucinations: hearing voices, seeing things, or smelling things others cannot perceive. The hallucination is very real to the person experiencing it and can be terrifying for them, as well as their loved ones.
- Delusions: false beliefs that the person cannot or will not change even when they are presented with new ideas or facts.
- Delusions often cause problems concentrating, confusion, or create the sense in a person that their thoughts are “blocked” somehow.
- Thought disorders, such as unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking.
- Movement disorders, such as agitated body movements.
Negative symptoms are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors. These often diminish the person’s abilities, and may include:
- Flat affect: reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone.
- Reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life.
- Difficulty beginning and sustaining activities.
- Reduced speaking.
Cognitive symptoms are associated with changes in learning, memory, perception, problem solving or other aspects of thinking. With Schizophrenia, these symptoms may include:
- Reduced ability in understanding information and using it to make decisions.
- Trouble remembering things and/or completing tasks.
- Problems with working memory, the type of memory that allows for the the use of information immediately after learning it.
Sanctuary Centers Treats Schizophrenia
At Sanctuary Centers, we specialize in working not only with clients living with schizophrenia, but also with schizoaffective disorder, thought disorders, and other more severe psychiatric problems as well. We aim to help all our clients develop life skills such as medication stabilization and compliance, achieve better insight and understanding of self, and build toward their educational, vocational, and career goals. The foundation of our schizophrenia treatment is built around a system incorporating cognitive therapies, psychoeducation, family intervention, social skills training, pharmacotherapy, and community integration. Our caring clinical team work with each individual and their families to come up with a treatment plan designed to help with the transition back into the world, as clients reintegrate into their family, work, and school environments.