Why is schizophrenia not a well known mental health disease? It is because only about 1% of the population has schizophrenia. It is very common to be misinformed because of that, according to the 2023 schizophrenia study, it has age related symptoms. In the U.S. about 2.8 million adults have it, yet we still don’t know the exact cause.
Understanding Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental health disease/disorder that affects your way of thinking, your beliefs, and your way of life. It affects your sight and hearing and gives you hallucinations, along with delusions.
Schizophrenia affects your way of thinking by having you become indecisive and basically gaslights you about everything you know and thought you knew.
It affects your beliefs by making you believe things that are obviously wrong, but convinces you that whatever anyone says, that you are right.
It affects your way of life by making you paranoid and it also makes you start seeing and hearing people and objects that are not there.
Many people with schizophrenia experience intense hallucinations and delusions, hearing voices and seeing horrifying sights.
Another problem is that they could also not see or hear things that everyone else can see or hear.
Root Causes
There are many things that can cause you to develop schizophrenia, but not all of them are guaranteed to give you schizophrenia. Many reasons we don’t know about the causes are because a small amount of the population actually has schizophrenia.
Due to recent research, schizophrenia is caused by many things including genetics, though no single gene has been found to cause it.
It has been proven that there are many small differences in a person who has schizophrenia’s brain and someone who doesn’t have schizophrenia’s brain, but there are some instances where it doesn’t appear in a schizophrenic’s brain.
There are also instances where people with other mental health illnesses end up with those same subtle changes and differences.
Some people may be more prone to schizophrenia than others, but very traumatic and very emotional life events could cause you to develop schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia may have a different amount of neural transmitters in their brains than other people their age.
Treatment Options
There is no official way to cure schizophrenia, though many people try to find a cure. Although there is no cure, there are many treatments to improve the life of a schizophrenic.
One of the many treatments is getting a support dog that is specially trained to help a schizophrenic person by barking if the sounds or sights are not really there.
These dogs are specially trained to acknowledge certain ques, like saying what you see or hear than the dog barking, so that it knows what you are talking about.
There are some medical treatments that have been known to help regulate the problems such as, antipsychotic and anti-Tremor medications along with non medical treatments such as therapy.
Antipsychotic medicines include, Aripiprazole, Haloperidol, Olanzapine, Quetiapine, Risperidone, Chlorpromazine, Fluphenazine, Perphenazine, Trifluoperazine, Clozapine, Paliperidone, Prochlorperazine, Asenapine, Loxapine, Thiothixene, and Ziprasidon.
All listed items above are only available with a prescription, but that prescription could make the difference.
A major therapy option in Utah takes place at the University of Utah Health, where they use behavioral therapy and inpatient group therapy to help with the negative symptoms which include lack of motivation or interest in activities.
To conclude
In the end, schizophrenia is not well known or understood due to having cases being relatively rare. Although it is not understood very much, there are many treatment options for those who do have it, and even though there is not a known cure, hope is not lost.
If you know someone who has this mental health disease, and have a story to share about them getting help, tell me down below in the comments. Thank you!