Psychological Disorders Schizophrenia isn’t something you hear about in everyday life, but we are surrounded by it daily. You may not know, but schizophrenia is a complex brain disorder. It can affect a person’s ability to think clearly, their feelings, make decisions, and relate to others. Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness. Research suggests schizophrenia may be caused by too many or too few of some of the chemicals in the brain. These chemicals are to control emotions, motivation, movement, and how people experience the world around them. A problem with these chemicals may cause messages in the brain to get mixed up and bring about symptoms.
While some research suggests that schizophrenia is caused by a combination of genetic factors or inherited genes that are linked to schizophrenia, it may also be linked to environmental factors. Scientists still do not know the cause. There is no cure yet; however, the symptoms of schizophrenia can be managed with psychiatric care, medicine, and support. In this article that I found from the New York Times it talks about new clues to cure the treatment, and how scientist still aren’t sure how this disorder can develop, but they know the disorder can be related to many different other mental disorders, but it all depends on the person. In March of 2008 researchers had no break. They were trying to figure out this disorder, and what they did was take blood samples, and discovered that rare and undetectable genetic mutations had something to do with how the disorder comes about. Doctors knew for many years that genetics had something to do with the development with schizophrenia, but they weren’t really sure. Later on they found that even though schizophrenia had something to do with genes, that other genetic glitches had something to do with it also, and that it could be unique to single individuals. The genetic complexity kind of explained why people with schizophrenia are themselves such as a diverse group. Anyone that suffers from this disorder acts different from anyone else with this disorder, and they all also respond to medication differently. It is also said that after possibly a year and a half of taking medications for the symptoms of schizophrenia, many patients stop taking it because it didn’t work, or had intolerable side effects. The medications that the patients take numb cells in the brain to a brain chemical called dopamine, but researchers say this that this is thought to be overactive for someone with schizophrenia. Drug makers see the chance to test compounds that act on other signaling systems in the brain. A chemical messenger called glutamate, the brain’s primary stimulating agent, has become the focus of this investigation. Eli Lilly said that a compound acting on the brain’s glutamate system reduced symptoms of schizophrenia without major side effects. In this article there was no opinion aspect to it. The author definitely wasn’t stating his opinion to the readers. He was stating facts, not trying to sway anyone’s opinion. This article was very interesting, and some of it was new to me. I didn’t know that scientist never knew what developed this disorder, and I never knew it had something to do with genetics. I also didn’t know about the medication, and how a lot of patients don’t like it because of intolerable effects. What I did know was that after a year or so, maybe even months in some cases the patient stops taking their medication, and also the medication didn’t work sometimes, but I knew about the symptoms of this disorder already also.

In the future schizophrenia will somehow have a cure, or the government will eventually make enough mental institutions for people with this disorder so they can be taken care of the proper way. With many people having this disorder the government will also pay for the mental institutions, or even help out in some sort of way. Yes, the world we live in is very selfish, and in some cases if it doesn’t have to deal with you, you don’t help out, but this disorder is not a joke, along with many other disorders, but we can’t have these people living on the streets. Somewhere down the line they need to be put someplace where they will get the right amount of treatment, so they can live at home, and enjoy their families, and life.