Essential Facts on Paranoid-Type Schizophrenia
Paranoid type schizophrenia is one of five different types of schizophrenia, which is a chronic mental illness marked by detachment from reality. What makes paranoid schizophrenia different than other types is the overwhelming paranoia that people are plotting, lurking, spying and out to sabotage them. Usually, these schizophrenics are better able to communicate, memorize and express emotion than other types of schizophrenics, but they are still incapacitated by their irrational fears, delusions and suspicions.
Living your life with paranoid schizophrenia is frightening. The individual experiences voices offering a ongoing summary of his or her life. ”Be careful — he’s looking at you from over there, hidden in the bushes,” says one voice. ”Your professor is plotting to kill you, so you must kill first,” another voice claims. ”They’re watching you out of the TV screens… break them,” yet another demands. Paranoid schizophrenia is characterized by positive conditions including auditory hallucinations and delusions, to a greater extent than the negative symptoms of speech disturbances, flattened emotions and bad power of recall.
To make a diagnosis of a person with paranoid-type schizophrenia, a mental health professional will ask questions in relation to warning signs and genetic indicators. He or she will look for delusions, hallucinatory voices and paranoia as the crucial factors, with less importance on flattened emotions, memory problems, poor decision making skills and speech problems. Doctors will try to differentiate those kinds of mental issues from medication-induced psychosis and epilepsy. Generally, it requires anywhere from a month to six months to officially complete a diagnosis. On occasion, patients suffer severe psychotic attacks and go through times of remission.
Other symptoms of paranoid type schizophrenia are the same as the other schizophrenia subtypes. For instance, social withdrawal, anxiety, loss of appetite, lack of hygiene, suicidal thoughts and a feeling of being ”out of control” are all common among all schizophrenic patients. It can be difficult to define paranoid schizophrenia because the patients run the gamut from appearing normal in every way but occasionally speaking strangely, to appearing quite ill with bizarre behaviors catching attention. Some schizophrenics, for example, will wear aluminum foil hats to prevent their thoughts from ”being broadcast” or will smash a TV to prevent ”people from spying.”
If left untreated, paranoid type schizophrenia can result in a number of devastating effects. An astonishing 90% of individuals who are afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia smoke, drink to excess or abuse drugs. Four out of ten people with schizophrenia attempt suicide and 10-15% of all schizophrenics succeed in ending their own lives. Those who do not commit suicide struggle with depression, poverty, homelessness, incarceration, family conflicts and the inability to work or attend school. With antipsychotic medications, a schizophrenic can lead a relatively normal life, although there are serious health risks associated with these drugs that include heart problems, lung disease and cancer.
Even with ongoing schizophrenia research, there is still no cure for schizophrenia, but there are ways to cope with the illness. Drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist are the number one method of treatment but it does not work alone. Drugs along with regular therapy are often the recommended course. Click here to learn more about schizophrenia disorder.
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This article is doing a good job at keeping the stigma up and running. Alluding to violent voices is not helpful, since this is only in EXTREME cases and when the person is having an episode. Statistically, people with schizophrenia are no more likely to commit violent crimes than any other person without the diagnosis. However, this is increased to a rate of 10x more likely when the person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia is also abusing drugs or alcohol.