The Oxford dictionaries describes Schizophrenia as:
A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
Emil Kraepelin (15.02.1856 – 7.10.1926) was a a German psychiatrist. Encyclopedia of Psychology written by H.J. Eysenck’s identifies Kraepelin as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, Psychiatric genetics and Psychopharmacology.
Kraepelin is specifically credited with the classification of what was previously considered to be a unitay concepy of psychosis, into two distinct forms.
- Manic Depression
- Dementia
Bipolar Disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that causes periods of depression and periods of elevated mood.
Elevated mood is significant and is known as Mania or hypomania, depending on its severity, or whether symptoms of psychosis are present. With Mania, a person behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy or irritable. Often, a person will make poorly thought out decisions with little regard to the consequences.
During periods of depression, there may be crying, a negative outlook on life and poor contact with others. Over the 20 years, the risk of suicide is greater than 6% due to hard periods of depression, while self harm occurs 30-40%. Depression is also commonly associated with anxiety disorders and substance use disorders.
The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, coined the term ‘schizophrenia’ in 1911. He was also the first to describe the symptoms as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Bleuler changed the name to schizophrenia as it was obvious that Krapelin’s name was misleading as the illness was not a dementia (it did not always lead to mental deterioration) and could sometimes occur late as well as early in life.
The word ‘schizophrenia’ comes from the Greek roots schizo (split) and phrene (mind) to describe the fragmented thinking of people with the disorder. His term was not meant to convey the idea of spilt or multiple personality , a common misunderstanding by the public at large.
Occording to NHS Schizophrenia can be usually diagnosed if:
- The person experienced one or more of the following symptoms most of the time for a month: delusions, hallucinations, hearing voices, incoherent speech, or negative symptoms, such as a flattening of emotions.
- If the person symptoms have had a significant impact on your ability to work, study or perform daily task.
- All other possible causes, such as a recreational drug use or bipolar disorder, have been ruled out.
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