Causes and Types of Schizophrenia
Forms of Schizophrenic Behavior and Causes of the Mental Illness
Mar 14, 2009
People struggling with the mental illness known as schizophrenia usually experience persistent delusions, hallucinations, and emotional withdrawal.
The Types of Schizophrenia
According to the general classification, there are six distinct types of schizophrenia.
- Disorganized schizophrenia is characterized by person’s being verbally incoherent, feeling and expressing emotions that are not appropriate to the situation.
- A person diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia is extremely withdrawn, negative, isolated, and has obvious psychomotor disturbances.
- If a person has paranoid schizophrenia, he or she is very suspicious of others, and often has great schemes of persecution at the root of the behavior. Hallucinations and delusions are also the symptoms of this type of schizophrenia.
- Residual schizophrenia is usually expressed through a person’s having no motivation or interest in everyday life.
- People with a schizoaffective disorder have some symptoms of schizophrenia and mood disorders, such as depression, bipolar mania, or mixed mania.
- People with undifferentiated schizophrenia exhibit the symptoms of more than one of the above mentioned types of schizophrenia, but without a clear predominance of a particular set of diagnostic characteristics.
The Causes of Schizophrenia
There are many factors that may cause schizophrenia. Scientists are still working on trying to identify all of them. The most common causes of the mental illness are genetic and environmental.
- Genetic cause of schizophrenia usually lies in a person’s having immediate relatives with a history of schizophrenia or other psychiatric diseases (schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, depression).
Some researchers consider schizophrenia to be highly heritable (some estimates are as high as 70%). A recent review of the genetic evidence has suggested a 28% chance of one identical twin’s developing schizophrenia if the other already has the psychological disorder.
The research results list seven genes as likely to be involved in the inheritance of schizophrenia, or the risk of developing the disease. Scientists suggest that multiple chromosomal regions are inherited by, and transmitted to people who are later diagnosed as having schizophrenia.
- Environmental cause. There is considerable evidence indicating that stress may trigger episodes of schizophrenia psychosis. For example, emotionally turbulent families and stressful life events have shown to be some of the risk factors for the relapses or triggers of schizophrenia episodes. Abuse as a child and early traumatic experience are also among the risk factors for developing schizophrenia later in life.
Factors such as poverty and discrimination may also be involved in increasing the risk of having a schizophrenic episode due to the high levels of stress that these lifestyles harbor. The "social drift hypothesis" suggests that people affected by schizophrenia may be less able to hold steady, demanding, or high-paying jobs. As a result, low income and problems increase stress levels and leave such people susceptible to lapsing into a schizophrenic episode.
The different types of schizophrenia include disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, residual, undifferentiated, and schizoaffective mental disorders. The major causes of the illness are divided into genetic and environmental. Though schizophrenia may not greatly influence some of the attention-related tasks a person performs, it has a large effect on the surrounding people.
To learn more about schizophrenia and the major symptoms of this mental illness, read Schizophrenia as a Mental Disorder.
Sources:
- Bertelsen, Aksel. “Schizophrenia and Related Disorders: Experience with Current Diagnostic Systems.” Psychopathology 35: 89–93, 2002.
- Turner, Trevor. “Schizophrenia.” In G. Berrios & R. Porter (Eds.), A History of Clinical Psychiatry. London: Athlone Press, 1999.
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