Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that impacts all areas of an individual’s life. It deteriorates a person’s functioning by creating unusual perceptions about reality, strange emotions, and abnormalities in motor abilities (Comer, 2014). Not only does this disorder cause havoc on the individual’s life, it also directly affects the family and caretakers of the person. The article, Schizophrenia: A Siblings Tale, tells the perspective of a sister whose life is greatly impacted by the diagnosis of her younger brother. This article relates to the topics covered in the textbook, addresses positive and negative symptoms, and tells about the types of therapy the individual and family received.
This article shed light onto a rarely discussed topic
…show more content…
427). These symptoms involve hallucinations in which a person may directly hear a voice talking to them, visual perceptions of colors or distinct objects or people, feel sensations of something crawling in their body, or claim that their food and drink tastes different. They may experience delusions or false believes, such as the government is spying on them or that someone is trying to poison them. They experience thought disorders consisting of loose associations, neoglisms or made up words that have significance to them only, repetition of words or statements, or rhyming words. They may display inappropriate affect in which they smile when receiving bad news. A person’s inability to correctly interpret social interactions and events may lead to the development and ongoing occurrence of positive symptoms (Ito, Matsumoto, Miyakosi, Ohmuro, Uchida, & Matsuoka, 2013). Negative symptoms involve a deficit “in normal thought, emotions, or behaviors” (Comer, 2014), p. 431). Sufferers might have a lack of volition and display apathy or an incapability of starting a course of action or even to complete a course of action. They lack energy and feel worn down while displaying a flat affect. They have a lack of excitement about them. A poverty of speech, or alogia, can be observed in a way that they say very little. People with negative symptoms