“If you talk to God, it is a prayer, if God speaks to you, it is schizophrenia.” –Thomas Szasz (Google Image: Quote). This quote gives a good definition of what most people, including myself, think schizophrenia is, but we don’t realize that it’s more than just voices in your head, even if those symptoms don’t occur. I’ve always thought about what it’s to work with patients who have mental conditions, and one that I find the most fascinating is schizophrenia. I always thought that it was voices telling people to do crazy things, but it turns out that it’s so much more than that.
So what’s schizophrenia you ask? Schizophrenias a major mental disorder that messes with a person’s reality, emotions, behavior, thinking and relating to others. The
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Schizophrenia does tend to run in the family, but there isn’t a gene that’s responsible for it. In the different mix of genes this can make people more sensitive to this illness, but carrying these genes doesn’t actually mean that they will get schizophrenia. There was a study done that has shown this illness can come from identical twins. They share the same genes and if one develops the illness, then the other has a one in two chance of getting it. However, in non-identical twins their genetics are different, but when one gets the illness, the other has a one in seven chance of getting schizophrenia. There were studies done with people that have schizophrenia and it was shown that their brain structures were slightly different. The brain changes aren’t shown in everyone who has the condition and people who don’t have the condition can also have different brain structures. Schizophrenia is thought to be a brain disorder. In the brain there’s neurotransmitters which bring messages to brain cells. Neurotransmitters and schizophrenia have a connection because there are drugs that vary the levels of neurotransmitters that