Schizophrenia is a chronic psychotic illness that causes the person to have hallucination, paranoia, and hear negative voices in their heads. In history is was the cause of bewilderment and those who had the disorder were thought to be possessed by the devil. Schizophrenia is cognitive and biological disorder that has yet to be fully understood, though there is some understanding of the illness it is limited.
This illness commonly develops in young adults where there is server psychotic deterioration. As a person grows older these symptoms start to get milder with regular psychotic episodes. It effects the person cognitively and neurologically, shown by differences in their eye movement, working memory and attention. Schizophrenia affects 1% of the population, in all parts of the world.
There are many hypothesis on
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Genes and environment influence each other greatly. The link between them have suggested that it could be an impact of both that leads to schizophrenia (cannon et al). It can be seen at least some of these factors influences the dopamine system, for example stress can lead to dopamine dysfunction. It is suspected that the development of schizophrenia is caused by a ‘trigger’ to these prone to the illness. The main triggers are stress and drug abuse. Stress caused by losing jobs and abuse (violent or emotional) does not cause schizophrenia but can prompt the illness to develop in an individual who is vulnerable to schizophrenia. In addition drug abuse is not the cause of the illness, but major studies have shown individuals under 15 are four times more likely to develop schizophrenia if they regularly use cannabis and more potent drugs. There is strong suggestion that the disorder results from both genetic and environmental factors. Meaning the genes are not the sole factor of the illness but perhaps it predisposes one to be able to develop