Todd West Schizophrenia Summary

This article describes a man who has a psychotic break with reality, which can be attributed to schizophrenia. We can see that this man, Todd West, suddenly developed irrational behavior as well as hallucinations of disembodied voices. As Joanne Greenberg explains, people who suffer from schizophrenia often experience compulsive illogical thoughts, which Todd’s behavior constitutes. (Greenberg, 18) There are two hallmarks of schizophrenia: false memories and beliefs that are all-consuming and hallucinations that can affect any of the senses though typically manifests in ones sense of audition(Greenberg, 50). Although these symptoms always appear in a schizophrenic patient, they can appear at different magnitudes and some people experience much more powerful delusions then others (Mendel, 273). The time at which schizophrenia develops tends to be the early to mid twenties, which is consistent with the onset of West’s psychotic break at age twenty-three. In Treating Schizophrenia, Werner Mendel states that in a significant portion of cases close family members do not notice the gradual changes in the schizophrenic’s behavior. They perceive the changes in the person’s behavior to be sudden, although non-family members

These episodes have periods of remission, which will last for weeks to months, so if Todd West were to be observed for an extended period of time, doctors could be certain of a diagnosis (Mendel, 23). To improve the accuracy of the diagnosis, doctors could perform a battery of blood tests that would help to pare down the possible list of reasons that West may have been hallucinating, such as drug effects. If this test came back negative, a psychological evaluation that examined his delusions and hallucinations in an attempt to achieve the correct diagnosis (Mayo