History of Schizophrenia

What is Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental illness in which the person suffers from distorted thinking, hallucinations, and a reduced ability to feel normal emotions. It is an illness where the persons thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behavior are totally disturbed and abnormal.

Schizophrenia is a cluster of illnesses which have overlapping signs and symptoms. It is today known that everyone suffering from schizophrenia has to be diagnosed and treated differently.

Schizophrenia is not only devastating to the person suffering from it, but also to the entire family.

Brief History of Schizophrenia
The history of schizophrenia can be traced back to documents written by the Pharaonic Egyptians as far back as 2000B.C. In these texts thought disturbances are mentioned that are commonly seen in schizophrenia. At that time it was thought that these mental disturbances were caused by demons and evil spirits and could be cured by exorcising.

Many signs and symptoms of schizophrenia have been described in ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese scripts.

Schizophrenia history is better known and recorded since the 1700s. It was during this time that more detailed and accurate descriptions of abnormal mental behavior were recorded. These included changes in a persons speech, gestures and emotions.

Emil Kraepelin combined the various diseases of the mind and named it 'Dementia Praecox' - meaning early dementia - in the year 1878 and divided it into 4 categories. These included 'simple', 'paranoid', 'hebephrenic', and ' catatonic'.

Studies on these illnesses continued and it was Eugen Bleuler who gave the illness its current name 'schizophrenia' and split the symptoms into 'positive' and 'negative' in the year 1911. He coined the word from the Greek words 'schizo' meaning split, and 'phrene' meaning mind, and divided the illness into 4 categories - the 4 'A's' - blunted 'Affect', loosening of 'Associations', 'Ambivalence', and 'Autism'.

Both Kraepelin and Bleuler kept studying the symptoms and effects of schizophrenia and subdividing the symptoms into categories. They finally came up with 5 sub-divisions namely - 'disorganized', 'catatonic', 'paranoid', 'residual', and 'undifferentiated'.

Other scientists and physicians too were studying schizophrenia very closely. Kurt Schneider divided the symptoms into primary 'first-rank' symptoms, and secondary 'second-rank' symptoms in the year 1959. The patient was diagnosed to be suffering from schizophrenia if any of the primary symptoms were present. If no primary symptoms were present but more of the secondary symptoms were present, it was diagnosed as schizophrenia.

Treatments for Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia treatments have gone through vast changes in the past century. In the early 20th century it was noticed that a higher body temperature reduced the symptoms of schizophrenia. Patients were injected with a mixture of sulphur and oil to increase their body temperature. Many other therapies such as gas therapy, insulin therapy, and sleep therapy were all tried unsuccessfully.

Antipsychotic medication to relieve the symptoms of schizophrenia were released in the market in the 1950s. These drugs came with a host of side-effects including restlessness, muscle loss and tremors, earning it the name neuroleptics. An improvement in the form of atypical antipsychotic drugs were released in the 1990s. They too came with a host of side-effects, but fewer and better than the older drugs.

Schizophrenia is Still a Complex Illness
From the early 1900s to the 1970s those studying schizophrenia had no insight into the functioning of the brain of a patient. CT scans in the mid 70s helped renew an active interest in schizophrenia. With the invention and use of MR imaging in the mid 80s brain patterns and functioning in those with schizophrenia could be studied much better. Even though the understanding of schizophrenia, its causes and effects are much clearer today, it still remains a very complex illness.

Patients today are treated with much improved medication and counseling. Many of those who have got mild to medium symptoms are reasonably cured and can return to a perfectly normal life.

There are a few things about schizophrenia that we must all be aware of.

-- A person suffering from schizophrenia is not a 'split' personality, they have only 'one' personality.
-- A person suffering from schizophrenia is not a violent person. Due to the nature of the illness, in more severe cases they may tend to inflict mental and bodily harm to themselves.
-- A person suffering from schizophrenia is not developmentally delayed; they develop normally.
-- A person suffering from schizophrenia is not lower in intelligence than a normal person.

Once diagnosed, such people need a lot of care, love and affection. This will help in getting them out of the shell they go into, and combined with the proper medication they can get over most of the symptoms and lead a normal / almost normal life.