Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia comes from the Greek roots schizien “to split”, and phren “mind.” Understanding any mental illnesses is complicated, but one of the most abstract is schizophrenia. Samuel Wick brilliantly explains, “Schizophrenia is a disease, occurring during adolescence and early adulthood, which produces a change in the personality with the development of delusions and hallucinations” (1071). Schizophrenia is found all over the world and more the 2 million Americans develop the disease every year. Schizophrenia is a chronic and disabling brain disease with many possible causes, terrifying symptoms, and a wide variety of treatments.
The first interesting point of schizophrenia is the many possible causes. There are a few common causes that reappear in cases of schizophrenia, but the majority of what is known is indefinite. Samuel Barondes explains, “Despite extensive study for many years initially promising, but ultimately disappointing hypotheses, we do not have a clear understanding of either the causes of schizophrenia or how the causative factors lead to the clinical features” (1612). One of the major controversies when pondering what causes schizophrenia is whether the disease is caused by a genetic malfunction, or a disruption in the individuals environment. “The Causes of Schizophrenia” gives some insight to this question:
While one person may develop schizophrenia due largely to a strong family history of mental illness […] , someone else with much less genetic vulnerability may also develop the disease due to a more significant combination of prepregnancy factors, pregnancy stress, other prenatal factors, social stress, family stress, or environmental stress that they experience during their childhood, teen, or early adult years.
With this given information there is a large possibility that both of these factors can go hand in hand. “The Causes of Schizophrenia” adds some interesting points to the relationship of genes and...