The paranoid schizophrenia Serves to name the disease that suffer many patients with schizophrenia and who have as main manifestations the positive symptoms.
This subgroup is characterized by presenting a clinical picture in which relatively stable and often paranoid delusions predominate, which are accompanied by hallucinations (mainly auditory) and disturbances of perception.
It should be noted that the division of this mental disorder and different categories (paranoid, hebephrenic, catatonic schizophrenia, etc.) has been questioned.
In fact, these subgroups have been removed from the latest mental health diagnostic manuals, as they do not find enough scientific evidence about their prevalence.
This means that people with schizophrenia can not be systematically included in the different subgroups proposed, since a large variety of symptoms usually appear in different patients.
In this way, a schizophrenic person may present positive, negative or disorganized symptoms with relative arbitrariness, so building specific diagnostic categories becomes complicated.
However, this does not mean that these subgroups are not useful, since, for example, there are many schizophrenic patients with more or less similar symptoms who can be classified under the subgroup of paranoid schizophrenia.
In order to establish the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, the general guidelines for the diagnosis of schizophrenia must be satisfied and, in addition, hallucinations and delusional ideas should predominate.
As for delusions, the most frequent are the following:
Chase delusions : The patient may feel persecuted, cheated, mistreated spied, defamed, poisoned or drugged, robbed of him, that there is a conspiracy against him or possess any false belief of being harmed.
Delusion of reference : It is based on a false belief that the events, objects, behavior of other people and other perceptions that the patient captures are related to his person.
Celotype Ideas : It is also known as Othello and Patient syndrome and is characterized by the irrational belief that his partner is unfaithful to him, so it is a delirium of infidelity.
Delusions of having a special mission or suffering a bodily transformation.
As far as the hallucinations are concerned, the most frequent ones are usually the auditivas, in which the patient hears voices that they scold him, they give him orders or they judge him. Likewise, gestatory, sexual, or other sensations of the body are often present.
What are the causes of schizophrenia?
A fairly important genetic burden has been demonstrated in the development of schizophrenia. Several studies such as those performed by Faraone and Santangelo show that their heritability could be estimated at 60-85%.
Likewise, there are other important risk factors in the development of this disease.
These include obstetric complications, malnutrition during pregnancy, being born in winter and suffering from alterations in psychomotor development.
In this sense, schizophrenia is understood as a neurodevelopmental disease in which to suffer the factors discussed above and possess a high genetic load, may predispose the person to develop mental illness.
Also, factors such as the consumption of certain drugs, especially marijuana, or live stressful events, could trigger the development of the disease in a brain structure already predisposed to schizophrenia.
Treatment and prognosis
Paranoid schizophrenia is characterized by being the most therapeutically approachable type of schizophrenia with a better prognosis. This fact is explained by two main reasons.
The first is based on the type of pharmacological treatment that exists today for schizophrenia, which is quite effective for positive symptoms (present in paranoid schizophrenia) and quite ineffective or even harmful for the negative ones (absent in paranoid schizophrenia ).
The second reason is explained by the absence of negative symptoms and Cognitive impairment Which predominates in paranoid schizophrenia.
Thus, the long-term repercussions of schizophrenia, such as the development of a totally apathetic and dull emotional state and a gradual deterioration of cognitive abilities, are usually present with less intensity in this type of schizophrenia.
Thus, paranoid schizophrenia is treated primarily through psychotropic drugs.
Currently the most used are the Antipsychotics Atypical drugs, such as quetiapine, clozapine or risperidone, which reduce delusions and hallucinations and often produce fewer adverse effects than conventional antipsychotics.
Also, people with paranoid schizophrenia can benefit from psychological treatment.
Firstly, motivational therapy is often a very useful tool for the psychotherapist to ensure that those patients who are not aware of suffering from schizophrenia can adequately adhere to the pharmacological treatment and take the antipsychotic drugs that decrease the positive symptoms.
On the other hand, cognitive-behavioral treatments to address the intensity of delusions and hallucinations, and the Skills training social To increase the level of performance of the patient are very beneficial treatments.
Finally, psychoeducational family interventions are very useful to help both the patient and family members understand and manage the disease adequately.
Symptoms of schizophrenia
To simplify understanding of the symptoms of schizophrenia, these can be divided into three broad groups: positive, negative and disorganized.
1. Positive symptoms
The positive symptoms of schizophrenia are probably the best known and those receiving more social and professional attention.
Thus, most treatments of schizophrenia have the objective of relieving or attenuating this type of manifestations, due in large part to the great eccentricity that characterizes them.
Among the positive symptoms we find the formal disorders of thought, that is, delusions or paranoid ideas.
The delusions that a person with schizophrenia may suffer can be of many different types, they can also acquire a greater organization, and therefore play a more important role in the person's thinking, or be lighter and more fragmented.
Among the most typical delusions are those of persecution, where the patient believes himself to be persecuted by other people, the self-referential, in which the patient believes that other people talk about him or the cellophile that is based on a delirious belief that the couple Is being unfaithful.
Likewise, other types of delusions that can be found are the erotomaniac, the megalomaniacs, the mystical delusions, the guilty, the nihilist or the hypochondriacs.
Finally, delusions considered most serious are those of alignment of thoughts, which are characterized by the belief of the patient that other people control, read, steal or spread their own thinking.
Another important positive symptom is hallucinations, which can be both Visual Such as auditory or sensory.
Finally, as positive symptoms we find formal disorders of thoughts such as derailment, in which the person loses the thread of the conversation while speaking or the tachytoschia characterized by possessing an excessively accelerated thinking.
2. Negative symptoms
Negative symptoms are the other side of the coin, that is, all those symptoms that can present a person with schizophrenia that refer to a decrease in both cognitive and State of mind .
These symptoms are usually less eccentric than the positive ones, call less attention, they may acquire a form similar to depressive symptoms and usually take less attention in treatment.
In fact, most drugs that are used to reduce positive symptoms (such as delusions and hallucinations) can increase negative symptoms.
Also, few people are aware that a person with schizophrenia can suffer from this type of symptoms, which, at the same time, are the ones that cause them greater discomfort and deterioration.
Among the negative symptoms we find Language disorders , Which usually becomes poorer, slower and deteriorated, and with less content.
Likewise, there is a deterioration in thinking which also tends to slow, block and become impoverished.
Finally, on an emotional level, there are symptoms such as apathy wave Anhedonia , Loss of energy, affective indifference and dullness.
3. Disorganized symptoms
Finally, disorganized symptoms refer to a large number of manifestations that affect both the behavior and language of people with schizophrenia.
Thus, language disorders such as stuttering, echolalia (instantaneous repetition of what another person says) or totally disorganized discourses in which words are spoken without any semantic structure.
Likewise, catatonic symptoms can appear as mannerisms (automatic, repetitive and unconscious movements of the fingers), bizarre postures (strange and unconscious body postures that can even cause physical injury) or catatonic stupor.
Other symptoms that may occur are induced abnormal movements such as imitating other people's movements in an automatic and unconscious way, extreme negativity, mutism or extravagant behaviors.
In this article I will explain your symptoms, causes, treatment, diagnosis, risk factors, advice for affected and family and much more.
References
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