Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe psychological disorder that affects approximately 24 million people in the world, that is, one person is affected by schizophrenia for every 300 people worldwide. Schizophrenia causes psychosis and is extremely disabling and may affect all areas of life, including personal, family, social, educational, and professional functioning. It is also common for people with schizophrenia to experience stigma, discrimination and human rights violations.

Symptoms of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is characterized by severe imbalances in the way a person views reality and changes in his behavior as a result of one or more of the following manifestations :

• Persistent delusions: A person holds firm beliefs about something being true despite evidence to the contrary.
• Persistent hallucinations: A person may hear voices, smell scents, or see, touch, or feel things. It does not exist.
• Experiences related to influence, control, or negativity: a person's feeling that his feelings, motives, actions, or thoughts do not come from him personally, or that others implant them in his mind or take them away from him, or that his thoughts are transmitted to others
• Disturbed thinking, often observed in the form of garbled or incoherent speech.
• Very disoriented behavior, such as the person doing things that seem strange or purposeless, or having unexpected or inappropriate emotional responses. It limits his ability to regulate his behavior.
• Very limited speech and poor experiences and ability to express emotions.
• Inability to show interest or feel pleasure.
• Tendency toward isolation. Social.
• Extreme agitation or slow movements, and insistence on assuming unusual positions.
• Permanent difficulties in practicing cognitive or thinking skills, such as memory, attention, and the ability to solve problems.< /li>

Recovery from schizophrenia

At least one third of people with schizophrenia recover from the symptoms of the disease completely. Some people with it experience a worsening of symptoms or a periodic recovery from them throughout their lives, while others witness a gradual worsening of their symptoms over time.

The impact of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia causes a great deal of distress and distress in personal, family, social, educational, vocational, and other important areas of life. People with schizophrenia are two to three times more likely to die early than the general population. This is often due to physical ailments, such as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, and infectious diseases. People with schizophrenia are often exposed to human rights violations, whether within mental health institutions or in community settings, and stigmatization practices against people with this disease are severe and widespread, which causes their social exclusion and affects their relationships with others, including family and friends, and contributes to the practice of Discrimination against them, which in turn can limit their access to public health care and educational, housing and employment opportunities. In humanitarian and public health emergencies, stress and fear can intensify, social supports collapse, isolation worsens, and health care services and the supply of medicines are disrupted. These changes can affect the lives of people with schizophrenia, for example exacerbating their symptoms. During emergencies, people with schizophrenia are more vulnerable than others to various human rights violations, including neglect, abandonment, homelessness, abuse and exclusion. Reference: World Health Organization