Paper Example on Schizophrenia

Summary of event:Jani is a young girl who was found to have weird habits from the age of 4, where she would scratch her parents and bite them. At the time, she would scratch the walls with her nails until blood comes out of her fingers. She also reached a point where she told her parents that she would kill them and bury them in the garden. At the age of 7, Janis parents bore a new born baby boy, and Janis behavior got worse when one time she pointed a knife at her brother and said she wanted to kill her in front of her parents. This led to her being secluded in a far away apartment away from her baby brother over the fear of harming him.

Application of the Bio psychosocial model:

Schizophrenia is a severe and chronic mental disease that tends to affect the thinking, reasoning, and feeling of a person to the point that the victim is deemed to have lost touch with the reality (Ripke, Benjamin and Corvin 421). It has been researched that schizophrenia usually starts from the age of 16 to 30 years, and this is the age when most people show signs or are diagnosed with schizophrenia (Sekar, Bialas and de Rivera 177). In rare cases such as Janis case is when children usually get diagnosed with schizophrenia. Jani is said to be developing unnecessary anger in the documentary as well as perceived thinking that makes her want to harm her parents and small brother. The alternate diagnosis for Jani in these circumstances would have been a bipolar disorder (The Learning House, Inc. 7). Or inflammation of the brain, which causes brain dysfunction and uncoordinated movements and actions, and this is mostly caused when the immune system is affected as a result of some infections such as encephalitis. In my opinion given the circumstances under which she behaves and changes emotions, it is safe to conclude that she has schizophrenia (Frith 6). This is the only mental disease under which the symptoms and signs of her behavior, emotions, and way of reasoning that Jani develops (Born Schizophrenic: Jani's Story).

Psychological aspect:

The symptoms of schizophrenia are subdivided into three broad categories, which are; positive, negative, and cognitive. Positive signs are when people develop psychotic behaviors that include; hallucinations, delusions, dysfunctional way of thinking as well as movement disorders (Hockenbury and Hockenbury 22). Negative symptoms are usually related to emotional and behavioral disruptions. They vary across; flat affect, reduced speaking, difficulty in incepting and sustaining activities, and reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life. Cognitive symptoms, on the other hand, are more severe than those above and they include; weak executing functions, trouble paying attention, difficulty in focusing and poor memory in general (Linchestein 234). It is, therefore, apparent to consider these symptoms when carrying out clinical observation and Rorschach on a patient that exhibits mental disorder as it will assist promptly in correct diagnosis (Bortolon, Delphine and Raffard 84).

Project drawings, on the other hand, help in diagnosing the coordination of the brain as scientists and psychiatrists observe the coordination of the movements and brain of the victim (Pitschel-Walz 18). The immune system is the observed to determine if there may be inflammatory conditions on the nervous regime of the patients, as they tend to also develop similar symptoms as those of schizophrenic patients (Murray and Lewis 681).

Conclusion:

Psychiatric and neurological disorders have certain resemblance which may require specialized clinical tests to determine exactly what a patient suffers from to not administer the wrong diagnosis on a patient. This is to mean that it is quite challenging and exhaustive to treat patients and come to a conclusive diagnosis of the mental illness or disorder that they are suffering from exactly. Brain imaging has emerged as a very reliable tool in diagnosing the patients with brain disorders or dysfunctions, but it has not advanced diagnosis and experience play a significant role in diagnosing patients such as Jani correctly. It is therefore conclusive to state that scientists need to work extra on finding the most accurate diagnosis and cures for such patients shortly.

Works Cited

Born Schizophrenic: Jani's Story. 2010.

Bortolon, Catherine, Capdeville Delphine and Stephane Raffard. "Face recognition in schizophrenia disorder: A comprehensive review of behavioral, neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies." Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews (2015): 79-107.

Frith, Christopher Ronald. The cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia. New York: Psychology Press, 2014.

Hockenbury, D and S Hockenbury. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers, 2002.

Linchestein, Paul, et al. "Common genetic determinants of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in Swedish families: a population-based study." The Lancet (2009): 234-239.

Murray, Robbin and Shon Lewis. "Is schizophrenia a neurodevelopmental disorder?" British Medical Journal (1987): 681.

Pitschel-Walz, Gabi, et al. "The effect of family interventions on relapse and rehospitalization in schizophrenia." Focus (2015): 18-32.

Ripke, Stephen, et al. "Biological insights from108 schizophrenia- associated genetic loci." Nature (2014): 421.

Sekar, Aswin, et al. "Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component." Nature (2016): 177.

The Learning House, Inc. The Foundations of Psychology. New Jersey: The Learning House, 2009.