The temptation to shut this blog down is overwhelming. I
enjoyed it when I started, thinking it would be easy to upkeep. But like I
learned a while ago, it takes 10 straight weeks to make a certain activity a
habit. I held out for about 2 or 3 before ennui set in. I just kind of want to
sweep it under the rug and forget I ever started it. But darn it, I’m terrible
at keeping my goals. I’m not going to let another one slide away from me just
because I fell behind. So today? Schizophrenia.
Today I read a new article for a new class. The group
project I’m working on is discussing various aspects of schizophrenia. This is
a pretty grim disease to have, and learning about the symptoms and experiences
people go through doesn’t make it seem any easier. In fact, we listened to a
sample of what a person experiencing auditory hallucination might hear. It was
pretty terrifying. Throbbing, mechanical sounds, the sudden sounds of flapping
wings, lots of voices mumbling curse words or sharply demanding “What are you
doing?” I couldn’t find that particular clip again on Youtube, but here’s
another example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhT9djAEy8s. This one is much
more about the loud, distracting noises with lots of very indistinct voices.
The auditory and visual hallucinations already seem hard
enough to deal with. Just imagine having to deal with constant put downs in a
job interview or on a date. But that’s just one symptom out several. Positive
symptoms, or problems that one gains from the disorder, include delusions,
thought disorders, and problems with movements. In extreme cases where a
patient doesn’t get treatment, they can even become catatonic. Negative
symptoms are normal behaviors or emotions being lost. People begin to have a
‘flat affect’ or seeming to lack feeling in their expressions and speech. They
lose interest in things they used to enjoy and begin to withdraw socially. All of this coupled with the fact that there
is no way to cure schizophrenia, only ways to maintain it and keep it at a
lower level. Schizophrenia is almost seen as a terminal illness to some people.
However, as with most psychological disorders, there is a
range of severity. There are those who anti-psychotics don’t work and they have
to be hospitalized for the remainder of their lives. There are also those that
go on to be college professors, artists, and musician. If you’ve seen the movie
A Beautiful Mind, you already know about John Nash, who
struggled with schizophrenia but eventually won the Nobel Prize in economics.
Really, with all the research we’ve done so far in different medications and
therapies and programs for people with schizophrenia, why shouldn’t the
prognosis be brighter?
The particular article I’m reading focuses on
using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to try and reduce the negative
symptoms I talked about earlier. The researchers tried to reduce negative
symptom by introducing five different modules that targeted negative behaviors:
regaining initiative,
increasing social activity, emotional participation, emotional expression, and speech
activity. Ultimately, they found that CBT worked just as well as their control
group, Cognitive Remediation. CR focused just on increasing mental faculties,
like attention and working memory, rather than the emotional and social aspects
of the CBT. They both reduced negative symptoms by about half a point on
their measurement instrument, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (or the PANSS).
Schizophrenia is a disorder with no easy answer. Even inconclusive
studies like this one move the field further another inch. One day we’ll have preferred
treatment outline that we expect for other disorders like anorexia or anxiety.
I’ll be waiting for that day, when people with Schizophrenia can get a solid
treatment plan and prognosis rather than struggling in the face of uncertainty.
Klingberg, Wolwer, Engel, Wittorf, Herrlich, Meisner,
Buchkremer, & Wiedemann. (2011). Negative symptoms
of schizophrenia as primary target of cognitive behavioral therapy: Results of
the
randomized clinical TONES study Schizophrenia Bulletin 37(2) S98–S110, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment