Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness characterized by disordered thoughts and abnormal behavior including delusions, hallucinations, and anti-social behavior. It is a psychotic disorder where the patient fails to differentiate between real and unreal.
A Mission for Michael (AMFM) is the leading mental health service provider and is mainly known for schizophrenia treatment Orange County. With health centers located in Southern California and Virginia, they provide antipsychotic medications, individual therapies, and stress management programs to treat all kinds of intense mental illness. They provide evidence-based personalized treatment with the help of clinically qualified staff. With a 2 to 1 client-to-staff ratio, you can get 24-hours-a-day individual care.
What are the main types of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is categorized into four main types based on the person’s symptoms.
They are –
- Paranoid Schizophrenia – It is the most common type of schizophrenia characterized by positive symptoms like delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and behavior. It includes the feeling of insecurity. The person with paranoid schizophrenia has relatively normal expression and intellectual.
- Catatonic Schizophrenia – It relates to the muscular rigidity of the patients that affect their speech and behavior. People with catatonic schizophrenia have negative symptoms like odd movements, unusual body positions, reduced speech, distorted facial expression, and inability to complete daily activities.
- Hebephrenic or Disorganized Schizophrenia – Usually, these people relatively show disorganized speech and behavioral symptoms. They may also lack emotional responses, facial expressions, and daily activities like hygiene, eating, and working.
- Undifferentiated Schizophrenia – This classification includes people who do not belong to any of the three above-mentioned classifications of schizophrenia. It is because they exhibit both positive and negative symptoms. Their symptoms may include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech or behavior, and muscular rigidity.
There are other related disorders like Schizoaffective disorder, Schizotypal personality disorder, and Schizophreniform disorder that exhibit temporary symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms may last for a month to six months.
How is schizophrenia treated?
Schizophrenia treatment is based on the type of schizophrenia and the symptoms exhibited by the individual. A combination of medicine and psychotherapy is used for the treatment of schizophrenia.
Here are a few types of treatments and therapies for schizophrenia –
- Antipsychotic medications – These medications affect brain chemistry to reduce the psychotic symptoms by chemical reactions. Usually, the medicines are in the form of pills or injections and are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
- Cognitive-behavioral and enhancement therapy (CBT and CET) – These therapies help you to restore normal thinking and behaviors. It includes computer-based brain training to improve their attention, memory, and thinking ability.
- Coordinated specialty care with family intervention – This treatment combines medication and psychosocial therapy for the initial stage of schizophrenia. It includes social and employment counseling with the intervention of the family members. It effectively reduces symptoms, improves the quality of life, and increases social involvement at work or school.
- Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) – The professionals help the patient to meet daily challenges and handle the problems proactively.
There are no specific laboratory tests for schizophrenia but your urine test, blood test, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computed tomography (CT scan) are done followed by the psychological analysis to confirm the type of schizophrenia.
