Schizophrenia [1] is a serious mental illness. It is a brain disorder that impairs the ability of people especially their psychological functions such as emotion, perception, thinking, or will.
Precisely because of its deteriorating nature, and because it was observed that it began at a very early age, it was called “precocious dementia” for some time. Later this name was replaced by schizophrenia, as we call it today, which etymologically means “split mind.” With this term, we wanted to underline the alterations in thinking that these patients present.
Schizophrenia is a disease that presents many and varied symptoms but none is specific to it, but they can also be present in other mental disorders. In addition, the symptoms for the most part are subjective, that is, only the patient experiences them, with which they cannot be verified.
Common Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Delusions
They are misconceptions [2] of which the patient is convinced. They are false convictions that the person holds strongly and are irreducible to logic. The person suffering from psychotic illness depends on some details of truth for this, even though he misinterprets them. For example, believing that everyone is against them or that they are trying to harm them. Other delusion examples are:
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Delusions of grandeur: the person believes they have special powers. “I feel chosen to do a mission, I communicate directly with God”
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Delusions of harm: when the person believes that someone is trying to harm them or harm them in any way. “I know they are mounting a plot against me, there are people who try to poison me”
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Erotomanic delusions: when the person himself believes that he is the object of falling in love with another. “The King of Spain is always looking out for me, he never stops sending me signals”
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Celotypical delusions: the person suspects that he is being deceived by someone. “My husband is seeing another, I smelled perfume on his jacket”