Schizophrenia is a chronic and a severe mental disorder which affects more than 2o million people, worldwide. Narrowing it down to the Indian scenario, the doctors claim that around 1% of the population in the nation is affected due to this considerable disability.

Being an educational and occupational performances hazard, Schizophrenia blocks ones’ ability to think, act and react, while leading to extreme emotional imbalance, loss of language as well as the sense of self and behaviour. A patients’ experience can also range from fixed, false beliefs to traumatizing auditory and visual hallucinations.

With time, as it gets extremely difficult to cope up with, 13% of those who suffer also contemplate suicide, sometimes succumbing to early deaths. However, this is a symptomatic disease that isn’t life threatening. Its occurrence is often due to the preventable physical problems, such as cardiovascular, metabolic dysfunctions and major infections.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia:

1. Hallucination: hearing, seeing or feeling things that are not there;

2. Delusion: fixed false beliefs or suspicions not shared by others;

3. Abnormal behaviour: disorganised behaviour such as wandering aimlessly, mumbling or laughing to self, strange appearance, self-neglect or appearing unkempt;

4. Disorganised speech: incoherent or irrelevant speech; and/or

5. Disturbances of emotions: marked apathy or disconnect between reported emotion and what is observed such as facial expression or body language.

Sometimes even using drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines, or even a major addiction to alcohol can exacerbate schizophrenic symptoms and worsen their severity. Defining their every action, this directs them to not be accommodated and further shunned from the social circles.

It is only natural that a Schizophrenia patient tends to feel lonely and is generally rejected by the society to turn into a social outcast. This is all because there is no timely and proper consultation and a considerate counselling. The shame and taboo attached to the topic of conversation, further dissolves their identity.

Hence, it naturally becomes the responsibility of the loved ones to take care of them by taking precautionary measures that involves acknowledgement of their experiences, respect their behaviour, and guide them towards betterment with effective medication and regular sessions with a physiologist/psychiatrist (depending on the intensity of the condition).

Moreover, the public spheres can also aid in facilitating a safer environment for the patients by refraining from making them more vulnerable to extreme actions and try to become a strong community for these individuals.

Dr.Pranav Padinghar-Surat
A leading independent psychiatrist

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