Having fragmented thoughts clearly characterizes someone suffering from schizophrenia. It’s a psychotic disorder which distorts thinking, whereby a person confuses reality with fantasy, experience changes in perception and emotions as well as movements and behavior. It can’t be defined as a single illness. Instead, the disease is often describe or thought of as a syndrome with many distinct forms and symptoms. For decades, society greatly misunderstood the illness, fearing it as dangerous and unpredictable. A majority of people thought that individuals with schizophrenia would need to be locked away or institutionalized. Only lately has it been apparent to people that this illness has many manifestations and that it can be controlled by therapy and medication. Though it can occur at any given age, schizophrenia is generally diagnosed in late adolescence or early adulthood.

Diagnosis may be difficult to establish so it’s made based on the client’s prevalent signs or symptoms, whether it’s the paranoid type, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated or residual schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia, which involves persecutory or grandiose delusions, hallucinations and aggressive behavior, is the reputed, infamous kind. Interestingly, people who have this kind of illness oftentimes are functional and so are capable to interact socially and work. For the disorganized type, individuals typically demonstrate incoherence and disordered thinking. They may speak in a confused way and exhibit inappropriate emotions in public. Simple tasks such as eating and dressing require much effort on their part. Movements, in the catatonic type, involves either motionless or excessive activity. Mobility may be highly affected enough where it halts completely and turns into a catatonic stupor or in a fixed position. Conversely, motion may build up a lot that it turns into catatonic excitement. Other attributes of the catatonic type include severe negativism and mirror what other people say and make. For the undifferentiated and residual type, the person exhibits mixed psychotic symptoms and remission of symptoms correspondingly. On the whole, the clinical course varies among individuals and credit must go to advances in treatments and medication since many people with this disorder are currently living in the community as living proof of effective interventions.