What Is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia is defined as a type of psychosis.

What Are The Symptoms of Schizophrenia?

Unrealistic thoughts and believes, audiovisual hallucinations, meaningless behaviors and conversations are shown as impairments of effective communication.

Schizophrenia has a number of problems with thought, behavior, and emotions. Signs and symptoms may vary. But it often involves delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech and reflects dysfunction.
Symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained as follows:

Delusions: False beliefs that are not based on truth. For example, a person may have thoughts that they have been harmed or harassed, that certain actions or comments are directed at them, that they have an extraordinary talent or reputation, or that someone else is in love with them. Delusions occur in most people with schizophrenia.

Hallucinations: This usually involves seeing or hearing things that don't exist. Hallucinations can be in any of the senses, but hearing voices is the most common hallucination.

Irregular thinking (speaking): Communication may be impaired and answers to questions may be partially or completely irrelevant. Rarely, speech may include putting together meaningless words that can't be understood, sometimes known as word salad.

Extremely Irregular or Abnormal Motor Behavior: Behavior does not focus on a goal. Therefore, it is difficult to perform tasks. Behavior may include resistance to instructions, improper or awkward posture, or unnecessary and excessive movement.

Negative symptoms: It means decreased or no ability to function. For example, the person may neglect personal hygiene or appear to lack emotion (doesn't make eye contact, doesn't change facial expressions or speaks in a monotone). Also, the person may lose interest in everyday activities, socially withdraw or lack the ability to experience pleasure.

How Is It Treated?

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that requires long-term treatment.

Drug Treatment:

Medication is the primary treatment for schizophrenia. A long-term and regular treatment plan is established in the follow-up of a psychiatrist. With medication, it is aimed to reduce the symptoms of the disease and to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of periods when symptoms are aggravated. In this process, it is very important for the patient to comply with the treatment and to inform his/her doctor about the process. With this cooperation, the patient's drug treatment is rearranged according to the process. Antipsychotic drugs are used to treat the disease. Antipsychotics greatly reduce the obvious psychosis symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as its negative symptoms.

Medications are the cornerstone of schizophrenia treatment. The goal of medication is to effectively manage signs and symptoms at the lowest possible dose. The psychiatrist may try different medications, different doses, or combinations over time to achieve the desired result. Other medications, such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, may also help. It may take several weeks to notice an improvement in symptoms.

Psychosocial support
In addition to continuing drug treatment in the initial period of schizophrenia, psychological and social interventions are also important.

Psychosocial support may include:

Individual therapy: Psychotherapy can help normalize thought patterns. Also, learning to cope with stress and detecting early warning signs of recurrence can help people with schizophrenia manage their illness.
Social skills training: Her communication and social interactions focus on improving her ability to participate in daily activities.

Family Therapy: Provides support and education to families struggling with schizophrenia.
Occupational rehabilitation: It focuses on helping people with schizophrenia find and continue their jobs.
Schizophrenia is a clinical syndrome that benefits greatly from treatment. With the treatment, very gratifying changes are observed in the lives of the patient and his/her relatives.