by Bayla Maya

Created on: February 28, 2007   Last Updated: April 18, 2007

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe brain disorder that makes it difficult for a person to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically and to have appropriate emotional responses to others and to behave appropriately in social situations. They may also have difficulty with some aspects of memory. Schizophrenia is a lifetime road to recovery.

Although the exact cause of schizophrenia remains unknown, experts do agree that schizophrenia develops because of interplay between biological predisposition (for example, inheriting certain genes) and ones environment. It is though that brain development disruption is likely the result of genetic and or environmental stressors early in development (during pregnancy or early childhood). This leads to subtle alterations in the brain that makes a person susceptible to developing schizophrenia. Environmental factors later in life (during early childhood and adolescence) can either damage the brain further and thereby increase the risk of schizophrenia, or lessen the expression of genetic defects and decreases the risk of schizophrenia.

Many people are not aware there are two types of schizophrenia. Type I schizophrenia is described as having positive symptoms because of its favorable response to the use of antipsychotic medication, and the patient's supposed preserved mental state. The use of the word positive is confusing when describing the sudden onset of unconstructive symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and an impaired perception. One may wonder how such negative characteristics are optimistic. Perhaps this form of schizophrenia derives an optimistic connotation due to the short-term altered state of the patient. In this case, the word positive describes the minimal or short-term effect the disorder has on the sufferer.
As expected the negative symptoms of type II schizophrenia are long term and permanently depilating. This seems ironic when considering this disorder preys on the victim gradually. However, type II schizophrenia has a lesser response to antipsychotic drugs, and has maladaptive symptoms such as odd linguistic, social withdrawal, lack of concern, and odd emotional responses. When looking at this disorder from a long-term perspective the word negative is an appropriate descriptive term.

Comparatively speaking both, types of schizophrenia are equally debilitating. What it comes down to is a matter of perception. Some people would look at the type I form with an optimistic manner due to the prospects of achieving some stability within their lives. However, this person has not fully escaped the raff of schizophrenia. The type I schizophrenic is almost like a walking time bomb not sure, if they will explode and suffer another bout of this debilitating disorder. Relatively speaking the fate of the type II schizophrenic is more concrete with a limited chance of recovery. This makes the type I schizophrenia symptoms seem more appealing due to the short-term road of recovery for the sufferer. Realistically in regards to the type of schizophrenia diagnoses, the schizophrenic spends a lifetime walking down the road of recovery.

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