Teenagers Mental Health,focus on Teenage Schizophrenia.
Mental illness is common; in fact the majority of mental illnesses begin when people are teenagers. To be more specific half of all the people who will ever have a mental illness, experience their first psychotic episode before they are 18 years old. This early beginning of the mental illness sadly predicts more psychotic episodes to come in future years.Unfortunately teenagers are less likely than adults to seek or receive treatment for their mental illness.
This article will shed light on mental illness in general while specifically focusing on schizophrenia in teenagers. The adults in a teenagers life, whether they are his or her parents, teachers, guides or coaches, have a huge impact on whether they will get help and how quickly treatment will begin. This article aims at improving awareness to the attitudes we may hold on mental illness and how to overcome these possible biases to truly help those teenagers in need. In addition we all should continue learning to widen our knowledge about mental health, and available treatment options. In order to have the ability to identify and encourage more teenagers to seek professional help. Not less important offer support to family and friends when mental health problems are apparent.
Early intervention has shown to minimize the impact mental health problems have on a teenager’s development. This may begin by an assessment if a teenager is at risk of suicide or other physical harm to himself as non-suicidal self-injury or attempts to harm others. Taking into consideration theimportance to approach and make an assessmentwhileoffering help with any crisis that may arise in a teenager’s life. Crisis situations include suicide attempts, acute psychosis, excessive use of alcohol, drug overdose, apparent aggressive behavior, panic attacks, traumatic events and eating disorders. It’s highly important to listen to the teenager non-judgmentally, while offering support and information. This may include encouraging the teenager to get the proper help from a professional, whether it’s a social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist.
Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as a severe emotional disorder with psychotic intensity. Schizophrenia characteristics include a retreat from reality with the creation of disorders of thought (delusions and hallucinations) and disorders of affect and behavior(emotional disharmony and regressive behavior).
The different types of Schizophrenia include: Catatonic schizophrenia which is characterized by abnormal movements and physical behavior including forms of stupor (reduced responses), rigidity, excitement or inappropriate posture.Disorganized schizophrenia which is characterized by repeated incoherent behavior, marked by loosening of associations, or very disorganized behavior, flat emotional effect, extreme social withdrawal, facial contortions, mannerisms, repetitive gazing into a mirror, inappropriate giggling, and other odd behaviors.Paranoid Schizophrenia is a chronic form of schizophrenia characterized mainly by thoughts of persecution or grandiose delusions, often with hallucinations.
Teenagers with schizophrenia
The incidence of a first psychotic episode of schizophrenia between the ages of 13-17 is at about 0.5%. Only a minority of these teenagers will reach a complete recovery from their mental illness, while the majority will suffer from moderate to sever schizophrenia for the rest of their life. Treatment for teenagers with schizophrenia always combines both the use of psychiatric medication with other treatment interventions. The types of antipsychotic medication for the treatment of schizophrenia are clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, ziprasidone and aripiprazole. Treatment with antipsychoticsis necessary for remission of the illness and to control positive and negative symptoms. The teenager needs to be under close medical attention for the possible side effects from using these antipsychotics as dyskinesia (abnormal involuntary movements in the face, arms or legs), seizures, gaining weight, abnormal changes found in the blood as high glucose or high cholesterol, side effects in the heart, blood and circulation.As scary as these side effects may be, it is important to receiveproper medication which can greatly increase the effectiveness of the psychosocial treatment interventions. These may include: counseling for the teenager to enhance social skills, offering psychological support, engaging in behavioral treatments, social and cognitive rehabilitation and assistance in social and academic activities. Counseling for the family and offering family support is an important treatment intervention as well.Stress makes teenager with schizophrenia feel anxious, fearful and irritable. Often the ways of coping with stress chosen by teenagers with schizophrenia will be excessive sleep, and wishful thinking. These ineffective coping mechanisms can be changed through focused psychological treatment.
Why do teenagers with schizophrenia use drugs?
Social acceptance to a peer group is highly important for teenagers, but those with schizophrenia find many difficulties with social interaction. Reasons included being distracted by hearing voices or experiences of their thoughts; being interfered with, having lack of drive to socialize, anxiety or irritable mood, feeling stigmatized and being preoccupied with unusual interests or experiences. Some teenagers use drugs to cope with these social difficulties.
Use of illegal drugs is common in schizophrenia. Incidence rates show about 12% of people with schizophrenia also had drug abuse or dependence; about 1 in 4 had a cannabis addiction. This is 5 times higher than in the general population which for schizophrenia patients results in higher rates of relapse, hospitalization, suicide and other undesirable outcomes.
Some studies show the specific use of cannabis may be one of the causes for the development of the schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals. This is perhaps due to a genetic predisposition or developmental damage which results in individuals who lack dopamine regulation in their nervous system. This often leads to drug abuse especially amphetamines and cannabis. These drugs cause a state of dopamine-induced misinterpretation of the environment. Drug abuse can lead to a psychotic episode resulting in delusional interpretation of the abnormal experiences.
A number of studies searched for reasons why teenagers withschizophrenia use drugs.The teenagers gave a variety of reasons for their drug and specifically cannabis use. These can be divided into medical, social, behavioral and emotional explanations or reasons.
Medical reasons: to achieve a drug high, as a means of self-medication; to treat the schizophrenia symptoms as hearing voices; to reduce side effects of the medication; because drugs were not believed to cause psychosis; because cannabis was like a medicine; because cannabis was the most acceptable drug to use; because cannabis had been used long before the first psychotic episode and it was normal in their community.
Social reasons: to relax and find it easier to socialize with others; to belong and fit into a group sharing the group experience of protection and comfort while using drugs; to avoid loosing a peer group; to achieve a sense of identity and social status by participating in the social activity of drug use.
Behavioral and emotional reasons: to reduce aggression and anger; to cope with distressing emotions as hopelessness regarding relationships and acceptance; to relieve anxietyor to relieve the depressed mood; to treat sleep or appetite problems; to feel powerful or creative,as a means for escaping a dull life; to cope with trauma or loss, or rejection.
Most of us would rather not see or think about mental illness and those who are diagnosed as mentally ill. A means to overcome these fears is by learning more about specific mental illnesses as schizophrenia. The more we try to understand the illness we begin to give up on our misconceptions. Teenagers who suffer from mental illness are especially vulnerable and need to be regarded as teenagers with problems as any other teenager. With their need to have a peer group that accepts them. Their difficulty succeeding in belonging to such a group stems from the characteristics of the schizophrenia. Hopefully this article can be an eye opener to the life and difficulties of teenagers with schizophrenia. With more awareness we can make a difference in their lives and help them receive the treatment they deserve, before they resort to self medication through drug abuse.