Schizophrenia in Terms of Young Adults Dealing with Anhedonia.

Schizophrenia in Terms of Young Adults Having Hallucinations.

Schizophrenia can cause young men and women to see hallucinations or visions of things one can see that the other cannot. Hallucinations can come in many forms and can be either good or extremely bad. According to Arguedas, Langdon, and Stevenson (2012), “Olfactory hallucinations (OHs) are present in a significant minority of people with schizophrenia, yet these symptoms are under-researched and poorly understood. Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were classified into an OH group and a group with auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and no lifetime history of OHs” (p. 779). Another type would be the auditory hallucinations, or the voices that one hears in their heads and tells them to do something. For instance, young man may start hearing voices that make him feel bad and tell him that he should kill himself or perhaps make themselves into social outcasts. According to Carlborg (2010), “suicide is a major cause of death among patients with schizophrenia and was already described as the most serious of schizophrenic symptoms. The lifetime prevalence of suicide in patients with schizophrenia has been estimated to be ten-times higher than among the average population. Earlier research has suggested suicide rates of up to thirteen percent among patients with schizophrenia, but more recent studies, taking into account the variable suicide risk during a life span - that is, a higher risk close to illness onset and thereafter a declining risk - report a lifetime suicide mortality of four to five percent” (p. 1153-54). Many people who have had schizophrenia experienced their hallucinations as either frightening or annoying. Those who have had hallucinations that were longer, louder, more frequent, and experience them in third person would find them unpleasant.

Schizophrenia in Terms of Young Adults Dealing with Anhedonia.

Young adults who suffer from schizophrenia may end up having Anhedonia, which is the lack of capacity for pleasure. Meaning, the person would not feel joy or happiness. If one person were to have a happy conversation, that person would never feel the joy of talking to that person. That can also be called social anhedonia. According to Kwapil (1998), it was stated that “anhedonia was one of the four core symptoms of schizotypy and schizophrenia. He indicated that the anhedonia experienced by schizotypic and schizophrenic patients is primarily interpersonal. According to his original formulation, all schizophrenia-prone individuals will experience social anhedonia, along with other core symptoms” (p. 2) There is also the matter of the Social Anhedonia scale, which is used to measure the amount of social anhedonia within an individual. “The present study investigates whether the SocAnh Scale independently predicts the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, as opposed to simply potentiating the prediction of psychosis proneness by the MagicId Scale. The study also investigates whether SocAnh participants appear especially psychosis prone in adulthood, even if they are not deviant in early adulthood” (Kwapil, 1998, p. 4).

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 922