Gender Differences In Pediatric Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that isn’t commonly diagnosed. This disorder affects a person's perception of the world, as well as their behavior. The disorder is chronic and has no cure, but can be treated to help lessen the severity of symptoms for the individual. This disorder is involved with psychosis, meaning a person that does not have the ability to differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary. People that struggle with this tend to have psychotic breaks, which is the sudden change in personality and behavior. There are many potential causes of schizophrenia, including genetics, biological factors, abnormal brain structure, and environmental stressors. Schizophrenia can run in families with the inherited genes making an individual more likely to develop the disorder. Another reason that a person may develop schizophrenia is the biology of one’s brain. Neurotransmitter failures in regulating a person’s cognitive abilities and inhibition may be to blame. Abnormal brain structures can be a cause of schizophrenia, but an abnormal brain doesn’t automatically mean someone has or is going to have schizophrenia. Living environments can determine whether someone possessing the genes for schizophrenia will develop disorder. Such environmental stressors include stress, infectious disease, or exposure to toxins.
Symptoms for schizophrenia vary between gender and age. Men typically will start to express signs in their late teens early twenties while women typically will not until their twenties or thirties. In teens, signs of symptoms are subtle but may include changes in academic performance, more independent or socially withdrawn, trouble focusing, not sleeping well or at all, and behavior changes. There are a variety of symptoms some positive; meaning that they are actions not based on reality. Positive symptoms go with disorganized symptoms because they explain why a person is not able to think clearly or respond in a typical manner. Cognitive symptoms are to demonstrate what a person with schizophrenia will struggle with. Then there are negative symptoms meaning the irregular/ socially normal behaviors.
Positive symptoms are sometimes referred to as psychotic symptoms. This includes; delusions, hallucinations, and Catatonia. Delusions are beliefs that a person refuses to give up no matter what, these beliefs aren’t based in reality. Hallucinations are to do with the senses such as hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, or touching things that aren’t actually there. Catatonia is when an individual stops their current actions abruptly and freezes in a single position for a period of time.
Disorganized symptoms are a type of positive symptoms. Disorganized symptoms include behaviors such as; slow movement, inability of decision making, repetitive movements or gestures, moving quickly from thought to thought, talking about things that are incoherent, often misplacing things, struggling to make sense of typical everyday occurrences. Cognitive symptoms deal with what a schizophrenic would struggle with. This includes things like fully understanding information and using it to make decisions. Focusing on tasks and the act of material being able to be used immediately after it is learned is often seen as difficult. People with schizophrenia are unaware that they have these problems.
Negative symptoms for a schizophrenic are abnormal behaviors for others. These behaviors are poor hygiene, little to no interest in life, no motivation, lack of energy, not talkative, limited range of emotion, and withdrawn from friends and family. There is a period between beginning stages of showing symptoms up until the first full psychosis, this period of time is called prodromal and can last anywhere from a few days to years. Schizophrenia is diagnosed through a series of tests. First a doctor must be aware of, or notice signs of symptoms in a patient. From there a physical exam will take place, and the doctor will do a complete medical history. Both blood testing and brain imaging can be done to rule out other possible mental illnesses. Though there is no test that specifically diagnoses schizophrenia, there are assessments and designed interviews to help evaluate a psychotic disorder as such.
There is no cure for schizophrenia, but there are methods of treatment to help those who struggle with the disorder. Medication that is used to treat schizophrenia, in hopes to ease symptoms, is antipsychotics. There is also coordinated specialty care including medication and therapy. This approach is used when the first symptoms appear. Other treatments include a variety of therapies that help patients manage symptoms, be aware of warning signs, and construct prevention plans. Those with severe symptoms, that could pose harm to others or themselves, and are incapable to take care of themselves can be hospitalized. Electroconvulsive therapy is also a method of treatment. A patient is put under anesthesia and electro rods are attached to their scalp, this is done two to three times a week for several weeks. The electricity causes a controlled seizure that is assumed to affect neurotransmitters in the brain.
Schizophrenia was not always known as a mental illness nor seen as something that could be treated. Earliest recorded mention of schizophrenia was around 1550 BC and it was known as a type of madness. During the earlier years of civilization the term “madness” was used as away to describe demonic possession, this can be seen in parts of the Bible. The madness was not addressed as an illness until around 400 BC due to Hippocrates and philosopher Socrates. Hippocrates believed that what was believed to be madness could be cured, and caused question to previous beliefs of illnesses. (Amey Yeshwant Angane 2017) In the 15th century people began putting those who had madness in specific buildings and began to try and treat them to get rid of the “evil spirits” trapped inside of their heads. During the late 1700s the ideals of research and treating patients better became more common as well as defining terminology, the term “monomania” was similarly defined as what is now known as paranoid schizophrenia. This time period is also where lobotomy began to take place as a treatment. In the late 1800s catonia was coined as juvenile madness by Karl Kahlbaum, also during this time Ewald Hecker began looking into the disorder among adolescents. (Amey Yeshwant Angane 2017)
The term schizophrenia was not used until the 1900s. Electroconvulsive therapy became a method of treatment in the 1930s. Up until the late 1950s when symptom lists were released people believed that schizophrenia was passed through genetics only and those who had it were often forced into sterilization. Between the 1950s and 1960s antipsychotics were produced and began to be perfected as another way to treat schizophrenia. (Amey Yeshwant Angane 2017) Early onset schizophrenia is when a patient is diagnosed schizophrenic before the age of eighteen. When looking at both male and females diagnosed as early onset schizophrenic, males tend to suffer more comorbidities. These commonalities lie in; ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, physical injury, developmental disorders, intellectual disability (Hsu, C. -W 2019). According to Anna Ordóñez males with early onset schizophrenia also have higher verbal IQs.
Discussion
It is clear there is not much research done pertaining to gender differences in early onset schizophrenia and what research exists does not show many differences. Differences seen between the two genders typically involves comorbidities rather than focus on symptom reactions or experiences. Some research even suggests that there isn’t any difference for schizophrenia between the two genders and that they even tend to develop and show similar symptoms around the same time. (Hsu, C. -W 2019) The focus of men typically being known to develop and display symptoms earlier on could because most of the adolescent research focused on adolescent boys in the 1800s.
