Caring For Someone With Schizophrenia

The support of friends and family plays an integral role in the treatment of schizophrenia. Although it’s natural for caretakers to experience stress, frustration, and feelings of helplessness when caring for someone with schizophrenia, providing support with medical care, coping skills, and life skills can assist with recovery.

Schizophrenia includes a wide range of symptoms and behaviors. Learning about the constellation of symptoms and how those symptoms impact the person with schizophrenia enables caregivers to find appropriate help.

Symptoms Of Schizophrenia

Obeservable Behaviors

Two or more of the following for at least a one-month (or longer) period of time, and at least one of them must be 1, 2, or 3:

1. Delusions
2. Hallucinations
3. Disorganized speech
4. Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
5. Negative symptoms, such as diminished emotional expression

Social Issues

Impairment in one of the major areas of functioning for a significant period of time since the onset of the disturbance:

1. Work
2. Interpersonal relations
3. Self-care

Timing

Some signs of the disorder must last for a continuous period of at least 6 months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less if treated) that meet criterion A (active-phase symptoms) and may include periods of residual symptoms. During residual periods, only negative symptoms may be present.

Other Diagnosis Ruled Out

Schizoaffective disorder and bipolar or depressive disorder with psychotic features have been ruled out:

• No major depressive or manic episodes occurred concurrently with active phase symptoms
• If mood episodes (depressive or manic) have occurred during active phase symptoms, they have been present for a minority of the total duration of the active and residual phases of the illness.
• The disturbance is not caused by the effects of a substance or another medical condition.
• If there is a history of autism spectrum disorder or a communication disorder (childhood onset), the diagnosis of schizophrenia is only made if prominent delusions or hallucinations, along with other symptoms, are present for at least one month

Additional Symptoms

• Inappropriate affect (laughing in the absence of a stimulus)
• Disturbed sleep pattern
• Dysphoric mood (can be depression, anxiety, or anger)
• Anxiety and phobias
• Depersonalization (detachment or feeling of disconnect from self)
• Derealization (a feeling that surroundings aren’t real)
• Cognitive deficits impacting language, processing, executive function, and/or memory
• Lack of insight into disorder
• Social cognition deficits
• Hostility and aggression

 

Stop procrastinating

Stop procrastinating

Today is the day to get started

You can achieve actual change if you learn how to start doing instead of thinking, “meh, maybe tomorrow,”. The next time when you face a task and you can’t get started on for some reason, follow the steps below:

1. Define why you want to do it

Let’s say you want to start running. Ask yourself why: To reduce stress, lose some weight, and feel better. Well done.

2. Associate it with pain or pleasure

Running sucks, but the feeling you get if you skip it, is worse than the run itself. Also, the joy you feel after is more fulfilling than watching youtube.

3. Divide the task into smaller tasks

Break your task down to it more tangible and get an overview of what to do. In the running example, it could be like this:

Find your workout wear

Put it on

Go outside and move around a bit

Gently start running and listen to your body

Continue running until you feel satisfied

Return home

Stretch a little

Take a shower

Watch YouTube as a reward

4. Start small and simple

In the example above, finding your clothes is a way to get started. Create these kinds of cues creates a momentum into the rest of the task.

5. Try and fail

Failing is great; it’s how you learn stuff. If you don’t know what you are doing, try and feel it out. If you fail, that’s okay, try again with the new knowledge you have now.

6. Try and succeed

Eventually, you will succeed. The more you do something, the more often the first attempt will be successful. Compare it to when you cook your favorite meal; you rarely fail – right? Most other tasks are the same.

“Failure = small errors in judgment repeated every day.
Success = simple disciplines repeated every day.”

Ouroboros

The ouroboros or uroboros (/ˌ(j)ʊərəˈbɒrəs/, also UK: /uːˈrɒbərɒs/,US: /-oʊs/) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Originating in ancient Egyptian iconography, the ouroboros entered western tradition via Greek magical tradition and was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy. The term derives from Ancient Greek: οὐροβόρος,from οὐρά (oura), "tail"+ βορά (bora), "food", from βιβρώσκω (bibrōskō), "I eat".The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The skin-sloughing process of snakes symbolizes the transmigration of souls, the snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol. The tail of the snake is a phallic symbol, the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol. 

Jungian psychologyEdit

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw the ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the ouroboros to alchemy:

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.

The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.