This is a project for a high school AP Psychology course. This is a fictionalized account of having a psychological ailment. For questions about this blog project or its content please email the teacher, Laura Astorian: laura.astorian@cobbk12.org

1. By: Stacey Jones
***
This is a project for a high school AP Psychology course. This is a
fictionalized account of having a psychological ailment. For questions
about this blog project or its content please email the teacher, Laura
Astorian: laura.astorian@cobbk12.org

2. What is schizophrenia?
 It is a brain disorder that
affects the way a person
behaves, thinks, and sees the
world.
 They usually have altered
perceptions of reality.
 It is a chronic personality
disorder.

3. •Social withdrawal.
•Deterioration of personal hygiene.
•Forgetful, unable to concentrate.
•Strange use of words.
•Flat, expressionless gaze.
•Inability to cry or express joy.
•Oversleep.

4. Symptoms
 Delusions: firmly-held idea a
person has despite clear and
obvious evidence proves it
wrong.
 Hallucinations: sounds or
sensations experienced as real
when they only exist in the
mind.
 Disorganized speech: trouble
concentrating a train of
thought.
 Disorganized behavior:
disrupted goal-directed activity.

5. •Delusions of persecution: belief that other
people are out to get you, known as “they”.
•Delusions of reference: a neutral
environmental event is believed to have
meaning.
•Delusions of grandeur: belief that one is
famous or important figure.
•Delusions of control: belief that one’s
thoughts or actions are being controlled by
outside forces.

6. Types of disorganized speech:
 Loose association: rapidly
shifting from topic to topic,
with no connection to each
other.
 Neologisms: made-up words or
phrases that only have
meaning to the patient.
 Perseveration: repetition of
words and statements, saying
the same thing over and over
again.
 Clang: meaningless use of
rhyming words.

7. •Decline in overall daily functions.
•Unpredictable or inappropriate
emotional responses.
•Behaviors that appear bizarre and
have no purpose.
•Lack of inhibition and impulse
control.

8. What are negative symptoms?
 They are the absences of
normal behaviors found in
healthy individuals.

9. •Lack of emotional expression:
inexpressive face, lack of eye contact or
“flat affect”.
•Lack of interest or enthusiasm: problems
with motivation, not caring.
•Seeming lack of interest in the world:
apparent unawareness of the
environment.
•Speech difficulties and abnormalities:
inability to carry out a conversation, short
and disconnected questions.

10. Causes
 Genetic: individuals with a
first-degree relative who has
schizophrenia have a 10%
chance of developing the
disorder.
 Environmental: high levels of
stress are believed to trigger
schizophrenia by increasing
the body’s production of the
hormone cortisol.
 Abnormal brain structure:
enlarged brain ventricles are
seen in some schizophrenics.

11. •Psychiatric evaluation: when a doctor or
psychiatrist ask a series of questions
about you or your loved one’s symptoms
or past history problems.
•Medical history and exam: when the
doctor ask you personal and family health
history.
•Laboratory tests: simple blood and urine
tests can rule out other medical causes of
symptoms, or brain-imaging studies.

12. Treatments
 Schizophrenia needs to be
treated for a lifetime, it does
not go away! Treatment with
medications and psychosocial
therapy can help manage the
conditions but won’t get rid
of them. Antipsychotic
medications are the most
commonly prescribed drugs
for this condition. They’re
thought control symptoms by
affecting the brain
neurotransmitters dopamine
and serotonin.
 Aripiprazole (Abilify)
 Asenapine (Saphris)
 Clozapine (Clozaril)
 Lloperidone (Fanapt)
 Lurasidone (Latuda)

13. @Schizostacey

14. Leave me alone
 I use to know how to play
with others, I was the best at
freeze tag. But lately I’ve been
distant and can’t stand being
around people. When people
try talking to me I just walk
away, I know there not going
to speak about anything
interesting anyways. I started
developing a lost of attention
towards being social basically.
I’d rather stay home, in my
bed, and far away from
everybody.

15. •I think anything matters anymore,
what is there to look forward to?
When people are in pain it doesn’t
really affect me. My little brother fell
on his back the other day and I just
starred at him, I knew he wanted to
get picked up but I just didn’t. I just
don’t feel the emotion of pain point
blank! When my mom talks to me I
don’t make any eye contact and look
into space, “flat affect.”

16. Everyone is out to get me!
 Nobody really wants t to be
your friend, they just want
something from you.
People in general are up to
know good. When I see
someone I can just feel their
bad intentions for me. They
want to socialize for all the
wrong reasons. They all
want to do conniving things
to me and this is why I can’t
be around people.

17. •Television use to be my favorite thing to
do until it started talking to me. Last
Saturday, as usual, I laid in bed to watch
some old cartoons. And they started
talking me, it was strange because I hate
people but they seemed to have my best
interest at heart. Until they started
saying things like they wanted my mind.
Then I snapped back into, this is why I
can’t trust people not even the ones on
television.

18. Why can’t I be understood?
 Whenever I talk I find myself
repeating the same thing over
and over again. Or when I try to
explain myself its hard because I
can’t seem to find the right way
to put it. Sometimes when I
speak my mom says I splurge my
words but I don’t hear it. It’s
hard to get my point across all
the time , I can’t get be specific
with my phrasing. I shift from
topic to topic and no one can
understand what I’m trying to
say.

19. •I sleep all day and still get tired.
Some days I can’t even find the
courage to get out bed. It’s just so
nice and comfortable in my bed,
I’m away from everybody. When
I’m sleeping I feel like I’m not, my
dream is my reality. I can sleep for
hours and be fine, it scares my
mom sometimes because I sleep
for hours. Maybe one day I can just
sleep forever.

20. Who cares about showers
 I don’t really see the reason to
keep myself up because its
not like I'm impressing
anyone. Some days I put
deodorant on some days I
don’t. It doesn’t matter
anymore, it takes to much of
my time. When I go out,
which is barely, I just spray a
few sprits of perfume. And
when it comes to showers,
those happen every once in
awhile.

21. •She’s a very aggressive person, if she
doesn’t get her way then she’ll start
yelling at me. She Likes to go outside
a lot, unlike me, but she forces me to
go. She tells me not to take my
medications because she doesn’t see
nothing wrong with me, but I think
it’s because she doesn’t want to go
away. I tend o do what she says
because I’m scared what the
consequences might be. But one
thing I don’t seem to understand is
she claims to be the “better me.”