WOMEN’S BODIES: PSYCHIATRIC ILLNESSES IN ADOLESCENCE
The line between normal behaviour and craziness is wavy and grey. Maybe we all have brief bouts of going ‘around the bend’, but most of us can see that it does us no good and we come back to normal quickly. It’s easy to confuse the very intense feelings that come with grief or broken relationships with going crazy. There are times when very intense and confused feelings are a normal part of the process of regaining your balance. Real madness manifests in constantly bizarre and crazy thoughts and behaviour in a person who doesn’t know that they’re strange.
Schizophrenia is the most common serious psychotic illness of young people, though fortunately much less common than anxiety or depression. Young men are affected three times more than young women. In adults the sexes are equally affected. One adolescent psychotic episode doesn’t mean schizophrenia. An identity crisis (not knowing who you are) can result in similar symptoms, which settle down when the crisis is sorted out, and may never recur.
Schizophrenia is not (as used to be thought) a ‘split personality’. It is a disorder of perception of the self that results in withdrawal, confused and illogical thinking, inappropriate behaviour (such as laughing at sad news or taking off clothes in public), imagined incidents or voices, delusions of power and grandeur (many think they’re royalty, well-known politicians, performers, sporting aces and suchlike), feelings of being persecuted or controlled by outside forces, many other strange beliefs, and episodes of intense depression. Schizophrenics are sometimes not aware that their behaviour is anything out of the ordinary.
Schizophrenia affects about one in a hundred people at some time during life. Its cause is unknown, but genetic, biochemical and many other psychological influences are suspected. It is a very serious illness, often chronic, for which there is so far no cure. However, treatment is available that can control many of the symptoms.
Fortunately, other serious psychiatric disorders such as manic-depressive illness are rare in adolescence.
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