Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder in which a person suffers from hallucinations, chronic delusion, and a disconnection from reality. Schizophrenia is an umbrella term consisting of conditions such as multiple personality disorder, psychosis, catatonia, and similar mental ailments. Essentially, this condition severely disrupts the working of a person’s brain. As a result, people with schizophrenia have little control over their memory, thinking ability, and senses. Here are some key details about schizophrenia:

Schizophrenia symptoms
Mental health professionals can diagnose schizophrenia in patients by detecting certain typical symptoms, some of which include:

• Changes in social and emotional behavior
  As one cannot differentiate between real and unreal experiences, people with schizophrenia are often afraid and paranoid about imaginary enemies and danger. This makes them suspicious of everyone around them, even people they may have known for years. Their intense paranoia and anxiety force such individuals to stop interacting with friends, family, and strangers. They prefer to spend their time by themselves.
  Additionally, people with schizophrenia find thinking and concentrating incredibly challenging. They will not be able to focus on tasks such as reading or learning something new.
• Frequent hallucinations and delusion
  As implied earlier, people with schizophrenia constantly feel that they are at the end of rude gestures, jokes, or comments, even when that is not the case. They may also feel that they have special powers or fame or that a person they fantasize about loves them back. Their false beliefs and delusions are unwavering.
  Such delusions cause them to see or hear things that are not real. People with schizophrenia can often envision crowds looking at them when they are by themselves. Hallucinations are a clear indicator of schizophrenic behavior.
• Incoherent speech
  Schizophrenia negatively affects the areas of the brain that regulate thinking and speech. As a result, people having this disorder find it nearly impossible to organize their ideas and thoughts into spoken words. Moreover, while speaking, such people often cannot stay on a topic for too long. Therefore, such individuals jump from one unrelated topic to another while speaking, often blurting out incoherent and jumbled sentences during conversations.
• Catatonic tendencies
  People with schizophrenia display catatonic tendencies, where they behave unpredictably to the world around them. For instance, they may move around excessively and impulsively to avoid eye contact with others, or behave in childish or silly ways. Their behavior can make them a danger to themselves, their loved ones, and others in their immediate vicinity.

Schizophrenia causes
The exact causes of schizophrenia are still unknown. However, several studies have found certain factors that cause individuals to develop the condition. Some such factors are:

• Genetic inheritance
  Several research studies have found that schizophrenia can be genetically inherited. This means that, if an individual has a family history of schizophrenia, wherein their parents or grandparents suffered from the condition, there is a strong likelihood of them developing it too. Moreover, standalone cases of schizophrenia are rare in a given family tree.
  However, as specified below, several factors could combine to bring about this mental ailment in individuals as well.
• Traumatic environmental factors
  A person’s immediate environment shapes their overall mental health. Environmental factors such as viral infections, traumatic episodes involving violence, malnutrition, or trauma during birth can cause the brain to undergo radical changes in an individual. This may eventually result in schizophrenia.
• Chemical and hormonal imbalances in the brain
  The previous two causes, and exposure to long-term traumatic episodes, can cause hormonal and chemical imbalances in the brain. These imbalances then go on to cause early schizophrenic symptoms, such as depression, a reluctance to socialize, erratic and unexplainable behavior, and similar others in persons exposed to such episodes.

Schizophrenia remedies
Currently, there is no definitive treatment or preventive measure for schizophrenia. Instead, there are certain ways in which the condition can be detected early. Once that is done, patients can receive the health care and counseling they need to carry on living a happy and fulfilled life with this lifelong disorder.

Individuals who show some of the above symptoms can undergo a physical and psychiatric evaluation to diagnose the condition. Apart from that, the families of likely patients can regularly screen them for schizophrenia at healthcare facilities.

Counseling helps individuals cope with the condition and still pursue their personal and professional goals. Essentially, family involvement, education, and timely, sympathetic health care can make life easier for individuals with schizophrenia.

Foods to eat/avoid to combat schizophrenia
Vegetables such as broccoli, onions, and garlic contain prebiotic fibers that keep the brain healthy. On the other hand, saturated fats and sugar-heavy foods are harmful to the brain as they can trigger conditions such as diabetes and, possibly, brain dysfunction.