Stress and Schizophrenia from Ada Xavier's blog

The following article was written by the essays leader Ada Xavier

At the present stage of the development of psychiatry, one of the most common pathologies is schizophrenia that is a mental disorder associated with the collapse of thinking and emotional reactions. One of the issues connected with the illness that have drawn special attention is the fact that stress and schizophrenia are interconnected states of the body. In particular, it has been observed that regular stress badly affects health and exacerbates existing diseases, while chronic stress also accelerates the development of schizophrenia and brain damage. Moreover, patients with schizophrenia are often more prone to neurological disorders under the influence of stress. Additionally, stress disorders prevent timely treatment for psychiatric patients with schizophrenia. The problem of medication of schizophrenia in the presence of stressful diseases becomes of special relevance because in the case of schizophrenia, stress leads to an irrational model of the illness which, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of treatment. Overall, stress has an adverse impact on patients with schizophrenia and leads to the health issues, deterioration of a patient’s state, aggravation of schizophrenia itself, brain damage, worse quality of life and more stress.

As stated above, schizophrenia is a serious disorder that affects people’s ability to think and feel. According to Dallel, Cancel and Fakra (2018), about one percent of people in the world suffer from this disease. Schizophrenia refers to psychotic illnesses that are characterized by auditory or visual mania and hallucinations, disorganized speech or behavior, and cognitive impairment (Patel, Cherian, Gohil, & Atkinson, 2014). Its pathophysiology is abnormal phenomena in neuronal flows to the cerebral cortex, and the main cause of such anomalies is neurochemical imbalance; for instance, an excess or deficiency of neurotransmitters including dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, aspartate, glycine and gamma-aminobutyric acid (Patel et al., Atkinson, 2014). There are numerous symptoms of the disorder. In particular, most people with schizophrenia struggle from mania that is usually associated with hyperactivity of the brain, irritability, expressive behavior, sleep problems and can cause schizophrenic psychosis in a patient (Green, Teroganova, Girshkin, & Quidé, 2014). Moreover, there are that reduce the abilities of an individual. These include violation of thinking, language and motor skills that can lead to complete inability to move. Additionally, schizophrenic may have serious impairment in mental activity and loss of memory. Therefore, schizophrenia is a mental disorder that adversely affects the life of a person suffering from it.

Stress has a negative influence on all the spheres of life of those who have schizophrenia. Interestingly, positive emotions have the same harmful effect on metabolic processes as the negative ones. To be more specific, stress disorders that occur in patients with schizophrenia lead to the formation of an unhealthy lifestyle characterized by hypertensive disorders, inappropriate nutrition, inadequate care for health, and development of harmful habits. In addition, the general psychological state of the patient worsens that results in the deterioration of his/her social functioning. Stress causes a violation of the subjective activity at different levels and nerve suffering at the neurological level. Consequently, an individual loses the ability to carry out daily activities in the usual style on the behavioral level. Moreover, due to the disease, social and behavioral constraints develop at the social level, and psychological disorders progress at the psychological level.

It has also been discovered that patients with schizophrenia who experience stress risk aggravation of the mental disorder they have. Specifically, high levels of stress can cause deterioration of schizophrenia owing to the production of a hormone called cortisol (Green et al., 2014). When stress and cortisol affect the body of a schizophrenic, they cause huge damage to the brain. Some of the symptoms of stress associated with the brain that are evident in a patient with schizophrenia are memory problems, anxiety, and depression. Dallel et al. (2018) have discovered that about forty percent of schizophrenic patients experience anxiety, and twelve percent suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder. When studying stress and its influence on aggravation of schizophrenia, one needs to consider the mechanisms of influence of factors of the environment or stressors and the possible consequences of these effects on the human body. The reaction of the body of a schizophrenic depends on the strength of the influencing factor, the time of influence and the adaptive capacity of the organism. Thus, the patients are the subject to environmental and social stress factors that play a negative role in the progression of schizophrenia. Environmental stressors associated with schizophrenia include a child trauma, ethnic minority affiliation, urban residency, and social isolation (Patel et al., 2014). Social stress factors are discrimination or economic disadvantage, and they can drive people to paranoid thinking (Patel et al., 2014). Therefore, the stress response of the body of a schizophrenic turns into a form of damage causing the formation of certain pathological painful states of functional and organic nature that impede the effective treatment of this disease and lead to its aggravation.

Another aspect worth considering is that mental health is closely related to the quality of life. The assessment of the quality of life as an integrative indicator of social functioning gives the most complete picture of subjective satisfaction and a coherent picture of the effectiveness of treatment and rehabilitation of patients with schizophrenia. In the evaluation of the degree of satisfaction, the aspects that are taken into consideration are the main components of the psychic sphere such as emotional and motivational, and those of the sphere of self-awareness that is realized in the behavioral field. Thus, the presence of traumatic events in the life of patients with schizophrenia worsens the neurological and mental condition and reduces adaptive potential, which, in turn, negatively reflects on all the aspects of the individual’s interaction and the general level of quality of life (Dallel et al., 2018). The patients with schizophrenia that suffer from a posttraumatic stress have a low level of mental and physical health.

Lastly, stressed patients with schizophrenia and their doctors face the issues of proper and rational use of medical devices and care plan. In such a case, stress managing allows doctors to adjust pharmacotherapeutic treatment with targeted correction of the patient's behavior, the interaction in the family and social spheres and the degree of satisfaction with the life-activity taking into account the presence of the disease. Psychotherapy is the optimal model for treating schizophrenia in patients with stress disorders. Psychotherapeutic methods include training, cognitive training, mindfulness therapy, harmonization of emotional state and self-control (Patel et al., 2014). This type of treatment becomes a reliable prevention of stress and effective treatment of schizophrenia. The information about the disease, risk factors, one of which is stress, and the effectiveness of treatment that the patients receive in the session of psychotherapy, solve problems with pharmacological procedures and help the patient to follow the care plan and medication use.

To sum up, schizophrenia is one of the most common psychological disorders. One of the most dangerous factors that causes the disease and has a negative impact on its course is stress as it strongly affects the health of schizophrenics and results in psychosis. It also raises hormones of stress and damages the brain. Additionally, stress provokes neurological disorders in patients with schizophrenia who are less adapted to stressful situations caused by a traumatic condition. Likewise, stress is the result of more complex and acute symptoms of schizophrenia which impairs the timely treatment of the illness. Moreover, ineffective treatment of schizophrenia results in higher levels of stress as it creates some imbalances in the use of medical devices and care plan.