Schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder characterized by cognitive and emotional dysfunction, hallucinations and delusions. It can disrupt a person’s thoughts, movements, perceptions, and speech and make it difficult to/or near-impossible for them to function in their daily life.
Schizophrenia is highly heritable and is linked to physical abnormalities in the brain such as reduced volume. It is also thought to be impacted by malfunctioning dopamine circuits in the brain. Prenatal oxygen deprivation or virus exposure, including the flu or a UTI, can also increase risk of schizophrenia.
Symptoms
The most well-known symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations and delusions. Hallucinations are defined as sensory experiences in the absence of sensory input – hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, or feeling something that is not there.
There are many cognitive and specific schizophrenia tests that can be used to identify symptoms of schizophrenia. To be considered for a possible diagnosis, a person must have two of the following symptoms:
- hallucinations
- delusions
- disorganized speech, such as incoherence or going off on tangents
- disorganized behavior
- negative symptoms: indifference, lack of pleasure, little expressed emotion, relative absence of speech
TMS and Negative symptoms
TMS has been shown to reduce the negative symptoms in Schizophrenia patients. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a ground breaking, non-invasive, and simple treatment that involves the use of magnetic fields to stimulate areas of the brain that impact cognitive ability, negative symptoms, and depression.
Dr. Raymond Cho has 27 years of research experience in the fields of brain psychology, neurostimulation and cognition. He is an expert in the application of TMS in the treatment of mental health disorders, and he proudly endorses the use of TMS to treat negative or depressive symptoms if other treatments have failed to manage your schizophrenia.
Do you or a loved one believe you may have schizophrenia?
Are you looking for new treatment options?
Contact Houston Mind and Brain today to schedule a consultation!
