Schizophrenia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Schizophrenia - Essay Example The characteristic age of commencement is the late 20s for women and the early 20s for men. Moreover, women are more expected to have a ‘first break’ later in life. Consequently, approximately one third of women have a commencement of illness after age 30. Among the minor socioeconomic classes, schizophrenia is diagnosed disproportionately. Ordinarily, schizophrenia is caused by a multifaceted contact between thousands of genes and several environmental risk aspects, of which none causes schizophrenia on their own. The developing brain is also possibly to be affected by environmental risk factors. In addition, prenatal infection can cause delicate changes in neuron movement and placement, which would eventually result in irregular connections. It can also act directly on developing circuits and synapses. Immune and stress reactions can be changed permanently by prenatal exposure to infection or stress. This makes an individual to be more sensitive to succeeding environmental stressors that cause irregular associations in the brain (Gilmore, 2010). The causes of schizophrenia are extensively alleged to have a neurobiological foundation. The dopamine hypothesis, which is the main significant theory, asserts that schizophrenia is caused by hyperactivity in brain dopaminergic pathways. This theory is in conformity with the efficiency of antipsychotics and the capability of drugs such as amphetamines or cocaine that arouse dopaminergic activity to provoke psychosis. Moreover, Postmortem studies indicate higher numbers of dopamine receptors in precise subcortical nuclei of schizophrenics than in ordinary brains. Functional and structural abnormalities through brain imaging of schizophrenics and control populations have been an area of concern in recent studies (Podosyan, 2009). Long (2009) explains that schizophrenia frequently commences between the late adolescents and the mid-30s, while