History of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia
December 10, 2010

Schizophrenia, one of the known illnesses but with a hard judgment of misconceptions and foolish pretenses that aren’t valid.   History that lies in hand with this illness is interesting and is more complex than most would perceive it to be.   As far back as the second millennium, people believed a Schizophrenic person was possessed by demons or poisoned.   These people were considered the “abnormal” and were treated as so and were condemned to be mad.   This disorder was known to be between dementia praecox and manic depression which was theorized by Dr. Kraepelin who was a German physician in 1887.  
Schizophrenia, which came from the Greek language, means split mind to describe the thinking of a person suffering with this illness.   Dementia Praecox was put into four categories including ‘simple’, ‘paranoid’. ‘Hebephrenic’ and ‘catatonic’.   Kraepelin and Bleuler came up with five sub-division names for the symptoms of Schizophrenia, ‘disorganized’, ‘catatonic’, ‘paranoid’, ‘residual’, and ‘undifferentiated’.     Schizophrenia is still considered a complex illness because it is hard to find insight into the functioning of how the patience’s brain works.   Its’ causes and effects today are easier to understand and comprehend but the complexity is still there.  
The Nineteenth Century was the beginning of moving towards a definition of Schizophrenia.   It was a slow progression but started with four researchers who had defined this during the time period.   In 1851, Falvet said it to be “cyclical madness”.   While in 1871, Hecker defined it as hebephrenia which was to mean “silly” disorder in the mind.   1874, Kahlbaum put in catatonic and paranoid disorders.   It seemed that Emile Kraepelin seemed to be the closest to a schizophrenic definition than anyone. He divided it into four stages as so, simple, paranoid, hebephrenic, and catatonic.
The Twentieth Century had seen many controversial cases of schizophrenia treatment which...