While many people strive to be honest about everything in life, it’s sometimes hard to be totally upfront about schizophrenia.
If you have schizophrenia, it can impact the way you view life and left untreated, it causes a lot of issues. Schizophrenia does involve different problems involving thinking, your emotions, and the behavior you have. some people may be completely different people when they are going through an episode.
It’s important to understand what untreated schizophrenia does to a person, and we’ll go over what that is here, and the impact this has on life.
Problems with Understanding Reality
Reality is different in those with schizophrenia, and sometimes, they may look at reality in a totally different way.
For example, those who suffer from schizophrenia may see friendly gestures as a symptom of harassment. Maybe you’re interpreting every good thing as a bad thing. This creates a delusion.
But it also can be much more harmful. There are those who develop a false sense of importance, which means that they think they’re famous or have an amazing ability when in reality they don’t. there are also those who interpret actions as someone being in love with them when this isn’t true, and it can be really harmful towards others.
They also see reality in different ways. They may hear things that aren’t happening, have a voice that speaks to them that causes them to do actions. All of this can cause different things to happen in reality. Maybe the person harms because of the voice that tells them. It’s not good to leave them untreated, since it may cause them to engage in harmful behaviors, whether to themselves or to others.
Disorganized and Abnormal Behavior
It also causes very odd abnormal behaviors too.
It’s sometimes apparent in those who resist authority. They may suddenly not follow instructions, or completely ignore people.
If someone is telling you not to go a certain way because there’s a cliff, and someone who is a schizophrenic doesn’t listen, they’re going to fall off and die.
That’s a serious example, but if you’re not responding, or responding too much to movements, it can impact how you respond to others.
When dealing with a friend who is one, they may not respond to you at all, or maybe have bizarre responses. It’s not consistent either, but rather disorganized.
Emotional issues
Emotional issues are another big problem for those with schizophrenia.
Lack of eye contact, lack of emotional concern, and even struggling to speak may be a big problem. They may also speak in a monotone expression or change their facial expressions rarely.
This can communicate to others that the person doesn’t care, or that they’re bored, and it can turn off people from conversing. It also may show that they don’t really care that much either about others, which can impact relationships with others.
Untreated, it can upset people, and it may turn people off from talking to them.
Lack of Motivation
Motivation is also a big problem for those with schizophrenia.
Their altered reality may impact the way that they respond to the world around them.
They may have the delusion that they’re perfect and totally clean when in reality they’re unkempt and dirty.
This also shows itself in the lack of ability to do activities every day too, and they may be socially recluse as well. They may have the delusion that if they go out and talk, a big monster will get them, or it’s not what the voice tells them.
Obviously, this leads to major problems with socializing, engaging in life, and can lead to depression and other issues.
Inability to Experience Pleasure
They may also not find pleasure in things too.
They may find pleasure in odd things but ultimately will withdraw from people instead of engaging with them, and all too often can lead to self-harm and suicidal behaviors.
What can You do
The best thing for you to do is to get the symptoms treated right away, whether through therapy, medication, and whatnot.
Usually though, people with schizophrenia don’t even realize that they have it until a family member or friend says something. Helping people with this is hard.
If you’re dealing with someone who has schizophrenia, or maybe you’re worried that you may have some symptoms of it, you can click here to learn more information on this.
Having untreated schizophrenia can lead to a laundry list of health issues, and in this, we examined and looked into just what the impact of this can be, and how it’ll affect everything from an emotional response to your relationships as well.
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