Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder affecting more than 23 million people worldwide.(1)
Schizophrenia is a psychosis, a type of mental illness characterized by distortions in thinking, perception, emotions, language, sense of self and behavior. Common experiences include:
Hallucination: hearing, seeing or feeling things that are not there.
Delusion: fixed false beliefs or suspicions not shared by others in the person’s culture and that are firmly held even when there is evidence to the contrary.
Abnormal Behavior: disorganized behavior such as wandering aimlessly, mumbling or laughing to self, strange appearance, self-neglect or appearing unkempt
Disorganized speech; incoherent or irrelevant speech
Disturbances of emotions: marked apathy or disconnect between reported emotion and what is observed such as facial expression or body language (1).
Schizophrenia is associated with a severe disability and can affect educational and vocational outcomes (1).
Schizophrenia can be effectively treated with medication and psychosocial support(1).
Bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive episode, is a chronic mental illness responsible for mood disorders, most often alternating between states of exaltation and depression.(1)
Bipolar disorder is a chronic psychiatric illness characterized by recurrent mood disorders; it was formerly called manic-depressive psychosis (1).
In sick people, mood typically oscillates between:
Maniac episodes
Exaltation phases, where patients are extremely active, even agitated and sometimes feel euphoric and exalted.
Depressive episodes
Mood decline phases, following a manic phase, where patients may experience great sadness and lose all desire for activity (1).
The remission intervals
Between these manic and depressive episodes, mood can return to normal, or almost normal (1).
Anxiety is a feeling of discomfort, such as worry or fear, that may be mild or severe but that lasts over time.(1)
If a transient fear is a normal reaction to a stressful situation (like taking an exam, a job interview…), anxiety is an excessive but transient reaction to a situation felt to be a threat (1).
Anxiety disorders are different from transient fear and anxiety because they are excessive and persist over time, until they cause suffering in people with the disease (1).
Overtime, when anxiety sets in, it creates such suffering that it permanently disrupts daily life. We speak of anxiety disorders (1).
It is very important to detect a first episode of depression early because the treatment can then quickly reduce the symptoms. Depression treated late can lead to complications (1).
Depression is characterized by an association of variable symptoms from one to another (1).
These symptoms, that can be severe, are present almost every day for at least two weeks. They are a source of distress and have a professional, social and family impact. This is called a characterized depressive episode and not a simple “depression” or transient depressive reaction (1).
Depression can affect the body and be responsible for multiple pains, sexual disturbances, a slowdown in activity or, on the contrary, agitation (1).