Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Abstract
The paper evaluates three articles on schizophrenia disorder, and the first article addresses the use of medication as a tool in the recovery of schizophrenic patients while the second article is a review of the costs arising from schizophrenic patients particularly those linked to related comorbidities. The third article describes a study on the challenges of a diagnosis of childhood-onset schizophrenia and the need to apply medication-free period to diagnose the disease. Finally, a brief description of teaching plan that can be used when teaching a community or patients regarding the schizophrenia disorder and the best way to diagnose, treat and improve the lives of the affected individuals. The teaching plan considers the best ways to assess their learning needs, factors affecting their learning abilities and the best way to adapt the teaching to yield best learning outcomes.
Introduction
The paper uses information derived from the three identified articles to describe schizophrenia, which is a chronic mental disorder that impacts on the way an individual behaves, feel and makes them appear to have lost connection with reality. People suffering from the disorder have confused or unclear thinking, false beliefs, reduced emotional expression, or social engagement and are not motivated. The disorder starts in young adulthood and lasts for a longer time. Peak periods for the onset of schizophrenia are during late adolescence and at times early adulthood, which is vital for the vocational and social development of young adults. Statistics reveal that about forty percent of men and twenty-three percent of women suffer from the disorder often manifesting itself before nineteen years of age (Mas-Expósito, Amador-Campos, Gómez-Benito & Lalucat-Jo, 2011). The onset of schizophrenia is earlier in men than in women and pre-onset, or prodromal phase is detected up to thirty months before the symptoms manifest.
Besides, the disease is caused by a combination of environmental and genetic factors with people having a family history of the disorder having a transient psychosis of twenty to forty chances of getting the disorder within a year. According to Harrow, Jobe & Faull (2014), approximately 0.3% to 0.7% of people get diagnosed with the disorder, and as of 2013, there were about 24 million people affected by schizophrenia worldwide. The paper discusses various studies on Schizophrenia in different populations, and it is vital because despite that it does not occur often, its impacts are serious and last longer negatively impacting the lives of those affected. Early diagnosis of the disease paves the way for earlier intervention minimizing its effects with about fifty percent getting permanent impairment and about twenty percent doing well leading to full recovery. Furthermore, people living with the disorder live ten to twenty years lesser than the life expectancy of that of the general population.
Selected Articles
Article One
The first article on schizophrenia is titled Effective strategies for nurses empowering clients with schizophrenia: medication use as a tool in recovery authored by Irma Mahone, Fasching Chris, and Snow Diane. It was published in 2016 on the issues of Mental Health Nursing. The article provides an outline of some of the effective methods used by nurses in collaboration with individuals who have schizophrenia relating to the use of medication as a recovery tool. The article offers information on an overview of the shared decision-making in various psychiatric nursing and techniques aimed at improving patient follow-through while undergoing their psychotic treatment regimen (Mahone, Maphis & Snow, 2016). Additionally, the authors offer a case study aimed at demonstrating the various strategies in nursing practice. The article uses a single case study of a twenty-nine years old white male to demonstrate the use of medication as a tool of recovery among schizophrenic patients. The study described in the article is qualitative and uses real-life situations to offer a detailed clinical image of shared decision-making. From the case, it is evident that chronic schizophrenia needs a continued engagement between the treatment team and the patients and psychiatric nurses are of vital significance in the process.
Article Two
The second article is a research report authored by Marie-Helen Lafeuille and friends and published in 2014 in the Expert Reviews Pharmaecon. Outcomes Resource. It is titled Burden of schizophrenia on selected comorbidity costs and targets at evaluating the various health care costs linked to schizophrenic patients and that of the general population with regards to particular commodities. The study uses claims in the Medicaid, and the data is derived from five states in the United States between 2001 and 2010. The comorbidities identified in the study include diabetes, substance abuse, and hypertension. The study involves the evaluation of Medicaid databases comprising of medical claims, prescription drug claims, and eligibility information from the states of Missouri, Iowa, Florida, Kansas and New Jersey (Lafeuille et al., 2014). From the study, it is evident that schizophrenia is linked to higher costs related to comorbidities and it is an indication that schizophrenic patients and those with associated comorbidities incur higher comorbidity and all case costs linked to healthcare when compared to non-schizophrenic patients with similar comorbidities.
Article Three
The third article on schizophrenia disorder is titled childhood-onset schizophrenia: The challenge of diagnosis and authored by Peter Gochman, Judith Rapoport, and Rachel Miller. The article is a publication of Curr psychiatry Rep. and was published in 2012. The study involved the evaluation of the salient clinical features of ninety-three children who have been admitted in the last ten years to gain further understanding of the various factors vital for validation of Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) diagnosis (Gochman, Miller& Rapoport, 2011). Study results indicate that patients suffering from early-onset psychosis must be observed medication free and more significant consideration should be given to children with sporadic hallucinations or depression.
Teaching Plan
a. From the analysis of the three articles, subjects of interest to teach about schizophrenia disorder are:
• Medication aids in the recovery of schizophrenia disorder.
• Schizophrenic patients incur higher costs linked to associated comorbidities.
• Medication free period is vital in treating childhood-onset schizophrenia.
The subjects listed above when taught to the patients or the community is essential considering that all of the subjects are useful in regards to diagnosis, treatment, and recovery of patients who have schizophrenia. Both the patients, medical professionals and the community at large play a vital role in the treatment of patients.
b. The best way to assess the understanding levels of the community and patients on the subject is through effective use of questions. Asking questions is vital in assessing their knowledge on the topic, promotes understanding and stimulates their thinking on the subject. Right questions generate discussion, the creation of new insights and promote a detailed exploration of the subject at hand. Questions should cover what they already know, what they need to learn, their capability to learn and the proper technique to teach the team (Harrow, Jobe & Faull, 2014).
c. The potential problem of low literacy levels among the patients is poor communication leading to poor teaching outcomes. It can be addressed by allowing more time for interaction to promote effective communication between the patients and the nurses and other healthcare providers. Low literacy levels can be minimized by raising awareness of matters via incorporation of health content into the teaching programs. Additionally, using translators during the teaching process will help in making the target population to understand these subjects.
d. Some of the psychological factors impacting on patient’s readiness to learn to include anxiety, fatigue, fear or pain, these affect their motivation to learn. The problems can be averted by matching the teaching content to the current state of readiness of the patient with the main aim of ensuring the patient moves along with the teaching.
e. The learning needs of the patients can be assessed using the Learning Needs Assessment tool (LNAT) and comprises three main areas, namely current knowledge, environment and family and learning style.
Conclusion
From the analysis of the three selected articles, it is evident that schizophrenia is a serious disease that negatively impacts the lives of those affected and there is a need to diagnose it early to ensure that the best interventions are applied to promote recovery and improve lives. Schizophrenia affects a considerable percentage of the population. Thus there is a need for collaboration between patients and healthcare providers to manage it, especially considering that schizophrenic patients incur higher costs linked to related comorbidities. The use of a medication-free period is an essential tool in the recovery of schizophrenic patients. Finally, an effective teaching plan for patients or community must consider their varying learning needs, thus the prerequisite for an assessment to ensure that the teaching plan is adapted to promote the well-being of the targeted learning outcomes.
References
Gochman, P., Miller, R., & Rapoport, L. (2011). Childhood-onset schizophrenia: the challenge of diagnosis. Current psychiatry reports, 13(5), 321.
Harrow, M., Jobe, T. & Faull, N. (2014). Does treatment of schizophrenia with antipsychotic medications eliminate or reduce psychosis? A 20-year multi-follow-up study. Psychological Medicine, 44(14), 3007-3016.
Lafeuille, H., Dean, J., Fastenau, J., Panish, J., Olson, W., Markowitz, M., & Lefebvre, P. (2014). Burden of schizophrenia on selected comorbidity costs. Expert review of pharmacoeconomics & outcomes research, 14(2), 259-267.
Mahone, H., Maphis, F. & Snow, E. (2016). Effective strategies for nurses empowering clients with schizophrenia: medication use as a tool in recovery. Issues in mental health nursing, 37(5), 372-379.
Mas-Expósito, L., Amador-Campos, J. A., Gómez-Benito, J., & Lalucat-Jo, L. (2011). The World Health Organization quality of life scale brief version: a validation study in patients with schizophrenia. Quality of Life Research, 20(7), 1079-1089.
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