Schizophrenia
Image: WebMD.com
Dr. Christie Mensch serves the Wyandot Center in Kansas City, Kansas, by delivering outpatient mental health services to people with issues like schizophrenia, attention-deficit disorder, and depression. Before accepting her current position, Dr. Christie Mensch treated patients at Kansas City Veterans Hospital.
When psychiatrists inform patients that they have schizophrenia, it means they’ve developed a chronic brain disorder that causes a spectrum of serious and life-changing symptoms. Experts categorize these symptoms according to three standards.
For example, those with “positive” symptoms experience vivid hallucinations that cause them to fall out of touch with reality as healthy individuals perceive it. Such symptoms also include dysfunctional thought patterns and agitated motions. Cognitive problems, another class of schizophrenia symptoms, often result in focus, decision-making, and memory difficulties. Finally, the “negative” symptoms of schizophrenia impede emotional function. For instance, patients may have trouble finding pleasure in the things they do and may speak in ways devoid of emotion.
Schizophrenia most commonly appears in young men and women in their 20s and 30s. In America, about 1 percent of people live with the illness.
Christie Mensch 