Signs of madness in men and women, causes and treatment, madness in culture

The word "madness" is used by many people. While psychiatrists use this word to define a mental disorder, ordinary people call everyone who does not fit into their picture of the world crazy. To understand whether we are talking about madness, you need to know the signs through which it manifests itself. Madness has many causes, but there are very specific treatments.

The common man likes to throw around the word “crazy”, not always understanding what it means. Speaking about madness in the literal sense of the word, we are talking about a serious mental deviation from the norm, when a person simply loses his mind. This is a severe mental disorder that deprives the sick person of reason, and rewards his loved ones with suffering and torment.

Madness can be called the loss of any knowledge, understanding of the world around us, its real perception, the ability to think logically, communicate with people around us, adhere to social norms, etc. Previously, the term “madness” meant absolutely all mental disorders, which today are distinguished as individual diseases:

Cramps.
Epilepsy.
Hallucinations.
Rave.
Depression.
Tendency to antisocial behavior.
Suicide attempts.
Shell shock.
Consequences of traumatic brain injuries, etc.

Now only people who do not understand the meaning of this word misuse this concept. In order not to be crazy due to our own ignorance, we suggest considering this disease in the article.

madness

What is madness?

The concept of madness has been used for a long time. Its modern equivalent is the term “madness.” What do they mean? They mean loss of mind. An individual suffering from insanity has gone crazy or lost his mind. He goes beyond the boundaries accepted in society with his behavior and mental activity.

Today, the term “madness” is practically not used in psychiatry and medicine, since it is an old definition of many mental disorders. However, in colloquial speech, many ordinary people use this word as an insult to people whose ideas or actions they do not agree with or are unable to understand.

The classification of insanity depends on many factors in its manifestation:

By influence on others:

Useful madness: delight, foresight, artistic inspiration, ecstasy.
Harmful madness: rage, mania, hysteria and other insanities that force the patient to cause harm or damage to others.

According to the nature of the flow:

Melancholy is a prolonged stay in a depressed state, mental anguish, apathy, dejection, lethargy, complete indifference to the world around us. The individual suffers and suffers mentally for a long time.
Mania is an insanity that is expressed in delight, euphoria, increased excitability, and physical mobility.
Hysteria is a pathological reaction manifested in aggression and extreme agitation. An individual may commit impulsive actions in a state of rage, which lead to negative consequences.

By severity:

Mild insanity - symptoms are rare and vague.
Serious insanity is when the symptoms are frequent, obvious and beyond self-control.
Acute insanity is a severe and chronic mental disorder.

Madness is often attributed to people who think outside the box. Let us recall events known in history when scientists made some discoveries, but society did not recognize them. Only after the death of the scientist did people come to understand that his research and theories were correct. However, while he was alive, he was considered crazy.

Madness is often combined with the word genius. For example, Einstein is considered a mentally ill person who suffered not only from insanity, but also from unreasonable aggression and autism. However, it was he who made serious discoveries in the field of physics.

Not every brilliant person is mentally ill with madness. It’s just that society may not understand his ideas. However, this does not make him sick and in need of treatment.

Not every madman is a genius. Only psychiatrists can give many examples from their practice when their patients did not invent anything or make discoveries, but were simply sick - devoid of intelligence and reason.

Approaching the topic of madness from an idealistic position, we can say that madness is a special vision of the world. If we talk about a sick person, then brain diseases lead to a disruption in the perception of the world. This condition must be treated. If we talk about a healthy person, then at first he looked differently at the world around him, which made him crazy in the eyes of others. This condition does not need to be treated, since it is not a disease, but a special, unusual view of the world.

Negative symptoms

With negative symptoms, in which the psyche is passive, everything is even more complicated. It is almost impossible to distinguish them from ordinary depression or various affective disorders. This especially applies to slowly developing forms of schizophrenia, which progress almost asymptomatically over years and decades.

The following signs should alert you, which are especially noticeable in a person’s behavior and personal qualities:

lack of will, complete lack of motivation;
apathy, depression;
decreased level of thinking, forgetfulness;
isolation, narrowing of the circle of communication;
indifference to what is happening;
lethargy and lethargy;
inability to rejoice and have pleasure.

The listed symptoms are not specific. However, they should be especially noticeable if the person was previously sociable, responsive and cheerful. If such signs intensify, then you should at least contact a psychologist.

Often patients try to die or tell their loved ones about it. Unfortunately, suicide attempts often become “successful”.

At this stage, which usually precedes an attack or occurs immediately after it, schizophrenia in a person can be recognized by certain speech features:

he gets confused in his words, jumps from one topic to another;
he develops a penchant for philosophizing;
the person’s conclusions are banal or absurd;
he often uses strange or made-up words;
his answers to questions are monosyllabic or unclear;
he abruptly ends the conversation and withdraws into himself.

Some people have these characteristics without any mental disorder. However, the strengthening of these traits or their sudden appearance should alert friends and relatives.

Why does a person become mad?

At all times, people have observed madmen. Previously, two interpretations were given of why a person becomes insane:

Heavenly punishment - when God punished a person by sending him madness.
Possession of demons - a person is possessed by evil forces, which makes him crazy. Such pictures can be seen in films where demons are cast out of people.

Modern psychologists explain the development of insanity differently:

A wrong way of life is when a person is constantly faced with some kind of grief, misfortune, or disappointment. If a person is constantly influenced by negative factors, his thinking changes in order to find balance in those “crazy” conditions in which the psyche finds itself.
Physical factors, diseases, such as neurotransmitter imbalance or traumatic brain injury.
Discrepancy between soul and body. When a person does not live in harmony with his body, soul and the world around him, his perception is distorted. This phenomenon often occurs among healthy people in a mild form, who turn a blind eye to troubles and are blinded by patterns and stereotypes. However, the painful form manifests itself in a real distortion of the perception of the world.
Mental experiences of a strong nature. All people experience grief and trouble. However, severe mental suffering can lead to madness when a person withdraws, secludes himself, refuses social life and spends a long time alone with his grief.

About schizophrenia: definition and causes

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects thinking. It develops for unknown reasons and is endogenous in nature, not associated with organic brain damage and external factors. In the vast majority of cases, the pathology is of a genetic nature, but other reasons can also serve as an impetus for the development of psychosis:

The upbringing environment is a big city, a large number of people in the family, living in a small apartment, alcoholic parents, etc.
Structural changes in the brain that occur for unknown reasons.
Insufficient or excessive production of neurotransmitters - dopamine, serotonin, etc.
Personality characteristics - more often schizoids suffer from schizophrenia - closed people focused on their inner world.
Head injuries, including birth and postpartum.
Infections suffered by the mother during pregnancy.
Severe poisoning, substance abuse.
Chronic or acute stress, severe psychological trauma, including violence.

Due to the fact that the pathogenesis of schizophrenia is unknown, it is chronic. A person is diagnosed for life, regardless of how often they have attacks - every year or just once in their life.

Schizophrenia often develops in adolescents during the period of hormonal imbalances and sexual formation.

It is almost impossible to predict the development of schizophrenia. It can occur both in a child from a prosperous family and in children who have been subjected to physical or psychological violence. Not a single person is safe from it. It affects regardless of gender, age, social status and other factors. Overall, this disorder affects approximately 1% of the general population.

How does madness manifest itself?

Madness comes in different forms, as do its manifestations. However, the most important signs by which it can be recognized are:

Distorted perception of reality.
Inappropriate behavior that is very different from social behavior.
Inability to control one's own actions.

Madness manifests itself in a special way, but it cannot be confused with anything else. The patient may attack others, frighten them with outbursts of anger or aggressiveness, and may himself be in fear, not being able to explain the reasons. A person in a state of insanity performs repetitive actions. His consciousness is turned off, he does not think at all, does not reason, although he does all this, however, there is no logic or consistency in his mental activity.

Melancholic madness appears in the following symptoms:

Apathy.
Depression.
Detachment.
Withdrawal from the outside world, which supposedly ceases to exist.
Lack of response to external stimuli.
Lack of contact with people.

To some extent, the person suffers from hallucinations and various manifestations of perceptual disorder. He lives in his own fictional world, which can only partially coincide with the real one. The patient may not know what date it is today, what city he lives in, who he was and what he did before his illness. Hallucinations are vivid: the patient can hear, see or feel something under his skin.

Doctors cannot identify the general symptoms of the disease, since everything depends on the type of madness that is observed in a person. The onset of the disease is determined by the following symptoms:

Loss of self-control.
Lack of self-criticism.
A sudden change in mood that has no objective reasons.
The patient's conversation with himself, as if he were communicating with another person.

A person becomes unable to control his emotions (anger, rage, fear, malice), which manifests itself in the form of affective behavior. The patient becomes unable to control his actions, which are meaningless and aimed at satisfying instinctive needs. At the same time, it becomes unimportant what consequences they will lead to.

A person may be confused about where reality is and where he thinks and sees something. Perception becomes distorted and confused, causing disordered thinking and loss of sanity.

Signs in children

Schizophrenia also develops in childhood, not only in adolescents, but also in very young children. For some of them, the first signs become apparent as early as 2-4 years of age. You can learn about the onset of the disease by the following characteristics of the child’s behavior:

He behaves as if he is constantly afraid of something, for example, he refuses to go to his room, sleep in the dark or with the door closed, take a bath, etc. Often the baby directly talks about his fears and various creatures that he thinks are they scare him. Sometimes he even points to a specific place where the “monster” is hiding.

He develops unusual fantasies. Children often imagine themselves in the form of movie or cartoon characters. If the child cannot get out of the role, immersing himself heavily in it for weeks or months, it is worth showing him to a child psychotherapist.
The child shows low intellectual data. He doesn't remember new information well, and at school, if he already goes to school, he gets negative marks.
He acts too reserved. Children love to communicate and play with each other. Isolation and the desire for loneliness are negative factors for socialization, even without reference to mental disorders.
The child's expression of emotions is inadequate. He cries when he could smile, or laughs at unfunny things.
Outbursts of aggression may also occur. Sometimes children with developing schizophrenia are cruel, and unmotivated. This is evident in their handling of animals and toys.

Some of these symptoms can also be mistaken for poor parenting. If it is normal, but the child behaves strangely, it is better to show it to a specialist. The problem is that early schizophrenia causes a more persistent schizophrenic defect, especially in cases where it has gone untreated for a long time.

Is there a cure for madness?

In ancient times, people could not explain madness, so they saved themselves from it by believing in the gods or God alone. Religion was supposed to protect what, in the minds of many peoples, is ugly. Madmen caused fears and concerns. Then no one could heal them except through prayers or spells. Only in rare cases was madness viewed positively when a person in this state created or brought benefit.

Madness has existed for many centuries, and therefore various methods of treating it have been developed:

Trepanation of the skull.
Uterus removal.
Lobotomy.
Female circumcision.

Many of the treatments used to treat any type of insanity can be compared to abuse and torture. The use of shock therapy, the use of various instruments, cutting, piercing or mutilation of the body. Each scientist tried to find his own way to rid people of madness, thereby depriving them of their sanity even more.

Modern medicine includes drug treatment and psychological therapy. Shock therapy evolved from the use of anesthesia. Some mentally ill people are placed in psychiatric clinics, which have nothing in common with the homes in which the insane were previously placed.

Facial expressions

It’s worth mentioning right away that it’s difficult even for a psychiatrist to identify or recognize a schizophrenic by facial expressions, so it’s better not to draw any conclusions based on the characteristics of a person’s smile, etc. However, some patterns can still be traced. Thus, in patients with schizophrenia, facial expressions of interest, attention and pleasure are less common. They also do not smile as often as mentally healthy people.

There are even several smile variations that scientists have identified in patients. There are four in total:

Smile with detachment. When the patient smiles, he turns away his gaze. This is due to the reluctance to make strong contacts.
Proboscis smile. Trying to smile, the patient extends his lips forward, as if he had a trunk. Scientists suggest that this is due to damage to the corticonuclear pathway (from the cortex to the nuclei of the cranial centers).

A forced smile. Facial expression is in dissonance with true emotions. In essence, this is just an imitation of a smile, which healthy people also resort to. In schizophrenics it occurs more often and, most likely, is of a compensatory nature.
Dissociated smile. It is determined by a violation of the consolidation of facial expressions, when the movement of the lips is noticeable only on one side, like in a paralytic. But then the smile disappears and appears on the other half of the face, which distinguishes it from manifestations of the neurological type.

Researchers also study the eye contact that patients make with other people and things. In most cases, schizophrenics avoid direct gaze, like to look from under their brows, or simply turn away from the interlocutor.

Results of madness

Every person is a little crazy simply because he tries to be an individual, to look at the world differently, to see something new. It doesn't need to be treated. On the contrary, it is encouraged. However, morbid forms of insanity should be treated or given the right to exist, excluding such forms of torture as were previously used to treat the mentally ill.

Depending on society’s attitude towards madness, certain methods are used to treat patients. If we talk about a healthy person, then his madness can become a form of genius.

Signs in men and women

Schizophrenia develops with approximately the same frequency in men and women, except for the paranoid form of the disease, which more often affects the stronger sex. In addition, their symptoms appear earlier, and in women - after 5-7 years. The peak incidence in the former occurs at 25 years of age, and in the latter at 30-32.

In general, schizophrenia progresses in approximately the same way for everyone. But there are certain nuances. Thus, women, as a rule, are more often concerned with their appearance. They are usually unhappy with her. Moreover, even plastic surgery does not help get rid of this dissatisfaction. Also, women, as more sensual beings, more keenly perceive various ideas associated with mysticism or religion. Their delirium more often has a religious connotation.

Men with schizophrenia are more anxious and aggressive. Their delusions usually involve delusions of grandeur, invention, persecution, or jealousy. Also, such patients have a greater tendency to alcohol and drugs.

Women with schizophrenia live slightly longer than men, but less than mentally healthy people of both sexes.

Otherwise, the signs for men and women are the same, and if we talk about the specific content of delusions and hallucinations, then this issue is individual. The nature of such symptoms becomes more clear to others, including the doctor, after the attack.

Diagnosis and treatment

Diagnosis of schizophrenia involves many procedures, the main ones being EEG, MRI, CT and psychological tests. With their help, it is possible to exclude organic brain damage and other types of mental disorders.

Determining the form of schizophrenia is much more difficult. The signs of its hebephrenic variety are quite transparent, and sluggish or latent depression is not much different from ordinary depression. Sometimes diagnosis takes months.

Psychopathology is treated with antipsychotic medications and psychotherapy. The first ones are necessary both during an attack and during remission. Psychotherapeutic techniques are indicated not only for patients, but also for their relatives, who need to learn how to properly communicate with a schizophrenic.

Conventionally, a person’s life can be divided into the time before diagnosis and the period after it, but a clear boundary can be traced extremely rarely. Most patients go into long-term remission and do not even need disability or social benefits in the form of benefits. Much depends on the patient himself. If he takes good care of his mental and physical health, he can live a happy life.