mic gestures or make movements such as walking in circles or pacing.Negative symptoms include emotional flatness or lack of expression, an inability to start and follow through with activities, and a lack of pleasure or interest in life. Negative does not refer to a persons attitude but to a lack of characteristics that should be there.Schizophrenia is a disease that affects 1 – 2 % of the world population. (www.chovil.com/first.html) The financial cost to society is huge and is compounded by the fact that 50% of people who have schizophrenia develop a substance abuse problem while 70% of those who go off their medication are re-hospitalized within a year and 100% of these within three years. (www.chovil.com/first.html) Medication plays a large part in the treatment of schizophrenia. Medication appears to improve the long-term prognosis for many people with schizophrenia. Studies show that after 10 years of treatment, one–forth of those with schizophrenia have recovered completely, one–fourth have improved considerably and one-forth have improved modestly. (www.nami.org/helpline/schizo) About 80 percent of those who stop taking their medications after an acute episode will have a relapse within one year.Some of the most commonly used medications are anti psychotics. Anti psychotic drugs are used in the treatment of schizophrenia to help relieve delusions, hallucinations and thinking problems associated with the disorder. These drugs appear to work by correcting an imbalance in the chemicals that help brain cells communicate with each other. Some commonly used antipsychotics include chlorpromazine (Thorazine); haloperidol (Haldol); thiothixene (Navane) and Thiorodazine (Mellaril). Atypical antipsychotics are newer drugs with fewer side effects and include: resperidone (Rispersal); clozapine (Clozaril) and Ziprasidone (Zeldox).As a group anti psychotic drugs are safe and serious side effects are relatively r...
