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Did you know that there is such a disease as fur-like or progressive schizophrenia? No, this disease has nothing to do with fur coats and the popular salad of the same name. But the name, funny at first glance, does not at all indicate the harmlessness of the deviation. On the contrary, such a disease promises many problems for both the patient himself and his relatives.
Some terminology
The name of this type of schizophrenia — fur coat, comes from the word «fur coat», which means «shift». The patient constantly alternates attacks with periods of remission. Moreover, during the “lull”, outside observers can notice an instantaneous or spasmodic personal transformation of the patient. Unlike sluggish recurrent schizophrenia, its progredient variant actively provokes the rapid formation of defects. Changes in a person’s personality are of an increasing nature — from attack to attack. True, not every shift entails some kind of cardinal transformation, and not every attack is characterized as a fur coat.
Who is more likely to develop progressive schizophrenia?
At risk for this insidious disease are young people who have just gone through adolescence. That is, those who are about to turn or have already turned 25 years old (although an earlier manifestation of the disease is possible, which is much more active than fur-like schizophrenia in adults with already formed brain structures).
You can recognize the disease at an early stage by the following symptoms:
- the patient is haunted by obsessive thoughts, ideas, or actions;
- a person constantly complains about well-being, hypochondria develops;
- it always seems to the patient that he has already met strangers somewhere who have never met him before;
- a person has a catatonic syndrome;
- gradually the patient develops a logical and convenient delirium for him .;
- the patient’s character traits noticeably change, sometimes to opposite values.
Features of fur coat schizophrenia
Personal transformation is noticeable already at the beginning of the disease. It expresses itself in the increased level of anxiety of the patient, the presence of paranoid ideas in him and the gradual withdrawal “into himself”. Most often, delirium is formed on a feeling of jealousy or trust in a relationship, it seems to such people that they are being persecuted, they are being watched.
It takes only three, less often, five years, and the patient develops paranoid traits, panic fear for his life and the Kandinsky-Clerambault syndrome. This condition is poorly amenable to conventional correction and requires inpatient treatment.
Even seizures in fur-like schizophrenia are not homogeneous. They are classified into the following main groups:
- exacerbation, in which affective disorders dominate,
- seizures with features of psychopathic mental disorders;
- neurosis-like states;
- depression of varying severity;
- hallucinatory changes in consciousness;
- catatonic crises and so on.
The negative transformation of personality, the development of mental defects, progressive obsessive-compulsive states and their intensity directly depend on the following factors: the age, gender of the patient, his social status, the presence or absence of comorbidities. Malignant juvenile schizophrenia is considered the most complex and severe, it is fraught with oligophrenic personality defects, intellectual problems.