TWS - Psych, Schizophrenia, and Weddings
• public
📝 Rx
Hi friends,
This week I started my in-patient psych rotation. It's a locked unit so I can't get in and out on my own, definitely an interesting experience. Coming off an outpatient unit where all I saw was depression and anxiety, this is just a lot more acute and something I think is important to see when rotating through psych. Lots of drugs, schizophrenia, and mania.
In other news, attending my first wedding this weekend, pretty excited, not really sure what to expect. In my small sample size with some psych colleagues we were pretty split between blowing most of the money on the wedding and having an ok honeymoon vs having a small wedding and blowing it all on the honeymoon.
- Average wedding cost in the US in 2023 was $30,119
- Average honeymoon is hard to say but from what I saw ~$5,000
Taking that in, seems like most people prefer to focus on their weddings. Crazy how it costs as much as a nice car. I'd probably do a more 60/40 budget split myself, with most going to honeymoon.
🩻 Diagnosis of the Week:
Schizophrenia
What is it:
There's a pretty specific criteria for this, but in basic terms schizophrenia describes a variety of symptoms presenting with psychosis (hallucinations or delusions or disorganized thinking/speech) that last for more than 6 months, the timing being extremely important. It's thought to be due to some dysfunction in that way that Dopamine is regulated in the brain. You can get positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms with schizophrenia and this condition can be extremely debilitating if not managed well with social support and medication.
Key signs:
- Positive symptoms are things that are added to someone's baseline. These are things like new fixated beliefs that have no basis, new sensory perceptions like auditory or visual hallucinations, new language issues with speech, and new odd behavior.
- Negative symptoms are things taken away from someone's baseline. These are things like loss of emotion, loss of pleasure, loss of interest, loss of social engagement, and loss of speech.
- Cognitive symptoms are things like memory, attention, and understanding issues.
- To diagnose you must have at least 2 of the following symptoms for 6+ months, with 1 of them being either of the first three.
- Delusions
- Hallucinations
- Disorganized Speech
- Disorganized or Catatonic Behavior
- Negative Symptoms