Free Essay - Multicultural Aspects and Therapies Related to Schizophrenia

The term schizophrenia refers to the severe mental disorder that manifests in chronic and intermittent psychosis (Stroup & Marder, 2020). It is one of the typical forms of maladaptive behaviors in human beings. The predominant symptom of the condition includes impairments in the occupational and social capacity of its victim. Different cultures demonstrate different aspects of Schizophrenia. These aspects have a bearing on the life of Schizophrenia and influence the approach that a particular group employs in treating and managing the condition (Stroup & Marder, 2020). This paper explores the multicultural aspects related to the disease by comparing two different therapies that psychotherapists employ in treating Schizophrenia patients.

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Multi-Cultural Aspects

Different cultures have varying perceptions that affect their approach to Schizophrenia. A culture that is concerned with the condition seeks to understand how accurately they can diagnose and manage the patients. (“Schizophrenia across cultures” (n.d) noted the existence of differences in persecutory delusions that different groups of people exhibit towards Schizophrenia. The source cited the Xhosa people in South Africa who develop paranoid delusions and hallucinations due to their intense fear of magical persecution, and the fear of losing fertility in China as the leading cause of the condition in the country. People are sharing the cultural experience of pain and physical symptoms when they think of the possible stressors due to the state's reality within the cultures.

Schizophrenia Patients in Western countries exhibit higher depressive symptoms and primary delusions than patients in developing countries (“Schizophrenia across cultures," n.d). Due to the different cultures, a study on people in different nations will also exhibit differences in hallucinations, auditory delusions or gustatory hallucinations, and pronouncements. Patients in developing countries experience more hallucinations than their counterparts in the West. The risk factors for Schizophrenia, like ethnic density and urbanization, also change with culture. “Schizophrenia across cultures” (n.d) also noted the inverse relationship between the chances of developing Schizophrenia to ethnic density.

Therapies Used to Manage Schizophrenia

There are different approaches that medics employ in treating and managing the victims of the condition. However, this section focuses on the two popular strategies; pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. These methods are not alternative to each other but apply either to different patients or to the same patient who is in various phases of illness.

Pharmacotherapy

As the name indicates, this therapy utilizes pharmaceuticals and antipsychotic medications that aid the recovery of the patients. Tsapakis et al. (2015) noted the effectiveness of this therapy in treating the symptoms and behaviors of schizophrenic patients. Pharmacotherapy encompasses different steps, starting with an assessment of the patient's physical state, administering the necessary antipsychotics, checking the efficacy of the prescription, and maintaining any milestone in the recovery journey.

In the treatment process, if any negative symptoms like a patient show diminished emotional expression, the therapist has to prescribe an alternative medication. The patient's ultimate improvement will require a maintenance phase for checking and preserving the stability a patient would have achieved (Stroup & Marder, 2020). The maintenance phase is also supplemented using low dosages of the prescription that work best for the patient. These stages of medication and the bureaucracy that accompanies the process prove complicated and costly.

Despite the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy in countering Schizophrenic symptoms, the approach also has implementation challenges. Tsapakis et al. (2015) noted the possible severe side effects that pharmacotherapy can generate in patients. Some patients would partially respond to certain antipsychotics, while some would get agitated by their prescriptions. Apart from the efficacy of drugs, the selection of antipsychotics requires the therapist to consider the possible side effects a given medicine has on an individual (Stroup & Marder, 2020). The approach thus makes it essential to assess and manage these effects. Patients might require alternative individual prescriptions, which adds to the total treatment cost.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy involves physicians teaching patients the skills that would help them manage their difficulties (Mueser et al., 2013). The approach takes different forms from individual to family psychotherapy (CBT). The most frequently used therapy is cognitive-behavioral therapy. Although the psychotherapy results take time before emerging, literature commends that it is more effective than pharmacotherapy (Tsapakis et al., 2015). Patients under the approach show high stability after recovery than those who used drugs. CBT procedures guide the therapists in the abstraction of delusions and the implementation of natural coping strategies to the patients (Mueser et al., 2013). Psychotherapy’s basic guideline is to instill rational thoughts and perspectives in patients having delusions and hallucinations. This purpose is the opposite of pharmacotherapy that aims to treat the conditions. Using this approach, a therapist focuses on reducing symptoms like low self-esteem and social mal-functioning by executing training of the patients on cognitive remediation and social skills.

A few deductions are evident from this discussion. Firstly, every maladaptive behavior relates to certain mental conditions, and its severity varies with the culture of a place. The presence of diseases like delusions and hallucinations should be a pointer to the existence of Schizophrenia. Although there are various approaches to the management of the conditions, therapists should establish which method would serve particular patients basing on factors of cost, side effects, and the response of the patient's biology to the type of medication. An appropriate combination of the two approaches yields better results.

References

Mueser, K. T., Deavers, F., Penn, D. L., & Cassisi, J. E. (2013). Psychosocial treatments for Schizophrenia. Annual review of clinical psychology, 9, 465-497. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185620

Schizophrenia across cultures (2020, June 19). https://institute.progress.im/en/content/schizophrenia-across-cultures

Stroup,S, & Marder, S, (Apr 21, 2020). Pharmacotherapy for Schizophrenia: Acute and maintenance phase treatment. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/pharmacotherapy-for-schizophrenia-acute-and-maintenance-phase-treatment

Tsapakis, E. M., Dimopoulou, T., & Tarazi, F. sI. (2015). Clinical management of negative symptoms of Schizophrenia: An update. Pharmacology & therapeutics, 153, 135-147. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163725815001230