Our goal is to provide you with personalized, thorough, effective treatment in an environment that is professional, welcoming and private.”
Schizophrenia Treatment in Fort Worth
If you or someone you love is suffering from Schizophrenia, get help by calling (817) 457-4646.
“Our goal is to provide you with personalized, thorough, effective treatment in an environment that is professional, welcoming and private.” ~ Dr. Alloju D.O.
Schizophrenia is a chrinic disorder characterized by remitting and relapsing delusional and hallucinatory experiences, disordered speech, and deteriorating social and occupational function. Its impact is multidimensional and often devastating. The office of the surgeon general estimates that schizophrenia occurs in 1.3% of the US population between the ages of 18 and 54, or nearly 2.5 million adults.
The onset of symptoms of Schizophrenia is very gradual and often goes unnoticed. The onset of symptoms typically occurs during young adulthool (mid-20s for men, late-20s for women). Unfortunately, many of these people are not aware of the resources available to them, so they end up homeless, jobless, or incarcerated. What these people need is a comprehensive and carefully individualized treatment plan that considers patient, disease, and lifestyle factors as well as current evidence-based medicine. With the right treatment team behind them, we can expect substantial improvements in outcome for these patients.
The symptoms of Schizophrenia can be grouped into 3 categories:
Positive Symptoms (psychoses such as hallucinations, delusions)
Disorganized Symptoms (confused thinking or speech, unusual or nonsensical behaviour)
Negative Symptoms (emotional flatness, inability to start or follow through with activities, speech that is brief and lacks content, lack of pleasure or interest in life)
In addition, cognition is often impaired, most severely in executive function, verbal memory, verbal fluency, vigilance, and motor speed. These deficits tend to occur very early in the course of the illness.
Schizophrenia is associated with medical morbidity and mortality, particularly for diseases of the digestive, circulatory, nervous, endocrine, and respiratory systems, as well as for suicide and undetermined death.
Factors more common in patients with schizophrenia that account for increased morbilty and mortality compared with disease-free populations include: Cardivascular disease precipitated by increased rates of smoking, obesity, diabetes, hypertryertriglyceridemia, hyperlipidemia, hyperprolactinemia, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, low levels if insight, HIV, hepatitis, substance abuse, and reduced access to and use of medical care.
Finally, the burden of schizophrenia weighs heavily on patients’ families and caretakers due to physical, enotional, social, and financial stressors. individuals with this condition tpically experience social witdrawal, preoccupation with their psychotic symptoms, poor interpersonal rapport, and lower levels of education and income.
Additional facts to consider: Adults with ADHD are three times as likely to get into a serious motor vehicle accident, and twice as likely to get a divorce.
The newer treatments are higly effective at reducing, and sometimes eliminating, the psychiatric symptoms suffered by the Schizophrenic population. These newer treatments have a much lower incidence of side-effects than did the older-generation antipsychotics. Some treatment options you might want to discuss with your Psychiatrist are: Mood stabilizers (Depakote, Tegretol, Lithium, Lamictal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilfy, Geodon, and any other adjuntive treatment that might be necessaryl
There is hope for a better future for the Schizophrenic patient, and it starts right here.
Helpful Schizophrenia Resources:
- National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression
www.narsad.org - Schizophrenia.com
www.schizophrenia.com
Dr. Lisa Alloju is a 1993 Graduate of Texas Christian University with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. In 1997 Dr. Alloju completed medical school at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.
She completed Psychiatry Residency training at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth in 2002. While in residency, she was Assistant Chief Psychiatry Resident in 1999, and in 2002 was awarded Pfizer “Resident of the Year.” Her experience since completing residency includes work in the John Peter Smith Psychiatric Emergency Center, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, inpatient addiction and eating disorder centers, partial hospitalization treatment centers, and outpatient psychiatric and addiction medicine clinics.
Dr. Alloju has given several formal presentations to health care professionals on topics such as, “Women’s Issues in Psychiatry,” “Depression Screening in Primary Care,” “Choosing an Antidepressant,” “Treatment Options for Depression,” and “Antidepressants in the Primary Care Setting”.
