Psych Fair

There was many interesting topics to choose from at the Psych Fair. The Psychological topic that I chose and took notes, was Schizophrenia. The group that chose this topic concentrated on all the aspects of schizophrenia, such as the amount of people it affects, the symptoms and they feature a video with a life of a schizophrenic person. Schizophrenia is a group of severe biological disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perception and inappropriate actions and emotions. The presentation showed statistics which said approximately 1 percent of the population develops schizophrenia during their lifetime, more than 2 million Americans suffer from the illness in a given year. The students chose this topic because they wanted to correct the misconception that schizophrenia is "split personality." The students applied their topic to psychology by making a movie called "Imagine Schizophrenia" which showed a life of a schizophrenic person, and the hallucinations and delusions they suffer from. The poster presented information about a 20th-century artist named Louis Wain, who was fascinated by cats, he painted pictures over a period of time in which he developed schizophrenia. There were four pictures which marked the progressive stages in the illness and exemplified what the illness does to the victim's perception.

The key concepts focused in the project were the different types of schizophrenia and the side effects which occur. The four different types of schizophrenia are paranoid, catatonic, disorganized, and undifferentiated schizophrenia. People with paranoid schizophrenia experience delusions of grandeur and persecution. Catatonic schizophrenia is when people have variations in voluntary movements. There are two forms of it, catatonic excitement and catatonic stupor. In catatonic excitement people experience rapid movement and delusions and hallucinations. In catatonic stupor people undergo extreme