Case Study on Mental Health

Mental Health

Presenting Problem

The patient is a 25-year-old male, single, unemployed, living with parents. The person seeking treatment in this case has been experiencing some extreme problems that have developed somewhat rapidly over the course of six months. The problem is very severe and has interfered with all of his personal relationships. He was recently fired from his janitorial job at a school for scaring the students with his words and actions. The patient has not sought treatment before but is now due to his parent's concern and him becoming much more violent and demonstrating strange and odd behavior. The patient claims to be hearing many voices in his head urging him to do strange acts. The patient has also recently taken up a hobby of collecting dead animals and placing them in mailboxes and other public places.

History of the Problem

The patient has described his life becoming more and more confusing over the last few years. The patient was always a poor student and has been arrested twice for violent behavior as a teenager. The patient's violent spells have come and gone since his early teenage years but he is expressing a strong feeling of loss of control in his current state. The patient claimed that he has heard many different voices in his head since the age of 13.

Prior Treatment History

The patient has never seen a mental health specialist until now. The patient has taken many illegal psychedelic drugs in his teenage years. The patient currently smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and has taken Chantix in a past failed attempt in quitting his smoking habit.

Medical History

The patient has never been hospitalized for medical illness, nor for any other reason outside his tonsillectomy he received at age 9. The patient does not take any prescription drugs.

Family History

The patient lives with his father and his stepmother. The patients real mother committed suicide in a mental institution when he was three years old. His mother's brother, or his uncle also committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. The patient was there with his cousin when this suicide took place. The patient is an only child. Both of the patient's grandmothers were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and were institutionalized late in life.

Developmental History

The patient does not remember his mother. His father's marriage to his stepmother occurred when he was 14 years old. The patient revealed he has had a sexual relationship with his stepmother since he was 16 years old.

Educational History

The patient graduated from high school as an average student. He described his educational experience as boring and limiting to his imagination.

Work History

Shortly after graduating high school the patient took the janitor job that he recently lost.

Legal History

The patient has been arrested twice for violent behavior. Both instances surrounded him being attacked by mysterious forces. The court cases for the patient notes his arrests were for disturbing the peace.

Sexual Relationship History

The patient is bisexual. He claims the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepmother was part of God's plan.

Theoretical Analysis

There are many approaches to help describe Schizophrenia but there is no consensus on its occurrence. There are two fields of theory associated with this disease; bio-determination and environmental based approach that includes the impact of social theories.

The neurodevelopment theory of schizophrenia has been of great importance focusing most etiologic research over the past two decades. According to this theory there is deviance in early brain development whose full adverse consequences emerge only in adolescence or early adulthood (2-4). In its simplest form this theory posits that schizophrenia is the behavioral outcome of an aberration in neurodevelopment processes that begins long before the onset of clinical symptoms and is caused by a combination of environmental and genetic factors