Schizophrenia is often a life-long mental disorder that restricts the patient’s actions, emotions and thoughts. The person suffering from this condition develops a faulty perception about life and people and often remains into a hallucination. Schizophrenia is very common among young adults and there is no specific reason that causes this particular disorder. The onset of schizophrenia mostly occurs between 15-25 years of age in both men and women. But, this mental disorder can also be seen in older people. Identifying the symptoms of schizophrenia is not very easy as initially, it shows common mental issues like depression, anxiety, being aloof from the family and social life etc. However, an accurate schizophrenia test is necessary for early diagnosis and treatment of the patient.
A new test to determine schizophrenia
A few years back, the researchers from London University came up with a theory that schizophrenics are more immune to optical illusions. Studies have shown that the schizophrenics might find it difficult to distinguish between fact and imagination, but often their vision is more accurate than non-schizophrenics. So, they suggested an easy test with the optical illusion that might diagnose schizophrenia in patients irrespective of the severity of their condition. The test was conducted with few volunteers where they were shown high-contrast black and white images. Sections from the middle of the images were altered with low contrast. They were asked to choose the perfect match from a list of identical shapes containing one true match with the original image. The results show that 12 out of 15 schizophrenics were more accurate than the non-sufferers in finding the true match. This is because their brains take no account of the surrounding information and make no relative judgement. So, this particular schizophrenia test can be really helpful for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Till date, only subjective tests and interviews are carried out to identify schizophrenia and to determine the level of the same. But, if this particular optical illusion test gets popular among the psychiatrists then it might be a lot easier for them with an objective diagnosis.
Future prospects
The leading ophthalmologists in practice have approved and confirmed about the effectiveness of optical illusion in determining schizophrenia. They also suggested that this test can be useful for further evaluation and studies about the behavioral patterns in schizophrenics. This might bring a whole new perception or a new method of treatment for this typical mental disorder. Now it is to be seen if and when the optical illusion test gets approved by the medical practitioners and is performed widely to identify schizophrenia. If this objective method is accepted then it will be a revolutionary step towards diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia.