MINIATURES
ANSWERS IN SCIENCE
WHAT IS SCHIZOPHRENIA AND WHO CAN SUFFER FROM IT
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects 1% of the world population,
and it is independent of race, gender or culture.
Speaking specifically about Spain,
considering that there are 45 million Spaniards,
about 450.000 people suffer from schizophrenia.
This disorder is characterised by several clinical manifestations,
the most important of which are deliria and hallucinations.
- She never gets old.
- Marcee can’t be real, she never gets old.
- Without a treatment, John, the fantasies could dominate you completely.
These two main symptoms are also called positive, because there are negative ones
such as social withdrawal and a lack of interest about anything.
It is ultimately caused by the excess of activity of a neurotransmitter denominated dopamine.
There are several hypotheses about its origins,
one of the most accepted is
that some alterations in the brain development are produced,
due to infections,
even when we are in the womb.
At puberty, and at other stages of life,
once produced this alteration in the brain development,
if there are certain psychosocial events
such as strong stressful situations,
the disease can start to manifest.
Fortunately, there are excellent drugs
which control the symptomatology of this disease,
and this makes many people be able to lead an almost normal life.
Emilio Ambrosio Flores Psychobiology Professor at UNED,
for Radio UNED.
"THE MADMAN" ANTONIO MACHADO
It is a glum and tasteless evening of an autumn without fruits
in the sterile and eroded land
where the shadow of a centaur wanders.
Through a road in the arid plain of withered poplars,
alone with his shadow and his madness,
there goes the madman shouting.
Far away there are dismal steppes,
hills full of underbrush and bramble
and the ruins of old oak groves on top of bitter little ranges.
The madman shouts alone with his shadow and his chimera,
His figure is hideous and grotesque.
Skinny, slovenly, injured and badly cropped.
Fevered eyes light up his gaunt face.
He flees from the city… poor wickedness,
miserable virtues and chores of bored cocky men
and evilness of idle traders.
Through the fields of God, the madman advances
after the dry and skeletal earth.
Red of rust and dun of ashes.
There is an iris dream faraway.
Flee from the city, the urban boredom!
Sad flesh and villain spirit!?
It was not because of a tragic sorrow.
This wandering soul, detached and broken,
purges other people’s sin:
The sanity,
the dreadful sanity of the fool.
POEM: ANTONIO MACHADO SPEECH, EDITION: EDITH CHECA