What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a condition characterised by disturbances in a person's thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behaviour. It affects approximately one in every 100 people worldwide and first onset commonly occurs in adolescence or early adulthood. Schizophrenia is not a single illness. It is in fact a cluster of illnesses, which have overlapping signs and symptoms. It is therefore important to acknowledge the unique experience of each person living with schizophrenia.
While schizophrenia can be a devastating illness for the people who experience it as well as for their families, it is important to recognise that there is hope. Treatments, both medical and psychosocial, are becoming more effective. Recently introduced early intervention programs are demonstrating encouraging outcomes for people with early psychosis and the concerns of consumers and their carers, such as those relating to empowerment and quality of life, are being increasingly recognised.
Schizophrenia is a complex disorder with few generalisations holding true for all people diagnosed. In practice, there appears to be as many forms of schizophrenia as there are individuals experiencing the illness.

Signs and Symptoms.

A person diagnosed with schizophrenia may demonstrate auditory hallucinations, delusions, and disorganised and unusual thinking and speech. These may range from loss of train of thought and subject flow, with sentences only loosely connected in meaning. Social isolation commonly occurs for a variety of reasons. Impairment in social Congnition is associated with schizophrenia, as are symptoms of paranoia from delusions and hallucinations, and the negative symptoms of apathy or lack of motivation also know as avolition. In one uncommon subtype, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation. These are signs of catatonia. No one sign is diagnostic of schizophrenia, and all can occur in other medical and psychiatric conditions. The current classification of psychoses holds that symptoms need to have been present for at least one month in a period of at least six months of disturbed functioning. A schizophrenic-like psychosis of shorter duration is termed a schizofreniform disorder.
Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of schizophrenia. These are critical periods in a young adult's social and vocational development, and they can be severely disrupted. To minimize the effect of schizophrenia, much work has recently been done to identify and treat the pre-onset phase of the illness, which has been detected up to 30 months before the onset of symptoms, but may be present longer.
Those who go on to develop schizophrenia may experience the non-specific symptoms of social withdrawal, irritability and dysphora in the prodromal period, and transient or self-limiting psychotic symptoms in the prodromal phase before psychosis becomes apparent.

Common Schizophrenic Behavior

When a person has Schizophrenia there are a number of behavioral changes that they go through. Some include:
Substance Abuse
Nicotine Dependence
Disordered Thinking
Apathetic Personality
Changing "Normal VS Abnormal" Behaviors -These Changes in behavior can be the result of medication adjustments.

Schizophrenic patients should be carefully watched as suicide is a serious danger. If an individual tries to commit suicide or threatens to do so, professional help should be sought immediately.
People with schizophrenia have a higher rate of suicide than the general population. Approximately 10% of people with schizophrenia (especially younger adult males) commit suicide. Unfortunately, the prediction of suicide in people with schizophrenia can be especially difficult.

Treatment

The good news about schizophrenia is that although there is no cure, it can be treated effectively with prescription medications. In the past decade, several new antipsychotic medications also known as atypical antipsychotics, have been developed that have fewer side effects than older medications , known as typical antipsychotics.
Medication therapies as well as numerous psychological rehabilitation programs are the mainstays of treatment.
Goals of therapy are to reduce schizophrenic symptoms, prevent return of symptoms, minimize side effects from medications, and help the patient function more normally in society.
Initial drug treatment should include use of one of the atypical antipsychotic medications--such as:

• olanzapine (Zyprexa),
• quetiapine (Seroquel),
• risperidone (Risperdal),
• aripiprazole (Abilify).

If no response is seen within 3 to 4 weeks, consult a doctor and the addition of a second atypical antipsychotic should be warranted. If no response is evident while on two atypical antipsychotics, then addition of a third atypical can be tried, depending on your doctor. If schizophrenic symptoms are still present after trying three atypical antipsychotics, a typical antipsychotic medication--for instance, chlorpromazine, fluphenazine, and haloperidol--should be initiated. Clozapine (Clozaril), an atypical antipsychotic, is usually left as a last-line therapy because of its potential for serious side effects. In most medication-resistant patients, however, clozapine can be used with mood stabilizers (such as lithium), antidepressants, other atypical antipsychotics, typical antipsychotics, or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). If noncompliance with a medication regimen is suspected, some typical antipsychotics are available in long-acting, injectable forms--for example, haloperidol decanoate or fluphenazine decanoate.

After treating the first psychotic episode, most schizophrenic patients should continue treatment for at least 1 year. If the individual has multiple psychotic episodes, then treatment should last for at least 5 years. Patients with schizophrenia should be evaluated at least annually to determine the need to continue medication. Continuing antipsychotic medications indefinitely should be considered for patients with a history of serious suicide attempts or violent, aggressive behavior.
Please consult your doctor.

Gender and Age Patterns

• Schizophrenia affects men and women with equal frequency.
• Schizophrenia usdually appears earlier in men than it does women. This being in their late teens or early twenties.
• Schizophrenia affects women in their twenties to early thirties.
• Children over the age of five can develop schizophrenia, but it is very rare to develop before adolescence.

Causes

The causes of mental illness are linked to several factors which can be summarised into 3 main groups:
.Biological factors which come from physiology, biochemistry, genetic make-up and physical constitution.
.Psychological factors which include the person's emotional experiences, upbringing and interactions with others.
.Social factors that are associated with the person's present life situation and sociocultural influences
Although no single cause of schizophrenia has been identified, there are most likely to be several contributing factors. it's likely that there is an interaction between the persons biological vulnerability, stress or change in the environment and the persons ability to deal with these environmental factors in terms of their social skills and supports. If the environment is sufficiently stressful, even people with a high personal threshold for stress will develop some indicators of mental illness, including schizophrenia. This means a less stressful environment may decrease the risk of onset in a person with a predisposition to schizophrenia.
What we do know is that schizophrenia is NOT caused by:
-Domineering or passive parents.
-Poverty
-Weakness of character or personality
-Bad parenting
-Sinful behaviour
Factors that could contribute to Schizophrenia though are:
Family genetics, physical environment in which you live, neurodevelopmental factors, misuse of drugs or even biochemial balances in the brain.

Questions to ask doctors

Questions To Ask Your Doctor About Schizophrenia:

Is this schizophrenia?
Might it be caused by something else?
What are treatment options?
Which drugs are available for treatment?
Will there be a remission or recovery?
What are the major side effects of the medication you are prescribing?