Comment Some rebuttals (Score 1) 1128
There is an awful lot of incorrect stuff being thrown around in these posts. There are also a lot of half-truths. I can't even begin to find each and every one and rebut them all. Just rest assured that I have recently (last December) studied schizophrenia specifically in an academic setting (with a slant towards cognitive issues rather than medical ones.) Also, my mother has been schizophrenic my whole life and I have taken a rather active interest in it as a result.
1) Scizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. It is on Axis 1 in the DSM. "Psychotic" basically means having hallucinations, delusions, etc. A psychotic patient can also have issues with catatonia and other lesser known symptoms. Most of what people think of when they think of schizophrenia is hallucinations and delusions. If you have only those, then you have what is caled the paranoid subtype.
2) Scizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder.) A schizophrenic may communicate with imagined entities, but they are not "alters" -- the term for alternate personalities.
3) Occurences of schizophrenia do, indeed, have a high correlation with changes in brain structure (a certain part of the brain is often atrophied in schizophrenics among other differences of the brand that are typical in mentally disordered people.) This does not necessarily make it a purely medical disorder. Depression is usually accompanied by changes in levels of certain neurotransmitters, as is anxiety and pretty much everything else you can think of. But this always begs the chicken-or-egg question. Note that 50% of people who have an identical twin with schizophrenia also have schizophrenia. This rate is actually extremely high as mental disorders go. But it means that only half of people with the exact same genes as a schizophrenic actually become diagnosable with the disorder. So there need to be non-genetic influences for onset to occur. I don't remember the stat for fraternal twins, but it is much lower -- indicating that genes do play a significant role.
4) The important thing to know about schizophrenia as a medical/cognitive problem is that schizophrenics _can_ learn to manage their psychotic symptoms. People who spend a lot of time excersising their ordered cognition powers are a lot less likely to become schizophrenic (so you can bet that I'm all about puzzles and games as a child of a schizophrenic! :) and they are also less likely to slip into disorganized symptoms as their disorder progresses. (Disorganized thought is a known symptom of schizophrenia that often tends to happen over time if the patient doesn't start off that way.)
5) Cognitive therapies are actually quite effective. Someone on here stated that "talking therapies" only have an ~30% success rate with mental disorders. This is plain rubbish. Success rates differ wildly from disorder to disorder, with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy being very successful in a large number of cases -- quite often more successful than drug therapy in mood disorders. Schizophrenia, of course, requires meds to reduce psychotic symptoms and cognitive therapy to help the patient and his/her family and friends manage the strange behavior. As someone stated earlier, make sure your friend keeps taking his/her meds.
6) Family/friend support is crucial to a schizophrenic's success in handling the disorder. They will not be able to be fully independent for quite some time and you must be willing to put up with some very serious crap from them. According to NIMH, the prevalence of schizophrenia is 1%. This means that 1 in 100 people are diagnosed with it. Take a look around. If you go downtown, you can probably see several hundred people at once. But the likelyhood is that none or almost none of those people are schizophrenic. If you want to see most of those 1% of people, visit a homeless shelter. Most schizophrenics don't get the support necessary to live normal(ish) lives. And they often end up destitute.
1) Scizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. It is on Axis 1 in the DSM. "Psychotic" basically means having hallucinations, delusions, etc. A psychotic patient can also have issues with catatonia and other lesser known symptoms. Most of what people think of when they think of schizophrenia is hallucinations and delusions. If you have only those, then you have what is caled the paranoid subtype.
2) Scizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder.) A schizophrenic may communicate with imagined entities, but they are not "alters" -- the term for alternate personalities.
3) Occurences of schizophrenia do, indeed, have a high correlation with changes in brain structure (a certain part of the brain is often atrophied in schizophrenics among other differences of the brand that are typical in mentally disordered people.) This does not necessarily make it a purely medical disorder. Depression is usually accompanied by changes in levels of certain neurotransmitters, as is anxiety and pretty much everything else you can think of. But this always begs the chicken-or-egg question. Note that 50% of people who have an identical twin with schizophrenia also have schizophrenia. This rate is actually extremely high as mental disorders go. But it means that only half of people with the exact same genes as a schizophrenic actually become diagnosable with the disorder. So there need to be non-genetic influences for onset to occur. I don't remember the stat for fraternal twins, but it is much lower -- indicating that genes do play a significant role.
4) The important thing to know about schizophrenia as a medical/cognitive problem is that schizophrenics _can_ learn to manage their psychotic symptoms. People who spend a lot of time excersising their ordered cognition powers are a lot less likely to become schizophrenic (so you can bet that I'm all about puzzles and games as a child of a schizophrenic!
5) Cognitive therapies are actually quite effective. Someone on here stated that "talking therapies" only have an ~30% success rate with mental disorders. This is plain rubbish. Success rates differ wildly from disorder to disorder, with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy being very successful in a large number of cases -- quite often more successful than drug therapy in mood disorders. Schizophrenia, of course, requires meds to reduce psychotic symptoms and cognitive therapy to help the patient and his/her family and friends manage the strange behavior. As someone stated earlier, make sure your friend keeps taking his/her meds.
6) Family/friend support is crucial to a schizophrenic's success in handling the disorder. They will not be able to be fully independent for quite some time and you must be willing to put up with some very serious crap from them. According to NIMH, the prevalence of schizophrenia is 1%. This means that 1 in 100 people are diagnosed with it. Take a look around. If you go downtown, you can probably see several hundred people at once. But the likelyhood is that none or almost none of those people are schizophrenic. If you want to see most of those 1% of people, visit a homeless shelter. Most schizophrenics don't get the support necessary to live normal(ish) lives. And they often end up destitute.
