Schizophrenia

What is schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a type of psychiatric disorder that affects your mental and physical health. It can severely impact day to day life if left untreated.

Schizophrenia interferes with the way your brain works, affecting thoughts, behavior, senses and memory. It can impact social, personal and professional relationships. It may also cause you to act in a way that puts you at risk of injury or other illnesses.

Are there different types of schizophrenia?

Traditionally, schizophrenia was categorized by types of conditions such as paranoid and catatonic schizophrenia. Nowadays, schizophrenia is referred to as a spectrum of conditions. These include:

• Brief psychotic disorder
• Delusional disorder
• Schizoaffective disorder
• Schizophreniform disorder
• Schizotypal personality disorder (a type of personality disorder)
• Specified or unspecified schizophrenia spectrum disorders (allow a diagnosis of unusual types of schizophrenia).

Who is affected by schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia usually begins in men between the ages of 15 and 25, and in women between the ages of 25 and 35. Men and women are affected equally.

What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?

The symptoms of schizophrenia are usually noticed by the people around the affected individual, rather than the person with the condition. The main symptoms of schizophrenia are:

• Delusions: These are believing something to be correct or present, even though evidence shows the beliefs are wrong.
• Disorganized movements: You might make unusual movements compared to the people around you, or not move much at all.
• Hallucinations: Believing you can hear, see, touch, smell, or taste something that doesn’t exist. For example, hearing voices.
• Incoherent or disorganized speaking: You may find it hard to organize thoughts when speaking.
• Negative symptoms: Any reduction or lost ability to do things, such as lack of motivation or no longer making facial expressions.

The symptoms of schizophrenia can cause you to feel paranoid, suspicious or scared. You may also stop caring about your appearance or personal hygiene.

Depression and anxiety can also develop, and sometimes people with schizophrenia turn to substance abuse to try and ease the symptoms.

What causes schizophrenia?

Doctors believe schizophrenia occurs because of many different things, including:

• Imbalanced chemical signals in your brain
• Loss of connections in areas of your brain
• Problems in brain development that happened before birth

While there isn’t a known cause, there are certain risk factors for developing schizophrenia. These include:

• Environmental factors: Things such as certain illnesses which affect the brain, including autoimmune diseases and infections, may increase the risk of schizophrenia. Extreme, long-term stress may also increase risk.
• Birth and developmental factors: Schizophrenia risk increases if your mother had gestational diabetes, malnutrition, preeclampsia, or vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy. A low birth weight or complications during delivery also increases risk.
• Recreational drug use: Using certain recreational drugs in large amounts may increase risk.
• Genetic factors: Having a parent or sibling with schizophrenia may increase your risk.

How is schizophrenia diagnosed?

Ther are no specific diagnostic tests for schizophrenia, so it is diagnosed by discussing your symptoms and observing how you act. To confirm a schizophrenia diagnosis, you must be displaying at least two of the main symptoms, have experienced symptoms for one month or more, and confirm that the symptoms are impacting daily life.

Your doctor will want to rule out other possible causes of the symptoms, so may perform the following tests:

• Blood, cerebrospinal fluid, or urine tests: These can identify chemical changes that explain changes in behavior.
• Electroencephalogram (EEG): This is a test that looks at electrical brain activity and can rule out things such as epilepsy.
• Imaging tests: CT scans, MRI scans or other imaging tests can rule out things like brain injuries, stroke or tremors.

How is schizophrenia treated?

There is no total cure for schizophrenia, but it can be treated and managed. Some people can fully recover from schizophrenia but may relapse in the future. Therefore, those who have recovered are said to be in remission.

Treatment of schizophrenia often involves combining medication, self-management and therapy:

• Medications: These are prescribed to manage symptoms of schizophrenia. Antipsychotics may be given as well as medication which can reduce the side effects of antipsychotics like tremors.
• Psychotherapy: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you to manage and cope with schizophrenia. Other types of therapy can help with secondary problems, such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse.
• Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): When other treatments aren’t working, ECT may be offered, which involves applying an electrical current to the head and stimulating parts of the brain. This can help to improve the function of the brain in people with depression and other problems.

Schizophrenia affects people differently and treatment will take varying amounts of time to be effective. With the right treatment, many people are able to live a full and normal life.