Schizo

• Schizophrenia

  One of the most serious, disabling, and complex mental disorders
• Schizophrenia is a complex condition characterized by heterogeneity
• There is a tendency for people with schizophrenia to differ from each other in symptoms, family and personal background, response to treatment, and ability to live outside of hospital
• Heterogeneity makes it difficult to predict how a person will be affected by schizophrenia, what their prospects are for the future, and whether their condition will improve, stabilize, or worsen
• A significant proportion of patients, perhaps more than two-thirds, improve over time and in response to treatment
• Up to one-third of patients continue to suffer from symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions, some endure unpleasant side effects, and many are difficult to assist with counselling or rehabilitation
• There is less than a 1 percent risk that a person will develop schizophrenia at some point in their lifetime in North America and Europe
• The prevalence, or total number of cases with the disorder at a given point in time, changes depending on how the diagnosis is made
• Schizophrenia is twice as common as Alzheimer's disease and five times as common as multiple sclerosis
• The development of psychotic symptoms marks the formal onset of the first episode of schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia symptoms tend to manifest between late adolescence and early adulthood (typically between 15 and 45 years of age)
• Men and women are at roughly equal risk and recent evidence suggests the disorder strikes each sex at about the same age
• Schizophrenia rarely occurs before adolescence or after 45 years of age
• If the disorder develops after the age of 45, it is more common among women and seems to comprise more emotional and mood-related symptoms
• Poor outcome is more likely among males, individuals who develop the disorder at a younger age, and those who experience a longer delay between the first appearance of symptoms and treatment
• The course of schizophrenia tends to be chronic and relapsing, with about 20 percent having a favourable course and about one in seven patients experiencing both remission of symptoms and improved daily life functioning
• Schizophrenia occurs throughout the world and at all socio-economic levels
• Once individuals develop schizophrenia, they are less likely to complete their education and unemployment rates are as high as 90 percent
• People with schizophrenia are more likely to develop additional psychiatric problems, including depression and suicidal behaviour as well as drug and alcohol abuse
• The financial and social costs associated with schizophrenia are substantial, with the disorder rivaling stroke and heart disease in terms of hospital care and costing billions of dollars annually in Canada
• Research on schizophrenia has increased substantially over the last three decades, with the number of articles published on the disorder multiplying since the early 1970s
• The costs to the Canadian taxpayer amount to billions of dollars annually in direct and indirect health care, family benefits, social support services, and productivity loss due to morbidity or early mortality
• Approximately 3 percent of the total burden of human disease is attributed to schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia places a heavy burden on patients, their families, and society
• Over the last three decades, with the rapid growth of knowledge about brain biology and genetics, research on schizophrenia has increased substantially
• The number of articles published on the disorder has multiplied since the 1980s
• Madness and insanity


  Documented since the beginnings of civilization, medicine, and writing
• Descriptions of madness and lunacy before about 1800 suggest that these conditions occurred at any time of life rather than primarily in young people
• Auditory hallucinations are extremely rare in cases of madness prior to 1700
• Historically documented madness seldom lasted more than a few days, and was often drug and alcohol–induced or related to other diseases
• The first recognizable descriptions of modern schizophrenia did not appear in English or French until the early years of the nineteenth century
• The number of insanity cases per 1000 people in the population increased by more than 2000 percent between 1847 and 1960 in Canada's Maritime provinces
• Increasing industrialization, the movement of people to cities from towns and countryside, and environmental changes may have been involved in the sudden and escalating emergence of schizophrenia in modern life
• People in earlier times viewed mental disorder differently and may not have recorded or commented on symptoms and characteristics that help to separate schizophrenia from more generic categories like "lunacy" and insanity
• Schizophrenia existed but was not recognized as a distinct entity until Haslam's (1809/1976) case studies and the later and definitive descriptions of Kraepelin (1896, 1919) and Bleuler (1911/1950)
• Positive symptoms


  Exaggerated, distorted adaptations of normal behaviour, including delusions, hallucinations, thought and speech disorder, and grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviour
• Negative symptoms


  Absence or loss of typical behaviours and experiences, including sparse speech and language, social withdrawal, avolition, anhedonia, and diminished attention and concentration
• Hallucinations


  Misinterpretations of sensory perceptions that occur while a person is awake and conscious and in the absence of corresponding external stimuli
• Hallucinations develop from a "misattribution of sensory experience" - an inability to discriminate between internal and external sources of information and experience
• Delusions


  Implausible beliefs that persist despite reliable contradictory evidence, reflecting a disorder of thought content