Schizophrenia

SCHIZOPHRENIA

What is it?

It is a common myth that people with Schizoprenia have a split personality - hence the joke, "I'm a Schizophrenic, and so am I"

This is wrong!

Schizophrenia is one of a group of conditions called the Psychoses (plural).

Psychosis (singular), basically means that the person has lost touch with reality in some way, shape or form.

In Schizophrenia, this usually takes the form of one or more of the symptoms listed below:

Symptom Description

Hallucinations These are when are person seems to sense something is real when it's not. For example, seeing spiders crawling up their body or seeing angels.

Hearing Voices Often people with Schizophrenia, describe having people talking to them in their heads. They usually think of these voices as real beings or spirits. For example, Steven would commonly have 3 main voices in his head, these were the wicked witch, the commander, and Jesus. There would be others, from time to time, but he wouldn't recognise who they were. These voices would often talk to him, and "tell" him to do things. Often he was greatly troubled by the voice of the wicked witch, who he would say told him that he had to kill or rape people that he seemed to care for in his everyday life. While Jesus would reassure him that he was good, kind and holy.

Delusions These are basically irrational beliefs. If we use the example of Steven above, we can demonstrate this. Steven, believed that he was God's special prophet, and had special powers to control people. However, he believed that the wicked witch was trying to take him over, and would often seize control of his body, or send him messages through the TV or radio. Delusions often take the form of being highly special, powerful or important, or of outside forces controlling people, or communicating with them.
There are lots of other forms of delusion, they are listed in categories, but the theme that runs through them all is that they are beliefs that the person has that are not based on what the rest of the world would agree with.

Symptom	Description
Hallucinations	These are when are person seems to sense something is real when it's not. For example, seeing spiders crawling up their body or seeing angels.
Hearing Voices	Often people with Schizophrenia, describe having people talking to them in their heads. They usually think of these voices as real beings or spirits. For example, Steven would commonly have 3 main voices in his head, these were the wicked witch, the commander, and Jesus. There would be others, from time to time, but he wouldn't recognise who they were. These voices would often talk to him, and "tell" him to do things. Often he was greatly troubled by the voice of the wicked witch, who he would say told him that he had to kill or rape people that he seemed to care for in his everyday life. While Jesus would reassure him that he was good, kind and holy.
Delusions	These are basically irrational beliefs. If we use the example of Steven above, we can demonstrate this. Steven, believed that he was God's special prophet, and had special powers to control people. However, he believed that the wicked witch was trying to take him over, and would often seize control of his body, or send him messages through the TV or radio. Delusions often take the form of being highly special, powerful or important, or of outside forces controlling people, or communicating with them. There are lots of other forms of delusion, they are listed in categories, but the theme that runs through them all is that they are beliefs that the person has that are not based on what the rest of the world would agree with.

How Common is it?

It is surprisingly common, worldwide surveys reckon that 1 in 100 people suffer from Schizophrenia. That's 1% of all the people in the world. If you went to a school of about 1000 people, it means that it is likely that 10 of them have now developed Schiziphrenia.

How do you get it?

First the good news, you can't catch Schizophrenia. It's not like a cold or the flu, so you are not going to get it from being with a person who has it.

The bad news is that the experts still aren't exactly sure how you do get it.

However, they do know quite a lot about it. There seems to be a strong family link, which means that if someone in your family has suffered from it, the chances go up that you will. Don't get too stressed though, it's still really unlikely.

What age does it normally start?

Normally in peoples' late teens or early twenties. Although it has been known to start at other ages (older and younger!), this is more unlikely.

Can it be cured?

Rarely

Schizophrenia os usually managed. This means that people can usually go long periods of time with few or no signs of it. However, it is quite common for people to develop the full blown symptoms every few years (This may be a lot of years!). When people do this, it is called a Relapse. This is the time when most people have to go into hospital.

One interesting fact that is useful to know is that quite often a stressful thing happening in a person with Schizophrenia's life, can lead to a relapse.

Schizophrenia and Therapy

The most common way of treating Schizophrenia is with medication, but therapy, although it has been involved in trying to treat Schizophrenia for a long time, is only now becoming widely thought of as effective.

Most of the excitement at the moment focuses on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. There is a lot of work going on here, and is being shown to be particularly good with specific symptoms like delusions.

Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Therapy are quite controversial. At the moment, at least, the main opinion seems to be that they offer a lot of useful ideas about what Schizophrenia is, and perhaps how you might treat it. However, the actual therapy does not seem to work as well. Although, as with all things in Psychology, there are some therapists out there, who have been very successful in treating Schizophrenia using these methods.

There is also a lot of work done with families of people who have Schizophrenia. This is often really helpful at reducing everyones stress and worry, and helping people to cope.

Other therapies, claim some success, but in general this is such an under researched area, that we just don't know how well most of them work with Schizophrenia.

We are thinking of creating a SimplePsych factsheet on Schizophrenia which goes into more detail while still using easy to understand English. If you would be interested at this service being offered to you please let us know by emailing us Click Here

Alternatively, if you'd like to take a look at some information that is offered to health professionals (eg Doctors), that don't specialise in Schizophrenia but need to know more than the person in the street, we'd recommend that you check out the Fast Facts booklet on Schizophrenia published by Health Press in the UK. There is a charge for it but it covers areas we are not able to go into here. Click Here to go to the Health Press site. Please let them know we sent you.

Thank you.

* RECOMMENDED BOOKS *

If you are interested in going into even more depth, the following book(s), sold by Amazon.co.uk, are recommended by us. Each is followed by a rating for ease of reading (1-3).

1=Simple and Easy to comprehend.
2=More Complex but still a good read.
3=Very Complex, only for professionals/those studying to degree level.

Early Interventions In Psychosis (Birchwood, Jackson & Fowler)

RATING SCORE = 3 An extremely up to date book, focusing on early treatment, both medical and cognitive-behavioural.

Cognitive Therapy For Delusions, Voices & Paranoia (Chadwick, Birchwood & Trower)

RATING SCORE = 3 An excellent book explaining the exciting prospects of treating Psychosis with CBT.

Unbearable Affect: A Guide To The Psychotherapy Of Psychosis (Garfield)

RATING SCORE = 3 A psychoanalytically orientated book.

First Episode Psychosis (Meeham et al)

RATING SCORE = 3 A small pocketbook on 1st Episode Psychosis mainly intended for Doctors - Very Handy.

Schizophrenia: The Positive Perspective (Chadwick)

RATING SCORE = 3 An enlightening and different view of Schizophrenia, from a person who is both a recognised academic and a past sufferer.

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