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Schizophrenia
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Schizophrenia is one of the most common mental illnesses. About 1 of every 100 people (1% of the population) is affected by schizophrenia. This disorder is found throughout the world and in all races and cultures. Schizophrenia affects men and women in equal numbers, although on average, men appear to develop schizophrenia earlier than women. Generally, men show the first signs of schizophrenia in their mid 20s and women show the first signs in their late 20s. Schizophrenia has a tremendous cost to society, estimated at $32.5 billion per year in the US (statistic from Brain Facts, Society for Neuroscience, 2002).
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Schizophrenia is a severe, lifelong brain disorder. People who have it may hear voices, see things that aren't there or believe that others are reading or controlling their minds. In men, symptoms usually start in the late teens and early 20s. They include hallucinations, or seeing things, and delusions such as hearing voices. For women, they start in the mid-20s to early 30s. Other symptoms include
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Schizophrenia has a long history of neglect, demonisation and concealment. Even today, the illness does not receive the levels of public attention and research funding warranted by the numbers of individuals and families it affects. It is ... common for affected families to conceal the illness from relatives, friends and workplace associates, thereby diminishing its impact upon public awareness.
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Schizophrenia runs in families, but despite intense research efforts, the precise genetics of this complex and disabling disorder remain unknown. The first efforts to find a “schizophrenia gene” have been greatly complicated by the likely involvement of multiple genes. Therefore, researchers have developed new methods to tackle the goal of gene identification. Previous studies utilized the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia as the trait of interest. In contrast to studying the genes that lead to schizophrenia, this study utilizes measures of brain functioning present in schizophrenia patients and their first degree relatives as tools to help to understand the genetics of schizophrenia.
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Schizophrenia can occur at any age, but it tends to first develop (or at least become evident) between adolescence and young adulthood. Schizophrenia that is recognized in children is likely to be severe. Although the risk of schizophrenia declines with age, there is a lesser peak incidence at around 45 years and another, mostly in women, in the mid-60s. Late-onset schizophrenia that develops in the 40s is most likely to be the paranoid subtype with fewer negative symptoms or learning impairment. Such patients usually have functioned at a near-normal level until structural deficits in the brain break down.
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Schizophrenia is treated with antipsychotic drugs used in the lowest effective doses. The antipsychotic drugs work mainly to antagonize (inhibit) dopamine and serotonin receptors in specific areas of the brain that are in dysfunction. Classical antipsychotics function primarily on dopamine receptors and have more side effects than modern, atypical antipsychotics that ... work on serotonin receptors. The newer, atypical antipsychotics are the treatment of choice because of their comparative lack of side effects, but classical antipsychotics may still be used if a patient is already doing well on the drug. The positive, psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia respond better to antipsychotic treatment than the negative symptoms.
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Schizophrenia