Hi! I'm Dr. David Goldbloom, Senior Medical Advisor at the Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health and I'm here to talk to you today about schizophrenia, a serious,
sometimes long-term mental disorder, that can have a range of symptoms.
There's no single cause for schizophrenia, but we do know that there
is a genetic connection, as well as evidence of disturbances in brain
chemistry and brain function.
Social and environmental factors may also play a contributing role.
What we do know is that schizophrenia is not split
personality and when people use the term casually, for instance describing the
weather as "schizophrenic" because it's warm in the morning and chilly in the afternoon
then that really trivializes the meaning of the illness for people who have it, and for their families.
About one in 100 people develop schizophrenia.
Men and women are affected equally.
However, men tend to have their first episode of
schizophrenia in their late teens or early twenties.
For women, the onset is usually a few years later.
People with schizophrenia can have a range of symptoms,
including periods of psychosis where they have trouble distinguishing
what's real from what they're thinking or feeling.
Indeed schizophrenia has the potential
to seriously disturb people's abilities to think, to feel,
and to interact with other people.
Symptoms may include:
Delusions: these are false beliefs that are not based in reality.
They can be very frightening, like the belief that people you don't know
are trying to hurt you or monitor you.
Hallucinations: these usually involve seeing or hearing things that don't exist.
Thought Disorder: this is a disruption in the logical flow of thinking that can make
it very difficult for other people to understand what the process is.
Other symptoms may include difficulty in taking care of the basics of everyday living.
Some people may appear emotionally flatter, or they seem to have more
trouble planning and carrying out daily activities.
They might be more socially isolated or they may neglect their own personal hygiene.
The vast majority of people with schizophrenia are treated as outpatients.
But sometimes when people's illness worsens, they need to be hospitalized, just like any other illness.
Treatment for people with schizophrenia typically involves anti-psychotic
medication, as well as a combination of psychosocial interventions.
Things like cognitive behavioral therapy or family counseling, social and life skills
training, housing and supported employment.
Schizophrenia strikes at young people at the very age when they're routinely acquiring the skills
necessary for independent living. Early intervention represents our best hope
for young people with schizophrenia in terms of changing how they experience
their illness helping them fulfil their potential and optimizing their quality of life.
It's difficult to predict how well someone will recover
after their first experience with schizophrenia.
However, some people have only one episode of symptoms.
But most people will experience recurring episodes of symptoms.
Nevertheless, most people with schizophrenia can live independently and
experience recovery in a whole variety of ways.
And most people will require medication and various levels of support from the health care system,
from their communities and from their families, for the rest of their lives.
The good news is that research is improving our understanding of schizophrenia.
What causes it, and how to treat it, while minimizing the side effects.
If you're looking for more information about schizophrenia services,
You can contact Access CAMH, at 416-535-8501 and press option 2.
You can also find out more about treatment services right across Ontario by contacting
the Ontario Mental Health Helpline 24/7 at the number on the screen below.
I'm Dr. David Goldbloom, thanks for watching.