Schizophrenia is one of the most complex of all mental health disorders. It involves a severe, chronic, and disabling disturbance of the brain. And, what was once classified as a psychological disease is now classified as a brain disease. There is no known single cause responsible for schizophrenia. It is believed that a chemical imbalance in the brain is an inherited factor which is necessary for schizophrenia to develop.
Schizophrenia is considered to be multifactorially inherited.
The factors are usually both genetic and environmental, where a combination of genes from both parents, in addition to unknown environmental factors, produce the trait or condition. There appears to be a different threshold of expression, which means that one gender is more likely to show the problem, over the other gender. Slightly more males develop schizophrenia in childhood, however, by adolescence schizophrenia affects males and females equally. Although schizophrenia affects men and women equally, symptoms in men generally begin earlier than in women. I n most cases, schizophrenia first appears in men during their late teens or early 20s.