Many medications (licensed drugs to cure or treat an illness) may also cause the same symptoms as schizophrenia. The most common ones are antidepressants (medicines to treat depression) and ADHD medication (medication to treat ADHD, a condition affecting the brain, including memory and focusing on surroundings.) If a person has taken anti-vomiting medication (medication to stop them being sick) for some time and suddenly stops, he or she may get schizophrenia symptoms. Hundreds of medications have schizophrenia symptoms as rare side effects (unintended effects of taking them). Illegal drugs such as LSD, amphetamines, magic mushrooms and cocaine may cause schizophrenia symptoms.
Medical illnesses, and treatment with certain medicines, can cause symptoms very similar to that of schizophrenia. In fact, there are over a hundred medical problems that can cause the same symptoms of schizophrenia. For this reason, it is important to rule out the possibility of either of these things being the cause for the person's symptoms. For this reason, the person should have a thorough medical exam to rule out problems like;
People with schizophrenia often have delusions or hallucinations. A schizophrenic delusion is a belief that is very different from what other people with the same way of life believe. Hallucinations are usually experiences of hearing voices that don't exist. These voices often say unpleasant things to the person. Many people can hear voices like this without being schizophrenic, for instance right before falling asleep. This is called a hypnagogic hallucination. The brain cannot tell them apart from normal sounds that are heard. This is not yet fully understood by science.
There are many risk factors that may cause a person to develop schizophrenia. They include trauma (damage caused by stressful events) and genetics (schizophrenia running in families). Having a schizophrenic parent may be very stressful, and there may also be genes that influence the development of schizophrenia. It is very easy to show that trauma, such as sexual abuse (forced unwanted sexual behaviour towards somebody) increases the risk, but 40 years of searching for the right genes has not found anything that has been confirmed by independent research groups.
People with schizophrenia may also have other mental health disorders, like depression, anxiety and drug abuse. They often have problems functioning in society, and have difficulty keeping a job. However, there are a number of people with schizophrenia who get well and have earned college degrees and had professional careers. For example, Elyn. R. Saks successfully became a law professor at the University of Southern California and a published author.
In a family treatment called "Open dialog" in Finland, eight out of every ten people with schizophrenia "get well." In developing countries, where doctors use less drugs, 2 out of 3 patients get well from schizophrenia. In western countries, where medications are used as treatment, 1 of 3 get well, but many suffer from drug side effects such as diabetes, obesity, and brain damage.
Treatment of schizophrenia may include medication to help treat the symptoms, different types of psychotherapy (therapy by a professional), such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and many rehabilitation therapies (therapies restoring things to how they were before), such as cognitive remediation therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, is a talk therapy that focuses on helping the person to think about their strange ideas (delusions) in more realistic ways.
The therapist may design a behavioral experiment for paranoia (false beliefs of danger) that will help the person to find out for example, if there really are cameras everywhere in the house. For hallucinations, cognitive therapy focuses on normalizing: many people hear voices without being stressed, and we all hear voices in the form of thoughts, it is just that people with schizophrenia hear them a bit more clearly than most people.
The British national guidelines for treatment (NICE) suggest the following treatments:
The guidelines also warn against using more than one antipsychotic drug at the same time. Both for people who are at risk for getting schizophrenia and for people who have got it, they recommend cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and family therapy. Getting support from people who have become well from schizophrenia is also strongly recommended.
The symptoms of schizophrenia fall into three main categories: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms.
Positive symptoms are thoughts, behaviors, or anything experienced by the senses that are not shared by others - like hearing voices that are not really there. They are called 'positive' not because they are good but because they are "added on". These symptoms may include having strange thoughts that do not make sense (delusions), disorganized thoughts and speech, and feeling, hearing, seeing, smelling, or tasting things that do not exist (hallucinations). Positive symptoms often respond to drug treatment and cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. Stopping anti-psychotic or anti-vomiting drugs too quickly may also cause these symptoms.
Negative symptoms are thoughts, behaviors or emotions normally present in a healthy person that a person with a mental disorder has less of or may not have at all; they are 'minus' these. The sign for minus is -; it is also the sign for the word "negative". Negative symptoms includes a 'flat affect'; having a blank inexpressive look on the face and/or monosyllabic speech (speech always sounding the same) spoken in a slow monotone, few gestures, lack of interest in anything including other people, and an inability to act spontaneously or feel pleasure. These problems are also side effects of anti-psychoctic drugs. They may also be symptoms of many medical problems such as a metabolism that is too low.
Cognitive symptoms are problems with attention, certain types of memory, the concept of time, and with the ability to plan and organize. Cognitive deficits caused by schizophrenia can also be difficult to recognize as part of the disorder. They are the most disabling of the symptoms because cognitive problems affect everyday functioning. These problems may also be side effects of anti-psychotic drugs, antidepressants, sleeping medication and anti-anxiety drugs.
A combination of what has happened to a person and the person’s genes may play a role in the development of schizophrenia. People who have family members with schizophrenia and who experienced a brief period of psychotic symptoms have a 20 to 40 percent chance of being diagnosed one year later. This may be both the result of stressful events because of the family member and possibly a genetic effect.
It is difficult to know if schizophrenia is inherited because it is hard to find out whether something comes from genes or the environment. Those who have a parent, a brother or sister with schizophrenia have a higher risk of developing schizophrenia. The risk is even higher if you have an identical twin with schizophrenia. This may seem to show that schizophrenia is inherited. However, it may be the stress of living with a schizophrenic family member that is traumatic. Identical twins are much closer and are treated much more in the same way, and this may be the reason why one of them is more likely to get schizophrenia if the other has it. Dr Jay Joseph has found many problems with the scientific studies of inheriting schizophrenia, including false reporting of results. Joseph also claims that 40 years of the search for the schizophrenia gene has not found a single gene that independent research groups have confirmed.