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Schizophrenia is one of the most difficult mental disorder's to manage, especially if not treated with the right medication and therapy. However, being schizophrenic doesn't mean you can't manage to have the same life as an average person. In addition, schizophrenia can be managed through a daily routine of medication and weekly therapy, in order to have a normal life.

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I Interviewed Georgina Acosta, who formally majored in psychology, even though this was not her level of expertise she referenced me too the movie A Beautiful Mind. The most surprising part about of the interview was when she discussed how schizophrenia can be triggered by environmental factors. For example, you can obtain the gene and not trigger it, but if you start to self medicate/drug abuse the schizophrenia can get turned on.

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The story about Nobel winning John Nash's life, from being an very outstanding mathematician to completely losing his intellectual in mathematics, due to his mental disorder schizophrenia. Nash didn't receive the Nobel prize until after he was diagnosed and had been through the struggle of dealing with the disorder, which made the recognition even more significant. In addition, having the mental disorder doesn't make it impossible to achieve any goals, like Nash it all takes dedication and practice.

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The daily struggle of a schizophrenic, explaining the struggle from a personal view can be astonishing, when hearing about the symptoms they have to deal with everyday and the daily routine of medication or therapy. It was surprising to know it took ten years to get on the right medication, and that the first therapist didn't give the right diagnose, so it was important to get another persecutive. "People think that because your on medicine the voices will completely stop, but you can't stop the voices with medication it's more positive listening.."

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Voices: Living with Schizophrenia | WebMD

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Schizophrenia is commonly misunderstood by society, being schizophrenic doesn't mean being incapable of managing a normal, and healthy life style. There should be no stigma in having a mental disorder, as well as not being shameful in needing medication on a daily basis. “Recovery from schizophrenia? Have you lost your mind, too?”

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A DECADE AGO psychologist Ronald Levant, then at Nova Southeastern University, was telling some of his colleagues at a conference about patients with schizophrenia whom he had seen recover. One of them asked rhetorically, "Recovery from schizophrenia? Have you lost your mind, too?"

Until recently, virtually all experts agreed that schizophrenia is always, or almost always, marked by a steady downhill progression. But is this bleak forecast warranted? Certainly schizophrenia is a severe condition. Its victims, who make up about 1 percent of the population, experience a loss of contact with reality that puts them at a heightened risk of suicide, unemployment, relationship problems, physical ailments and even early death. Those who abuse substances are also at risk for committing violent acts against others. Contrary to popular belief, people with schizophrenia do not have multiple personalities, nor are they all essentially alike-or victims of poor parenting.

Nevertheless, research has shown that with proper treatment, many people with schizophrenia can experience significant, albeit rarely complete, recovery from their illness. Many can, for example, live relatively normal lives outside a hospital, holding down a job and socializing periodically with family and friends. As psychiatrist Thomas McGlashan of Yale University concluded in a prescient 1988 publication, "The certainty of negative prognosis in schizophrenia is a myth."

From Desperation to Hope
Around 1900 the great German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin wrote that schizophrenia, then called dementia praecox (meaning "early dementia"), was characterized by an inexorable downward slide. In 1912 another doctor, A. Warren Stearns, wrote of the "apparent hopelessness of the disease." Some treatments of the day, which included vasectomy and inducement of intense fever using infected blood, reflected this sense of desperation. An attitude of gloom pervaded the field of schizophrenia research for decades, with many scholars insisting that improvement was exceedingly rare, if not unheard of.

Yet experts have lately come to understand that the prognosis for patients with schizophrenia is not uniformly dire. Careful studies tracking patients over time-most of whom receive at least some treatment-suggest that about 20 to 30 percent of people recover substantially over years or decades. Although mild symptoms such as social withdrawal or confused thinking may persist, these individuals can hold down jobs and function independently without being institutionalized.

In one study published in 2005 psychologist Martin Harrow of the University of Illinois College of Medicine and his colleagues followed patients over 15 years and found that about 40 percent experienced at least periods of considerable recovery, as measured by the absence of significant symptoms as well as the capacity to work, engage in social activities and live outside a hospital for a year or more. Although most patients do not go into long remissions and may even decline over time, some 20 to 30 percent of this majority experience only moderate symptoms that interfere with-but do not devastate-their ability to perform in the workplace or maintain friendships.

Improved Treatments
Contributing to this less fatalistic view of schizophrenia are the effective treatments that have become available over the past two decades. Such atypical antipsychotic medications as Clozaril (clozapine), Risperdal (risperidone) and Zyprexa (olanzapine), most of which were introduced in the 1990s, appear to ameliorate schizophrenia symptoms by affecting the function of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, which relay chemical messages between neurons.

In addition, certain psychological interventions developed over the past few decades can often attenuate symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. For example, cognitive-behavior therapy aims to remedy the paranoid ideas or other maladaptive thinking associated with the disorder by helping patients challenge these beliefs. Family therapies focus on educating family members about the disorder and on reducing the criticism and hostility they direct toward patients. Though not panaceas by any means, these and several other remedies have helped many patients with schizophrenia to delay relapse and, in some cases, operate more effectively in everyday life.

Who is most likely to improve? Researchers have linked a number of factors to better outcomes in patients. These include functioning successfully in their lives before the disease emerged; experiencing severe symptoms suddenly, all at once, rather than little by little; being older when the disease appeared; being female; having a higher IQ; and lacking a family history of the disorder. All these traits and features, however, allow at best modest forecasts of schizophrenia's prognosis.

Clearly, we have made considerable progress in our understanding of schizophrenia's course and are more optimistic than we have ever been about the future of those afflicted. Nevertheless, we need even more effective remedies if our aim is to bring patients back to the productive, happy lives they enjoyed before their illness struck-and shattered their sense of self.

Schizophrenia Fictions
Although most people have heard of schizophrenia, many misunderstand the disorder. Here we dispel three widespread misconceptions about this troubling mental illness.

Myth #1: People with schizophrenia have multiple personalities.
Fact: This belief reflects a confusion between schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder-once called multiple-personality disorder-a controversial diagnosis that is supposedly marked by the coexistence of multiple personalities or personality states within individuals. People with schizophrenia possess only one personality, but that personality has beenshattered, with severe impairments in thinking, emotion and motivation.

Myth #2: All people with schizophrenia are essentially alike.
Fact: People with schizophrenia experience a bewildering variety of symptoms. Some suffer primarily from "positive" symptoms, such as delusions, which are fixed false beliefs-the idea, say, that government agents are following them-and hallucinations, such as hearing voices. In contrast, others mainly have "negative" symptoms, such as social withdrawal and diminished emotional and verbal expression. Still another set of patients experiences cognitive deficits-problems with paying attention, remembering and planning. Many patients' deficits span all three categories.

Myth #3: Schizophrenia is caused by family attitudes and behaviors.
Fact: In 1948 German psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann introduced the notion of the schizophrenia-inducing mother-one who was hostile and hypercritical-an idea that persisted for decades. Yet research has consistently failed to directly link parenting to the onset of schizophrenia, although numerous investigations suggest that intense familial criticism may hasten its relapse.

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A DECADE AGO psychologist Ronald Levant, then at Nova Southeastern University, was telling some of his colleagues at a conference about patients with schizophrenia whom he had seen recover. One of them asked rhetorically, "Recovery from schizophrenia? Have you lost your mind, too?"

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In a study of how treatment can change a schizophrenic's life, not receiving the proper medication and therapeutic help can lead a schizophrenic into bad causes like homelessness, unemployment, lacking social skills etc.., treatment is a key factor in managing a normal life without medication it's most likely a schizophrenic will become homeless. Can the treatment of this mental disorder and many others be the resolution to this homelessness epidemic?

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Synaptic pruning is thought to be important in the development of schizophrenia, an experiment done on mice to block excess pruning has normalized deficit behavior. If this can work on humans as well as in mice, this might be the cure to the schizophrenia epidemic.  “Drugs aimed at treating a disease should be able to reverse an already existing defect as well as block future damage."

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Experimental chemical restores some lost brain cell function in schizophrenia.

An anticancer compound has reversed the behaviours associated with schizophrenia in mice.

On top of reversing these behaviours, the chemical also restores some lost brain cell function, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine research finds ( Hayashi-Takagi et al., 2014).

The compound is a type of PAK inhibitor which has been tested in the treatment of cancer, Fragile X syndrome (a type of mental retardation) and Alzheimer's disease.

Synaptic pruning

The drug works by targeting a natural process called 'synaptic pruning'.

Synaptic pruning is one of the underlying biological processes thought to be important in the development of schizophrenia.

In adolescence it is normal for children's brain to undergo quite extensive synaptic pruning: a process where the brain's grey matter is lost over time.

The refining of the brain's synapses seems to be beneficial to boosting cognitive control.

In schizophrenia, however, the pruning process gets out of control and many connections which are needed by the brain are destroyed.

The study's leader Akira Sawa, explained the results:

"By using this compound to block excess pruning in adolescent mice, we also normalized the behavior deficit.

That we could intervene in adolescence and still make a difference in restoring brain function in these mice is intriguing."

This is just one of many approaches being tried to tackle schizophrenia, which is a fiendishly complicated condition.

Although there is not yet evidence that the PAK inhibitor will work in humans, Sawa, the director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center, says:

"Drugs aimed at treating a disease should be able to reverse an already existing defect as well as block future damage.

This compound has the potential to do both."

About the author

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology.

He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book " Making Habits, Breaking Habits" ( Da Capo, 2003) and several ebooks:

→ Dr Dean's bio, Twitter, Facebook and how to contact him.

Image credit: Birth Into Being

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Drug Reverses Schizophrenia in Mice by Curbing Synaptic Pruning - PsyBlog

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Experimental chemical restores some lost brain cell function in schizophrenia. An anticancer compound has reversed the behaviours associated with schizophrenia in mice. On top of reversing these behaviours, the chemical also restores some lost brain cell function, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine research finds ( Hayashi-Takagi et al., 2014).

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The DSM provides a clear definition for schizophrenia, including symptoms and treatment. It very important to have a hard book textbook defining the disorder not just getting a web search definition. The DSM is always being updated as new studies are made and new information is made clear, the textbook is never outdated.

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders book. Read 54 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. This new edition of Diagnosti...

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From the beginning of the diagnose, to the struggle of dealing and managing the disorder, schizophrenia completely made Eleanor feel powerless over her decisions and life. In addition, schizophrenia can become very frightening when first diagnosed, the feeling of hopelessness can become overwhelming, and can be a disorder many don't overcome. "Eleanor your better off with cancer, because cancer is easier to cure than schizophrenia."

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In chapter two What is Reality?, under section Believing What Our Brain Tells Us, Eagleman gives a brief but insightful description of schizophrenia, following the description of the life experience of Elon Saks. Since she was sixteen she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it was important to acknowledge she has lead with the disorder for more than half her life, she even became a teacher. “Fortunately, thanks to medication and weekly therapy sessions, Elyn has been able to lecture and teach at the law school for over twenty-five years.”

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Read 1,725 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narrative...

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Psychotherapy can make huge improvements to certain patients, but doesn't fully help patients who suffer from schizophrenia. In addition, both the treatments have made huge improvements on patients, but using both at the same time can better improve the patients well being. "If psychotherapy produces nearly the same brain changes as pharmacotherapy, then the boundary between mind and brain is purely artificial -- even unnatural."

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Insight is a prerequisite of happiness, the theory goes, and well-being achieved without the hard work of psychotherapy is artificial and inauthentic.

But new evidence suggests that the talking cure and psychotropic medication have much more in common than had been thought. In fact, both produce surprisingly similar changes in the brain.

Take Eric's obsessive compulsive disorder. It hobbles patients with unwanted thoughts, often violent or sexual, that play in the mind like a broken record. Owing to the sometimes lurid nature of the thoughts, the treatment mainstay had for years been psychoanalytically oriented therapy to unlock the sexual and aggressive conflicts presumed to underlie the symptoms.

There was just one problem. That form of psychotherapy rarely, if ever, worked for those patients, a point now widely accepted by most psychoanalysts themselves.

But two seemingly different treatments can be highly effective: a form of talk therapy called cognitive-behavior therapy and a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants, or S.S.R.I.'s, drugs like Prozac and Zoloft. It is well known that patients with the disorder have altered serotonin function compared with normal controls.

Brain imaging that uses PET scans, or positron emission topography, has shown that the disorder is associated with functional hyperactivity of the caudate nucleus, a structure buried beneath the cerebral cortex. Some researchers hypothesize that the caudate is part of a subcortical circuit that acts as a kind of filter, sifting out extraneous thoughts and impulses.

In obsessive compulsive disorder, they theorize, the subcortical filter malfunctions, allowing the unwanted thoughts to reach the cortex and then on to consciousness.

In a study by Dr. Lewis Baxter at the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine, patients with the disorder who responded to either a reuptake inhibitor like Prozac or cognitive behavior therapy over 10 weeks showed virtually the same changes in their brains, decreases in the activities of the caudate nuclei and, thus, changes toward normal function.

When patients improved, the changes in their brains, as shown in the PET scans, looked the same regardless of whether they had received antidepressants or psychotherapy.

An S.S.R.I. works, in part, by enhancing the neurotransmitter serotonin, whose activity is often abnormal in people with obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Cognitive behavior therapy focuses on changing distorted patterns of thinking.

The intriguing finding from the PET scans is not limited to O.C.D. Two studies of patients with depression, reported last year in The Archives of General Psychiatry, compared the effects of interpersonal psychotherapy with an antidepressant on brain function, as observed in PET scans. In those studies, the depressed patients received interpersonal therapy, a short-term talk treatment that focuses on the effects of social relationships and major life events on mood.

In one study, a 12-week trial that compared an S.S.R.I., Paxil, to interpersonal psychotherapy, Dr. Arthur Brody, also at U.C.L.A., found that depressed patients who responded to either treatment had nearly identical changes in their brain function, a decrease in the abnormally high activity seen in the prefrontal cortex before treatment.

In the second study, Dr. Stephen D. Martin at the research unit of Cherry Knowle Hospital in Sunderland, England, reported that six weeks of Effexor, an antidepressant that enhances both serotonin and norepinephrine, and interpersonal therapy produced similar effects in those depressed subjects who responded either to medicine or to psychotherapy. Each had shown an increase in the activity of the basal ganglia, a subcortical brain structure.

Although the observed changes with psychotherapy and antidepressant were similar in that study, they were not identical. Subjects with interpersonal therapy but not Effexor also had activation of a brain area called the cingulate gyrus, which responds to serotonin in the brain and has a role in regulating mood.

The studies show that pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy can produce remarkably similar effects on functional brain activity. But does that mean that antidepressants and psychotherapy are really equivalent?

In a word, no. Psychotherapy alone has so far been largely ineffective for diseases like schizophrenia, where there is strong evidence of structural, as well as functional, brain abnormalities. So it seems that if the brain is severely disordered, then talk therapy cannot alter it.

But it is clear that talk therapy can alter brain function. The reason may come from the elegant work of a Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist and neurobiologist, Dr. Eric Kandel. Studying the simple and well-mapped nervous system of a sea slug, Aplysia, Dr. Kandel showed that learning leads to the production of new proteins and, in turn, to the remodeling of neurons.

Sea slugs exposed to the controlled-learning condition that produced long-term memory ended up with double the number of neuronal connections as the untrained animals. In essence, Dr. Kandel has proved that learning involves the creation of new neuronal connections.

The clear implication for humans is that learning literally changes the structure and function of the brain.

Now it may seem a big leap from a snail to a human. But if psychotherapy is thought of as a form of learning, then when therapists talk to patients, they cause them to learn, perhaps changing their brain function and, perhaps, for the long run.

In the end, Eric chose cognitive behavior therapy and improved drastically. Through exposure to those situations that he feared like messy dirty places, he became desensitized to them and lost his compulsion to wash.

Had he chosen an antidepressant, chances are that he would also have improved.

If psychotherapy produces nearly the same brain changes as pharmacotherapy, then the boundary between mind and brain is purely artificial -- even unnatural.

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BEHAVIOR; Like Drugs, Talk Therapy Can Change Brain Chemistry

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Insight is a prerequisite of happiness, the theory goes, and well-being achieved without the hard work of psychotherapy is artificial and inauthentic. But new evidence suggests that the talking cure and psychotropic medication have much more in common than had been thought. In fact, both produce surprisingly similar changes in the brain.

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Schizophrenia upon many other mental disorders can be very hard to manage, especially if there isn't stability in the individual's life. Even though, a schizophrenic is receiving daily medication and weekly therapy sessions, without a health lifestyle and stability the treatment could be useless. "Twice a month, Lisa receives shots of an anti-psychotic medicine, and she takes anti-seizure drugs every day. Still, her manic episodes frequently overwhelm her, and she has to be hospitalized for weeks at a time."

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Last spring, work was scarce, and Ms. Holloway fell two months behind on the $428 rent for their apartment in the Bronx. She could barely afford to keep the phone connected and the lights on, so when her landlord served her an eviction notice, she knew she needed help.

She called the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of seven New York City charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The agency paid the back rent and, Ms. Holloway said, kept her and her daughter out of homeless shelters.

Ms. Holloway has thought of looking for other work, but because she receives health and life insurance through her job, she is afraid to give up this measure of security. Ms. Holloway needs the coverage desperately, because she often has to see doctors for her asthma, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

Her daughter's illnesses are mental, but no less palpable. ''First they said I was paranoid schizophrenic, then they said I was schiz-affective and now I'm bipolar manic-depressed,'' Lisa Holloway said. ''I'm everything.''

Twice a month, Lisa receives shots of an anti-psychotic medicine, and she takes anti-seizure drugs every day. Still, her manic episodes frequently overwhelm her, and she has to be hospitalized for weeks at a time. Medicaid covers her treatments.

When she comes home, it is to a dark, foreboding place. The only light in the living room comes from the hall; the sole lamp broke long ago. The couch has no cushions, and strands of fabric hang off the bottom of a chair like polyester stalactites. The kitchen stove is often used to help heat the apartment.

The Holloways' hopes are basic ones. Lisa, who suffers from intense mood swings, violent impulses and unrelenting anxiety, said simply, ''I want to get better.''

Her mother just wants to find enough work so she can afford a kitchen table. During a recent interview, she perched on the arm of the couch, while Lisa crouched beside her on the floor.

After a few cups of coffee and an hour of introspection, Lisa bounded out of the dark living room. On the portable stereo in her room she played her favorite song, John Lennon's ''Imagine.''

''It's very loving, it's passionate,'' she said. ''It's all about caring. Imagine no heaven and no earth. Imagine everything different. It's very sad, but it's nice, though. It's beautiful.''

HOW TO HELP

Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these

organizations:

BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE

285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.

CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK

1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.

CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS

191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY

105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.

COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.

FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES

281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.

UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK

Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100

No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.

Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.

To delay may mean to forget.

Previously recorded $5,260,745.71

Recorded yesterday 15,357.00

Total $5,276,102.71

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The Neediest Cases; Fighting Schizophrenia In the Throes of Poverty

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Last spring, work was scarce, and Ms. Holloway fell two months behind on the $428 rent for their apartment in the Bronx. She could barely afford to keep the phone connected and the lights on, so when her landlord served her an eviction notice, she knew she needed help.