Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia- Severe disorders on which there are disturbances of thoughts, communications, and emotions, including delusions and hallucinations.

(Psychology: An Introduction,Charles D. Morris with Albert A. Maisto) It's quite horrendous. First of all, you've got somebody that you love, a child that you've raised. And then suddenly, the child becomes a crazy person. Better drugs and new ways of treating schizophrenia are enabling more of the disease's victims to live in society instead of institutions, and even to hold down jobs. Schizophrenia can be detected in childhood--even traced to the womb. These malfunctions may be wired into the brain before birth. There is mounting evidence that schizophrenia reflects deviation in development rather than a backwards process that begins in maturity. Scientists,whose findings have already paved the way for a greater understanding of schizophrenia, and researchers around the world are hunting for underlying causes of the disease.

People diagnosed with schizophrenia display a wide-ranging breakdown of perception and thought. A glitch in the timing of cell responses across broad swaths of brain tissue may help account for these people's fragmented experience of the world, according to a new study. In the brains of schizophrenia sufferers, electrical activity fails to synchronize with a specific sound frequency as it does in the brains of mentally healthy people. Improved drugs to fight psychosis--the loss of contact with reality that afflicts schizophrenics--are already coming on the market, and some researchers believe that within the next few decades, scientists will find a way to virtually cure the obscure disease. Schizophrenia usually begins between the ages of

16 and 30, with men often being affected earlier than women. The first symptoms can include trouble concentrating or sleeping, and afflicted people may start avoiding their friends. In the next stage, many schizophrenics begin to speak incoherently and see or hear things that no one else does. As the disease takes hold, there are cycles of remission followed by frightening relapses marked by disordered thinking that causes many schizophrenics to leap illogically from one subject to another when they talk. They begin to experience hallucinations, paranoia and delusions-- schizophrenics in their psychotic phases may become convinced that people are spying on them, or imagine that they have acquired godlike powers. When they are in the grip of psychosis, they frequently behave erratically, and they can become violent or suicidal. Often, it is parents and other family members who have to deal with the recurring crises. Often,schizophrenics are more of a danger to themselves.

An estimated 15 to 20 per cent of them take their own lives--in despair of ever finding peace of mind, or because their "voices" tell them to.