Schizophrenia: Its Aetiology

Schizophrenia: its Aetiology

Lesley Stevens and Ian Rodin justified the need of acquisition to the mental disorders’ aetiology in their book “Psychiatry”. They pointed out the fact that psychiatrists need to be familiar with the contribution of a particular disorder in order to make a more confident in the diagnosis. Knowing the aetiology of psychotic disorder is as important as the diagnosis. For the simple reason that psychotic disorders do not have particular tests that can be made for diagnosis; on the contrary, physical illnesses do. Knowing the probability of patients vulnerability to a particular disorder helps in the diagnosis. They gave an example explaining that the probability of having angina is more likely in a 60-year-old male smoker rather than a 30 year-old female non-smoker. Although the causes of schizophrenia remains incompletely reveled, research has shown strong factors that might contribute to the disorder. The factors that increase the risk of schizophrenia include: genetics, environmental factors, and some encephalon(brain) abnormalities.

The domination of schizophrenia in specific geographical countries suggests a strong association between genetics and schizophrenia’s aetiology. Surveys regarding adopted, by different families, monozygotic twins were made. These surveys were established to investigate the relationship between schizophrenia and genes. The studies showed a potent genetic aetiology. Chances increase by fifty percent to develop schizophrenia once the other twins be diagnose with the disorder. Among schizophrenic patients, having schizophrenic siblings increases the chances of developing schizophrenia by eight percent. Other family studies have showed that 12% of children with schizoph...

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...hizophrenia; seeing that dopamine does not trigger any negative symptoms. They state that dopamine dysfunction is purely a secondary cause of schizophrenia. In the view of these studies, schizophrenia aetiology needs further research in order to understand it better.

References:

1. Stevens L, Rodin I .Psychiatry. The 2nd edition. Churchill Livingstone Elsevier;2011.

2. University of Maryland Medical Center. 2013. Schizophrenia. [online] Available at: http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/schizophrenia [Accessed: 30 Nov 2013].

3. Weiser M ; Reichenberg A ; Rabinowitz J ; Kaplan Z ; Caspi A ; Yasvizky R ; Mark M ; Knobler HY ; Nahon D ; Davidson M, Self-reported drug abuse in male adolescents with behavioral disturbances, and follow-up for future schizophrenia, Biological Psychiatry [Biol Psychiatry] 2003 Sep 15; Vol. 54 (6), pp. 655-60.