Schizophrenia is an illness that have had a lot of clinical studies, the signs and symptoms and cognitive characteristics are well described and there are even some pharmacological treatments that do exist but there is still a lot that we as humans don’t know about this devastating illness. Worldwide about 1 percent of the entire population are affected by schizophrenia but it is still one of the most disabling chronic disorders. In America alone, approximately 1.2 percent of the population have the disorder. Schizophrenia is defined as a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels and even behaves. It is not a disease that is caused by negative parenting or weakness, instead it is on a biological basis and it affects those who are genetically predisposed to the disease.
Prior to the 19th century, schizophrenia like syndrome were thought to be very rare and had little to no reports where people said the victim was having uncontrolled behavior. Most of the time, illnesses like this fell into the psychosis category but in a review of ancient Greek and Roman literature, there was no account of a condition meeting the exact criteria for schizophrenia. There was also a detailed report in 1809 by a John Haslam and a separate account by Philippe Pinel about a James Tilly Matthews and this is regarded as the earliest cases of schizophrenia in the medical and psychiatric literature. The word schizophrenia roughly translates to “splitting of the mind”, has Greek roots and was coined by Eugen Bleuler in 1908. His intention was to describe a condtion where there was a split between personality, thinking, memory and perception. Bleuler also went along to describe the symptoms as the four A’s: Autism, impaired association, ideas of ambivalence and flattened affect. Bleuler saw that his patients were getting better as time passed along so he couldn’t use the term dementia to categorize the disease since his patients were not deteriorating.
Scientist are still finding out a lot of new information about schizophrenia but what they do know is that some risk factors are in the genes and environment. Scientist know that schizophrenia run in families and can be inherited but there are still people who have schizophrenia and their family does not and people with multiple family members with the disease but still don’t develop it so this leads scientist to also believe that it is many different genes that can increase the risk of schizophrenia but not just one gene alone. One of these genes is called C4. Early studies and test on both humans and mice show that the C4 gene appear to be involved in eliminating the connections between neurons also known as synaptic pruning. This happens naturally during adolescence but with excessive or inappropriate elimination of the synapse, schizophrenia could be the result. Environmental factors such as an exposure to viruses, malnutrition before birth, problems during birth and psychosocial factors paired with certain genes are also another aspect of how this disease can be developed. Brain chemistry and structure also play a role in the development of schizophrenia. Scientist think that an imbalance of chemicals in the brain involving neurotransmitters such as dopamine and glutamine and ever others can have an effect on schizophrenia. Post mortem research on schizophrenia patients have found that their brains have extra receptors for dopamine, which influence movement, learning, attention, and emotion. Researchers believe that all the extra dopamine magnifies brain activity and this can bring on some of the symptoms we see with schizophrenia such as hallucinations and other positive symptoms.
The onset for schizophrenia differ slightly between men and women whereas most males get the disease between 16 and 25 and we don’t usually see women with the disease until after the age of 30. The average age of onset for both men and women alike are 18 and 25. The beginning years of the illness are often the most symptomatic and include severe psychosocial deterioration. During the middle-aged years, things become a little more stagnant or benign and once the victim becomes more elderly, patients have said that there is frank symptom recovery. With all of this, episodes of psychosis occur regularly and can differ in seriousness at all times.
There are some certain risk factors that can have someone more likely to develop schizophrenia. Genetics have always been thought to have a link to schizophrenia but twin studies have been crucial in proving that there is a genetic predisposition. To say simply, the more closely someone is related to an individual with schizophrenia, the more likely it is for that person to contract the illness. The likeliness of developing schizophrenia as the child of two parents where neither of them have the disease is 1 percent, if one of the parents has schizophrenia, the likeliness jumps to approximately 13 percent and if both parents have it, the likeliness goes up even more to 35 percent. If the person has a monozygotic twin, the likeliness of that said person contracting schizophrenia is between 40 to 50 percent