1. Schizophrenia (now known as Schizophrenic Disorders)
The literal translation is “split mind” which refers to a split from reality. Do not confuse it with having “split personalities.” That would be DID.
You will often hear “psychosis” as part of schizophrenia. Psychosis refers to a state in which a person’s perceptions and thoughts are fundamentally removed from reality.
The DSM-5 recognizes a class of disorders called “schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.”

2. Symptoms of Schizophrenic Disorder
Positive symptoms: the presence (addition) of inappropriate behaviors. These include:
Hallucinations: hearing, seeing, or smelling things that are not there.
Delusions: false, unusual, and sometimes magical beliefs.
Paranoia: believing people are out to get you
Thought Disorder: unusual and bizarre thought processes, often disorganized.
Referential Thinking: giving personal meaning to completely random events.
Movement Disorders: unusual mannerisms, body movements, and facial expressions.
Preview Question 11: What patterns of thinking, perceiving, feeling, and behaving characterize schizophrenia?

3. Symptoms of Schizophrenic Disorder
Negative symptoms: the absence (subtraction) of appropriate behaviors, like social withdrawal, behavioral deficits, and lost or decrease of social functions. These include:
Flat Effect: the display of little or no emotion
Inability to read emotions of others.
Catatonia: immobility and unresponsiveness that lasts for long periods of time.
Cognitive symptoms: deficits in executive functioning, including difficulty maintaining attention, problems holding information in memory, and inability to interpret information and make decisions.

4. Experiencing Schizophrenic Disorder

5. Onset and Development of Schizophrenic Disorder
Nearly 1 in a 100 suffer from schizophrenia, and throughout the world over 21 million people suffer from this disease (WHO, 2012).
Schizophrenia strikes young people as they mature into adults, around 18 for men and 25 for women.
It affects men and women equally, but men suffer from it more severely than women.
The risk of suicide is eight times that for the general population.

6. Chronic and Acute Schizophrenic Disorder
When SD is slow to develop (chronic/process) recovery is doubtful. Such people with this kind of schizophrenic disorder usually display negative symptoms.
When SD rapidly develops (acute/reactive) recovery is better. Such people with this kind of schizophrenic disorder usually show positive symptoms.

7. Understanding Schizophrenic Disorder
The causes of Schizophrenic disorder has been studied looking at it through biological, psychological, and sociocultural lenses.
Schizophrenic disorder is heritable: you have a higher chance of acquiring a schizophrenic disorder if you have a parent who suffers from it than if none of your parents suffered from it. It’s not a guarantee you will, but it raises the risk significantly.
Preview Question 12: What causes schizophrenia?

8. BIOLOGICAL: Genetic Factors Viral Infection
Schizophrenic Disorder has also been observed in individuals who contracted a viral infection (flu) during the middle of their fetal development.

9. BIOLOGICAL: Genetic Factors
The likelihood of an individual suffering from schizophrenic disorder is 50% if their identical twin has the disease (Gottesman, 2001).
Identical
Both parents
Fraternal
One parent
Sibling
Nephew or niece
Unrelated

10. BIOLOGICAL: Genetic Factors
The following shows the prevalence of schizophrenic disorder in identical twins as seen in different countries.

11. BIOLOGICAL: Structural Brain Abnormalities
Brain scans show abnormal activity in the frontal cortex, thalamus, and amygdala of patients with schizophrenic disorder.
Paul Thompson and Arthur W. Toga, UCLA Laboratory of Neuro
Imaging and Judith L. Rapport, National Institute of Mental Health

12. BIOLOGICAL: Structural Brain Abnormalities
Patients with schizophrenic disorder may exhibit morphological changes in the brain like enlargement of fluid-filled ventricles.
Both Photos: Courtesy of Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., NIH-NIMH/ NSC

13. BIOLOGICAL: Neurotransmitter Regulation
Dopamine Over-activity: Researchers found that patients who suffer from schizophrenic disorder express higher levels of dopamine D4 receptors in the brain.
Glutamate Over-activity: The majority of excitatory messages are sent by glutamate, a neurotransmitter that sends the message for the other neurons to fire.

14. Psychological Factors
Once believed that unresponsive parents caused schizophrenic disorder, it is now believed that stress plays a role.
The vulnerability-stress hypothesis (or diasthesis-stress model) is a much more common explanation. The genetic component is still there, but the adaptive or maladaptive way we deal with stress is a factor.

15. Sociocultural Factors
Environmental factors can trigger schizophrenic disorder if the individual is genetically predisposed (Nicol & Gottesman, 1983).
The genetically identical Genain
sisters suffer from schizophrenic disorder. Two suffered more abuse from their father than the others and ended up suffering from a more severe case of schizophrenia than those abused less, thus showing there are contributing environmental factors.
Genain Sisters