Is there any hope for schizophrenia?

Question

i just need to know because that's our homework..Ü

Answer 1

yes if they get help and stay on their meds

Answer 2

"Schizophrenia" is a basket for under-understood psychiatric maladies which might be treatable or even cureable except for the tenaciousness of present-day psychiatrists' clinging to antiquated diagnosis, theory, and 'symptom-fixing' prescription of equally under-understood psychotropic medications.

This won't get you many points on your homework, I'm afraid.  Your teacher probably wants to hear the rote about 'mysteriousness', maybe with a touch of hope, which is in the same league as when cartographers used to put dragons beyond the limits of known territory, or early surgeons risked severe persecution from the established medical community and the Church when they wanted to dissect bodies in order to discover how anatomy actually worked instead of the acceptable "treatment" of the day which consisted of cutting the feet to let demons drain out with "bad blood", or putting screws into people's heads -- or even burning "witches" at the stake.

Today, most "treatment" consists of administering powerful and little understood drugs, or even the resurgence of electroshock to the brain. Imagine if you called a repairman for your expensive and fragile television.  The repairman shows up, and after looking at the TV, gives it a solid kick.  Asked what he is doing, he replies, "Well, we don't know WHY it works exactly, but sometimes it does!"  Or, he might just remove the ability to change channels.  That wouldn't be much of a TV repairman, would it?

There are some therapies which appear to have some real and beneficial effect on "schizophrenics".  I use the quotation marks because as I said, the term itself is about as global and inaccurate as saying someone is "possessed".  These therapies consist chiefly of very gradually restoring the patient's ability simply to use and rely upon his own perceptions, and so give him or her a better ability to trust in and participate in what we call "Reality" -- once again a term which belongs more in the realm of philosophy than it does in hard science.  Ask ten psychiatrists what schitzophrenia is, and what causes it.  You'll get a multitude of different answers, most of them equally vague.  This does not "prove" that mental illness is itself mysterious or unintelligible -- but instead that the science of psychiatry is a long way from maturity.  Astronomy was once considered to be the same way, and the same groups that so strongly defended long-held (and often superstitious) beliefs in those days are equally resistant to actual progress today.  Look what happened to Galileo!  As author Ken Kesey said memorably in the introduction to 'One Flew Over the Cuckooo's Nest': "He who marches out of step hears a different drum."

The  point is that our belief that our everyday vision of "Reality" can be imposed on others is as foolish as expecting someone to share our religious beliefs.  This is not to say that a common reality is not useful nor that adherence to it is necessary to function successfully in society.  But there is a world of difference between that and believing that the only way to deal with those who find this difficult or impossible is to mentally castrate them so they appear to "act better", and more importantly for mental-health practitioners adhere through stubborness and attachment to their own prestige to antiquated and ineffective theories and methods.  At best, such a viewpoint impedes actual research and discovery.  At worst, it is a social illness just as dangerous as any, including "schitzophrenia" -- with the added fact that close-mindedness, unlike most other mental illnesses, is not only chronic but also contagious.

Answer 3

I have known some people with this disorder. Unfortunately, they tend to go off their meds and commit suicide.

It would be interesting to know the average lifespan of a schizophrenic.

Answer 4

No. We still don't know what causes it exactly just that it is biological.