schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a long-term mental health condition that causes a range of different psychological symptoms. These include: hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that do not exist), delusions (unusual beliefs that are not based on reality and often contradict the evidence), muddled thoughts based on the hallucinations or delusions, and changes in behaviour. Doctors describe schizophrenia as a psychotic illness. This means that sometimes a person may not be able to distinguish their own thoughts and ideas from reality.

Our schizophrenia Blogs

Promoting smoking cessation in people with schizophrenia

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Meg Fluharty
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Meg Fluharty summarises a recent clinical overview of smoking cessation in people with severe mental illness, which provides useful practical advice to clinicians who are trying to help service users with schizophrenia, psychosis and other conditions to quit smoking

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Peer-led self-management for mental health: impressive programme, not so sure about the research

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Lucy Simons
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Lucy Simons and Chris Sampson appraise a recent evaluation of peer-led self-management training for people with severe mental illness.

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The more psychotic you are, the more benefit there is in taking antipsychotics

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John Baker reviews a recent participant-level meta-analysis of six placebo-controlled studies, which looks at the initial severity of schizophrenia and the efficacy of antipsychotics including Olanzapine, Risperidone and Amisulpride.

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Do we stigmatise mental illness more as we age?

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Raluca Lucacel writes her debut blog about an age-period-cohort analysis, which investigates how attitudes towards people with mental illness worsen during the course of life.

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Psychosis and schizophrenia in adults: new quality standard from NICE

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Consultant Psychiatrist Samei Huda provides a personal critique of the new NICE quality standard on psychosis and schizophrenia in adults. Read his thoughts and join the discussion!

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Poor oral health and severe mental illness: what are the links?

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Helge Hasselmann
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Helge Hasselmann summarises a recent systematic review of poor oral health and severe mental illness (SMI), which found that people with SMI were 2.8 times more likely to have lost all their teeth, and had more missing, decayed or filled teeth.

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People with severe mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent and non-violent crime

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Vishal Bhavsar summarises a recent cross-sectional study of violent and non-violent crime against adults with severe mental illness, which finds that service users were five times more likely to be victims of assault, and three times more likely to be victims of household acquisitive crime.

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Diagnostic test accuracy of first rank symptoms for schizophrenia

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Raphael Underwood
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Raphael Underwood summarises a recently updated Cochrane systematic review, which aimed to systematically evaluate the accuracy of first rank symptoms for diagnosing schizophrenia.

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Compulsory community treatment results in no significant difference in service use, social functioning or quality of life

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Rebecca Syed
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Rebecca Syed appraises and summarises an updated Cochrane review of compulsory community treatment and involuntary outpatient treatment for people with severe mental disorders. The review finds just 3 trials, which show that CCT results in no significant difference in service use, social functioning or quality of life.

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