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

Helping young people with psychosis return to work: early intervention services need to do more

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Stephen Wood
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Stephen Wood summarises a recent cluster RCT of vocational rehabilitation in early psychosis, which finds that early intervention services need to do more to help young people with psychosis return to work.

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Exercise for severe mental illness: new review finds few benefits

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Kathryn Walsh
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This new systematic review concludes that exercise programmes can lead to an improvement in exercise activity, but have no significant effect on mental health symptoms or body weight in people with severe mental illness.

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Meta-review presents the risks of all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders

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Raphael Underwood
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This recent and well-conducted meta-review concludes that the impact on mortality and suicide of mental disorders is substantial, and probably poorly appreciated as a public health problem. Raphael Underwood’s blog summarises the data for all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders.

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Schizophrenia and genetics: a new landmark study

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Marcus Munafo
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Genome-wide association studies have proved extremely successful in identifying reliable genetic associations with a number of disease outcomes, but until now studies of psychiatric outcomes have lagged behind. This latest schizophrenia study is therefore an important advance.

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Shared decision making in antipsychotic prescribing: the perspective of psychiatrists

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Liz Hughes
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Shared decision making is now commonplace, but will this approach ever be fully embraced in relation to antipsychotic prescribing? Liz Hughes reports on a recent qualitative study of consultant psychiatrists’ experiences that sheds some light on the issue.

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Preventing serious adverse outcomes in schizophrenia

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Stephen Wood
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People diagnosed with schizophrenia are 7.4 times more likely to be convicted of violent offences, 8.1 times more likely to die prematurely, and 20.7 times more likely to kill themselves.

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Antipsychotics and mood stabilisers may reduce violent crime

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John Baker reports on the first population based report of the positive effects of antipsychotic medication and mood stabilisers on reducing the risk of a conviction for violent crime, published in the Lancet in May.

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Art therapy for schizophrenia: an effective add-on treatment?

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Joe Judge
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The MATISSE trial in 2012 concluded that group art therapy did no better than standard care at improving symptoms for people with schizophrenia. A new critique of that RCT from the British Association of Art Therapists says the therapy can be more useful.

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Acute and transient psychotic disorders: the ‘third psychosis’ and its relation to schizophrenia

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Raphael Underwood
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Raphael Underwood reports on routinely collected data from the Scottish Morbidity Record, which suggests that 1 in 8 people with first-ever diagnosed acute and transient psychotic disorders will develop schizophrenia within 3–5 years. Researchers conclude that those at high risk of transition may benefit from monitoring for possible diagnostic change.

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Paliperidone Palmitate is no better than Haloperidol Decanoate at preventing relapse or controlling psychotic symptoms

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Alex Langford
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Alex Langford summarises a relatively large and pragmatic study, which provides firm evidence that the newer antipsychotic, Paliperidone, is no better at preventing relapse or controlling psychotic symptoms than its decades-old comparator, Haloperidol.

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