That is the title of this article I am writing about. “PHILADELPHIA The traditional view was that schizophrenia,
the most devastating of mental illnesses, struck young people on the cusp of
adulthood, often without much warning.
In their late teens or early 20s, previously healthy men and women would
suddenly begin hearing voices no one else could hear and withdrawing from a
world teeming with delusional threats. They faced a lifetime of disability even
with strong medication and —in a country without adequate care —of increased
risk of homelessness, suicide and prison.
Raquel Gur, a University of Pennsylvania neuropsychiatrist and nationally
known expert on schizophrenia, is at the forefront of the new way of thinking
about the disorder, which affects 1 percent of the population. Scientists now view it as a
neurodevelopmental condition that begins years before its most disturbing
symptoms appear, in much the same way that heart disease begins long before the
first heart attack. Gur's painstaking
work, done with the help of 9,500 Philadelphia children and their families,
finds that those at risk for psychosis diverge from their peers in important
ways as early as age 8. The differences in brain functioning —these are
thinking skills, not psychosis —widen in the mid-teens.” I believe it starts at
a younger age before you develop full blown psychosis. Even though mine did not come on until I was
twenty seven something was wrong when I was nineteen.
The article goes on to say: “The tantalizing question
is whether early identification and treatment can delay or prevent the onset of
psychosis, allowing young sufferers time to build a firmer foundation for
life. It's early, but there is some
evidence that the answer is yes.
Schizophrenia experts are excited by promising results for cognitive
behavioral therapy and, surprisingly, fish oil.
Work on the first stages of schizophrenia —what is often called the
prodrome —is unfolding at a time when scientists are learning the brain is a
far more dynamic organ than was once thought. True, the brains of people with
schizophrenia do not look or function normally, but all of our brains are
changing more than we realize. ‘Most people have gotten far more hopeful that
we will be able to use experience or training or something else to help the
brain rewire," said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH). He sees hope in teaching
people with schizophrenia how to focus and control their thoughts. Lack of
cognitive control, he said, "is the on-ramp to psychosis.’ Gur's work, undertaken with $26 million in
NIMH funding since 2009 and help from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is
an ambitious effort that is following children over time to see how psychotic
illnesses unfold. Four percent of the teenagers had symptoms of psychosis. The
rates were higher for 8- to 10-year-olds, but Gur chalks some of that up to
"vivid imagination." Because of funding constraints, Gur's team is
closely following only 250 at-risk children and 250 who are normal. The
researchers are analyzing genes and brain images, family history, neighborhood
environment, and early life experiences as well as measures of perceptual and
cognitive abilities and emotion processing. While much previous research has
focused on positive symptoms —hallucinations and delusions —in schizophrenia,
there is growing recognition that negative symptoms —problems with working
memory, advanced decision-making and social skills —are equally
disabling.” I’ve read that they are
using fish oil with some good results before you develop mental illness. I take
it although for my eyes. I really do not
notice anything different mentally.
Although my Geodon works so well I would not know the difference.
The article ends: “Gur's husband, Ruben, a
brain/behavior expert at Penn who collaborates with her, will soon start
testing the theory that acting may help at-risk youths recognize and express
emotions better. Raquel Gur will test cognitive retraining as a therapy. That
program will focus on improving attention, working memory (the ability to hold
thoughts in your head while working with them) and problem-solving. Gur hopes
for results within a year. Like other experts, she thinks early intervention
will be better for schizophrenia, as it is for so many other diseases. ‘If you
want somebody to continue on a fairly normal trajectory of development,’ she
said, ‘you need to capture them before they fall off the track so much that
it's difficult to bring them back.’ If
schizophrenia strikes before victims have grown up, it's hard for them to catch
up later. ‘They're not equipped to become adults,’ she said. William Carpenter, a well-known schizophrenia
researcher at the University of Maryland, says that, even if early treatment
only delays the worst symptoms, it has to be better to have more time to
develop life skills and relationships. Those make it easier to cope. ‘If you have to become psychotic,’ he said, ‘it's
a whole lot better to do it after you've finished school and got a job and got
married.’ Carpenter chaired the American
Psychiatric Association committee that decided not to list ‘attenuated
psychosis syndrome,’ a term for people with psychotic like symptoms that are
not strong enough to meet the definition of schizophrenia, in the official list
of psychiatric disorders last year. The group questioned whether most
therapists could identify the condition properly. There were also worries about
stigmatizing young people and exposing them to antipsychotic medications, which
don't work in this group. And, there was
the problem of false positives. Only about 30 percent of people who get what
Carpenter called the "placeholder diagnosis" progress to having
psychosis within two years. In Gur's sample, about half the children who had
psychotic symptoms at intake still had persistent or worsening symptoms two
years later. Among those who at first seemed normal, 17 percent later developed
sub-psychotic or psychotic symptoms. One of the things she's learning is that a
surprising number of children have perceptual problems that go away or don't
become severe. Her study could help
define who is most likely to become schizophrenic as well as factors common in
those who are most resilient. ‘It will become a national resource,’ she said.
What she knows already is that the children most likely to have serious
problems are different from an early age. If you look back at family pictures
taken at 7 or 8, these are kids who are always at the corner, looking down.
They often start to experience more serious interpersonal problems, perception
changes and heightened anxiety two to three years before they have a ‘break’ or
become actively psychotic. ‘It's not overnight,’ she said. ‘It's insidious.’ The
Philadelphia Inquirer” I believe early intervention would be good if a person
could just help these young people live the best lives’ that they can. I have always been quiet person I do not know
how that fits into my mental illness although I believe it does. My only problem now is that my concentration
is not the best. If I could fix that I
would be ok.
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