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A particular type of psychosis, schizophrenia is perhaps one of the most debilitating and chronic of the severe mental illnesses
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A particular type of psychosis, schizophrenia is perhaps one of the most debilitating and chronic of the severe mental illnesses. For a long time, schizophrenia was seen as a 'functional disorder' with some doctors calling it a sociological phenomenon - i.e. patients with schizophrenia are normal people driven insane by the insane world (Gelder, et al., 1989). However, the efficiency of antipsychotic drugs and recent advances in biological research have countered this 1970s concept. Revolutionary scientific advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, genetics and brain imaging over the years have provided credible evidence for the biological bases underlying schizophrenia. There have been many theories of possible causes. For instance, many years of family studies indicate that a susceptibility to schizophrenia might be inherited. However, scientists still do not know how many genes are involved or how the genetic predisposition is transmitted, and how the environment may interact with it. Another line...
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