Despite advances in our understanding of its causes and treatments, schizophrenia is still commonly misunderstood. This program answers some of the questions about what schizophrenia is, what causes it, and what abnormalities exist in the brains of individuals who suffer from schizophrenia.
Tyrone Cannon makes an important distinction between a disease and a syndrome. Schizophrenia, he says, is considered a syndrome because it involves a set of symptoms that appear differently in different people and tend to fluctuate over time. Furthermore, symptoms caused by a syndrome do not have an established cause.
Schizophrenia sufferers often experience a combination of positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, and racing thoughts) and negative symptoms (disorganized thoughts, reduced motivation, and lack of emotion). "Positive" refers to the presence of inappropriate behaviors, whereas "negative" refers to the absence of appropriate behaviors.
In people with schizophrenia, delusional beliefs can be thought of as rational explanations for unusual experiences. Auditory hallucinations, which are the most common, can range from mildly irritating to extremely debilitating, especially when the voices deliver derogatory or disturbing messages.
Studies have indicated a relationship between schizophrenia and brain abnormalities. Cannon explains that subtle reductions in gray matter and decreases in the integrity of white matter are thought to contribute to disconnectedness among different parts of the brain. When aspects of cognition get isolated, the result is scattered thinking and the inability to coordinate the cognitive processes needed to complete the simplest of tasks. It is also believed that exposure to certain viruses in utero may cause schizophrenia. In the final scene, Cannon points out the importance of reducing the stigmatization of schizophrenia so that more sufferers will seek treatment.