Ask me about working in a psychiatric hospital

[jackflashdrive]

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So if someone starts exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, there's basically nothing you can do? IE - no benefit to catching it early, etc.? I was under the impression that with drugs a lot of them could live normal lives, but I guess that's more like a 10% minority?

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Well there are a few issues. The first is that schizophrenia is a disease that ebbs and flows. Meaning that even outside of antipsychotic medication a person will often go through periods where they feel fine before the hallucinations and paranoia and the like come back. The frequency of periods of active psychosis helps determine how functional a schizophrenic will be.

Also, some people with schizophrenia are responsive to anti-psychotics and others aren't responsive at all as far as the psychosis goes. Often, people who are on anti-psychotics that are working will stop taking them because they feel the side-effects but don't perceive any benefit, and this can sometimes provoke a relapse.

As I indicated my 1 in 10 statistic is really unreliable, but I can say that the majority of people confined long-term in state mental hospitals are schizophrenics, and schizophrenia is on the low end in terms of the percentage of the population who experience mental illness (this indicates that there are large numbers of schizophrenics who cannot be helped, compared to other mental disorders).