Structural brain abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia, providing insight into how the condition may develop and respond to treatment, have been identified in an internationally collaborative study led by…

People with a severe form of schizophrenia have major differences in their brain networks compared to others with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and healthy individuals, a new…

Assessment
Textbook descriptions of schizophrenia are of male-type schizophrenia. When assessing women, clinicians may miss a first episode of schizophrenia, because the woman may seem too old for a first…

On magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, reduced cortical brain areas, small left hippocampal formations, and enlarged lateral ventricles are present more often in male than in female patients with schizophrenia. There…

Female patients with schizophrenia, more often than men, are able to enter into and maintain social roles. For instance, at first occurrence of illness, roughly one-third of women are married,…

Adult-onset schizophrenia is preceded in childhood by mild neuromotor, cognitive, and behavioral anomalies that occur with the same frequency in boys and girls during early childhood. But from school age on,…

Gender effects are important to schizophrenia. Why is that so? First, they are important because of the many differences between men’s and women’s experience of schizophrenia. Clinicians need to learn to recognize these differences…

One of the great therapeutic accomplishments of the second half of the 20th century was the establishment of legitimacy and efficacy in interventions exclusively targeting sexual difficulties. Despite the availability of empirically validated techniques…

The module has been in active use for the past 2 years at the Hollywood Mental Health Center’s Psychosocial Rehabilitation Program, the San Fernando Mental Health Center’s Wellness Program,…

Although few psychiatric rehabilitation programs have comprehensively addressed the friendship and intimacy needs of seriously mentally ill persons, the studies conducted to date have demonstrated the feasibility of their use and participants’ enthusiasm…

During the past two decades, a relatively small number of sexual education programs designed for mentally disabled persons have been described in the literature. They have almost exclusively focused on safe…

Despite a healthy interest in sex, many people with schizophrenia report a progressive deterioration of their sexual and sociosexual function beginning in young adulthood, closely paralleling the age of onset of…

Sexual functioning and its consequences should be a clinically important concern for practitioners and programs serving the needs of persons with schizophrenia. Unfortunately, sexuality is rarely on the radar screen of the vast majority…

Although psychosocial support is important in managing schizophrenia, pharmacotherapy remains essential for maintenance and recovery. Unfortunately, the treatment of ethnic minorities is often inappropriate. African Americans often receive excessive doses of…

African American families face the challenge of having limited resources. The direct costs of schizophrenia often exceed the median family income of African Americans. Moreover, African Americans are more likely…

Schizophrenia is considered the most severe psychiatric disorder. It has a poor prognosis, an unknown etiology, and an age of onset in the late teens and early 20s, when many individuals finish their…

Psychological therapy should be offered to every person in the country with depression, anxiety or schizophrenia, says a report from an influential group of health professionals published today.

Only…

It is generally accepted that the first building block of modern psychiatric nosology was Kraepelin’s distinction between those disorders we now know as mood disorders and the illness (or illnesses) we…

Figure 2­1 depicts an integrative schema that conceptualizes the interplay of extrinsic and intrinsic factors with the schizophrenia diathesis. The basis for this formulation is the familiar stress-diathesis model…

An appropriate treatment approach to depression begins with a consideration of the differential diagnostic possibilities outlined earlier in this chapter. Obviously, since there are no available biological tests (except for the medical/organic conditions), or even…

More than two dozen studies have been published examining the rates of occurrence of depression in the course of schizophrenia (Koreen et al. 1993; Sands and Harrow 1999;…

Introduction
Among the chronic health conditions experienced by people with schizophrenia, infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) occurs with notable frequency. People who…

HIV-related psychopharmacological interventions for people with preexisting schizophrenia follow similar guidelines for patients with new-onset psychosis associated with HIV infection. In advanced HIV infection, traditional neuroleptic agents have…

Mental health service settings vary in their ability to offer HIV-related interventions, and the range of services available may not yet be meeting the needs of people…