schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a long-term mental health condition that causes a range of different psychological symptoms. These include: hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that do not exist), delusions (unusual beliefs that are not based on reality and often contradict the evidence), muddled thoughts based on the hallucinations or delusions, and changes in behaviour. Doctors describe schizophrenia as a psychotic illness. This means that sometimes a person may not be able to distinguish their own thoughts and ideas from reality.

Our schizophrenia Blogs

Smoking cessation for people with severe mental illness

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Sally Adams
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Sally Adams appraises and summarises the SCIMITAR pilot RCT, which investigates smoking cessation for people with severe mental ill health. The paper presents a highly promising bespoke intervention for smokers with bipolar disorder, psychosis or schizophrenia.

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Smoking and risk of schizophrenia: new study finds a dose-response relationship

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Marcus Munafo
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Marcus Munafò looks at the mounting evidence about smoking and risk of schizophrenia, including a new case-control study that provides clear evidence of a prospective association between cigarette smoking and a subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia.

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Quetiapine for schizophrenia: more transparency needed in clinical trial reporting

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Andrew Shepherd
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Andrew Shepherd reports on a recent systematic review, meta-analysis and reappraisal of Quetiapine for schizophrenia, which concludes that Quetiapine IR has a small beneficial effect on psychotic symptoms, but also leads to weight gain and sedation.

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CBTp and medication in the treatment of psychosis: summarising the best evidence

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Clive Adams
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Clive Adams presents a summary of the latest evidence for CBTp and medication in the treatment of psychosis. This blog was published alongside Clive’s talk at the Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia conference in Bath on 11 June 2015

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Biological markers for treatment response in first episode psychosis

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Stephen Wood
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Stephen Wood summarises a systematic review of biological markers for treatment response in first episode psychosis, which discusses a number of hot topics in this field including inflammation, infectious disease and oxidative stress.

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Promoting smoking cessation in people with schizophrenia

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Meg Fluharty
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Meg Fluharty summarises a recent clinical overview of smoking cessation in people with severe mental illness, which provides useful practical advice to clinicians who are trying to help service users with schizophrenia, psychosis and other conditions to quit smoking

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Peer-led self-management for mental health: impressive programme, not so sure about the research

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Lucy Simons
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Lucy Simons and Chris Sampson appraise a recent evaluation of peer-led self-management training for people with severe mental illness.

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The more psychotic you are, the more benefit there is in taking antipsychotics

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John Baker reviews a recent participant-level meta-analysis of six placebo-controlled studies, which looks at the initial severity of schizophrenia and the efficacy of antipsychotics including Olanzapine, Risperidone and Amisulpride.

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Do we stigmatise mental illness more as we age?

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Raluca Lucacel writes her debut blog about an age-period-cohort analysis, which investigates how attitudes towards people with mental illness worsen during the course of life.

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