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

It’s not what you say: Examining the non-verbal behaviours of psychiatrists and patients

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Chris Pell considers the findings of a recent observational study of non-verbal behaviour and communication in meetings of psychiatrists and patients with schizophrenia.

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Long duration of untreated psychosis is associated with a range of poor outcomes

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Joe Judge
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Joe Judge appraises a recent systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the duration of untreated psychosis as a predictor of long-term outcomes in schizophrenia.

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Efficacy of high vs. low-potency first-generation antipsychotics for schizophrenia

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Raphael Underwood
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Laurence Palfreyman summarises 3 recent Cochrane reviews, which investigate high-potency versus low-potency first-generation antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia. The reviews find little difference in efficacy between the high-potency antipsychotics Trifluoperazine, Haloperidol, Fluphenazine, and low-potency typical antipsychotics.

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Second National Audit of Schizophrenia highlights lack of progress for service users and carers

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André Tomlin summarises the second National Audit of Schizophrenia, which highlights that many people with schizophrenia are still not getting the high quality psychological and medical treatment they deserve.

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Schizophrenia and osteoporosis: sticks and stones may break my bones…

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Chris Pell summarises a recent meta-analysis of prevalence estimates and moderators of low bone mass in people with schizophrenia. The study finds a significantly increased risk of osteoporosis in people with schizophrenia.

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Helping young people with psychosis return to work: early intervention services need to do more

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Stephen Wood
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Stephen Wood summarises a recent cluster RCT of vocational rehabilitation in early psychosis, which finds that early intervention services need to do more to help young people with psychosis return to work.

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Exercise for severe mental illness: new review finds few benefits

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Kathryn Walsh
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This new systematic review concludes that exercise programmes can lead to an improvement in exercise activity, but have no significant effect on mental health symptoms or body weight in people with severe mental illness.

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Meta-review presents the risks of all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders

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Raphael Underwood
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This recent and well-conducted meta-review concludes that the impact on mortality and suicide of mental disorders is substantial, and probably poorly appreciated as a public health problem. Raphael Underwood’s blog summarises the data for all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders.

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Schizophrenia and genetics: a new landmark study

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Marcus Munafo
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Genome-wide association studies have proved extremely successful in identifying reliable genetic associations with a number of disease outcomes, but until now studies of psychiatric outcomes have lagged behind. This latest schizophrenia study is therefore an important advance.

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Shared decision making in antipsychotic prescribing: the perspective of psychiatrists

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Liz Hughes
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Shared decision making is now commonplace, but will this approach ever be fully embraced in relation to antipsychotic prescribing? Liz Hughes reports on a recent qualitative study of consultant psychiatrists’ experiences that sheds some light on the issue.

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