Week 4 Post 3: Schizophrenia

    One of the first things that was mentioned as I started the Schizophrenia module was a fact that connected to all mental illnesses: across western nations, 1 in 5 people experience mental illness, but only half of these people ever receive an intervention. Of course I was surprised upon hearing this, but I became absolutely shocked as I learned about Schizophrenia-- I kept thinking, how is it possible that people can struggle with an illness this serious and consuming and never get help? I was also deeply disturbed by the fact that for Schizophrenia specifically, up to one quarter of people do not improve with medication. After being made evident that up to one fourth of Schizophrenic people have little to no options for help, it was upsettingly easy to understand that suicide rates for Schizophrenic people go up by 5%. It was also mentioned that evidence shows that having a lower socioeconomic status is a factor associated with Schizophrenia. The correlation of this is also interesting-- is it the lower socioeconomic status that can trigger Schizophrenia, or is it struggling with Schizophrenia that causes a lower socioeconomic status? Research shows that it can go either way.

    My ongoing questions as I continued through the rest of the Schizophrenia module was, what are the options for medication for Schizophrenia? Is the lack of medication the reason why it cannot help every Schizophrenic person? Web MD's article "Medications That Treat Schizophrenia" lists seven types of antipsychotic medications and sixteen types of atypical antipsychotic medications. Web MD also included side effects of the medications in their article, and what seems to be the most serious side effects includes seizures, low white blood cell count, mood changes (including depression), and Tardive Dyskinesia among many others. Maybe the reason why Schizophrenia medication does not always work is because for some patients, the negative side effects of medication outweigh the struggle of Schizophrenia symptoms? If it's possible that being on medication can be worse than being off of it, why hasn't better medication for Schizophrenia been produced? Is the reason, yet again, a lack of research on Schizophrenia to do so? The National Library of Medicine's abstract titled, "How much do we know about schizophrenia and how well do we know it? Evidence from the Schizophrenia Library" explains that there is research on Schizophrenia, however there are conflicted results, and much information is still unknown. The abstract concludes that our scientific understanding of Schizophrenia is still slight, and therefore it is impossible to go about understanding what medications will truly solve this illness. After I have repeatedly come to the conclusion over the past four weeks that there is not enough research on mental health, instead of continuing to ask "why isn't there any research?", my newest question is, "how do we advance in research processes that we obviously need in order to find the answers to clinical psychology that still remain unfound?"