Schizophrenia patients experience delusions, hallucinations and often lose thought process. Schizophrenia affects an estimated one percent of the population in every country of the world. Victims share a range of symptoms that can be devastating to themselves as well as to families and friends. “They may have trouble dealing with the most minor everyday stresses and insignificant changes in their surroundings. They may avoid social contact, ignore personal hygiene and behave oddly” (Kass, 194). Many people outside the mental health profession believe that schizophrenia refers to a “split personality”. The word “schizophrenia” comes from the Greek schizo, meaning split and phrenia refers to the diaphragm once thought to be the location of a person’s mind and soul. When the word “schizophrenia” was established by European psychiat

Schizophrenia seems to be a syndrome of multiple causes and types. Genetics seem to play a role, but there is no single “schizophrenia gene”. While it is clear that a supportive family can be helpful in preventing relapse, it is also agreed that family strife does not cause schizophrenia (Young, 35). One of the most recent advances in treating schizophrenia is the drug clozapine. This drug has been used in Europe and China for a number of years and now has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1990 for use in the United States. Clozapine is sometimes effective in cases where other drugs have failed to blunt systems. This drug appears to have fewer side effects than some of the anti-psychotic drugs. A major drawback to its use is that it can dangerously lower the count of white blood cells. Other new medications that have beneficial effect similar to clozapine but that appear to be safer are now undergoing testing and may be available in the near future. Various medications are handled by the body in different ways, so one drug may be selected over another because it has less chance of damaging a diseased liver, worsening a heart condition, or affecting a patient’s high blood pressure. For all the benefits that anti-psychotic drugs provide, clearly they are far from ideal. Some patients will show marked improvement with drugs, while others might be helped only a little, if at all. Ideally, drugs soon will be developed to treat successfully the whole range of schizophrenia symptoms. “ Roughly one third of schizophrenic patients make a complete recovery and have no fu

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