Despite the fact that schizophrenia has been studied extensively, findings have been inconsistent. The differentiation of the disorder from other forms of psychotic illness is not definite. Because various aspects of the condition are so different, more than one cause is suspected. The illnesses identified as schizophrenia are held to have a lifetime risk for about 1 percent of the population. For most patients, the outcome is not good (Johnstone 536). All of the studies indicate that schizophrenia has no cure. Relapses, no matter what the treatment program, appear to be inevitable. Once out of the institutional setting, few schizophrenics continue to take their medication as needed. Schizophrenics should be institutionalized to protect them from hurting themselves and others.
The German psychiatrist, Emil Kraepelin, was the first to use objective tests and measurements to study drug effects and mental disorders. At the turn of the century, he developed the classification of two types of psychosis: manic-depressive psychosis and dementia praecox. In 1911, Eugene Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, noted that the early onset of dementia was not characteristic of KraepelinÆs dementia praecox, and he introduced the term schizophrenia to refer to the disassociation or disruption of thought processes and the split among thought, emotion, and behavior (Carpenter and Buchanan 681).
Mental health professionals differ in their theories of what causes schizophrenia. However, as serious and complicated a medical illness as schizophrenia is, thousands of psychologists, social workers and even psychiatrists cling to the myth, popularized in the 1960s, that schizophrenia is caused by bad mothers or crazy families. Psychiatric patients (and their families) are generally insulted by the contentions that their trouble was brought on by bad parenting, childhood trauma, or
weak character and that they do not have an actual disea...