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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Literature relating to social influences on prognosis of schizophrenia is selectively reviewed. The influence of the care system is considered separately from other social influences such as business cycle fluctuations, community organization and attitudes, social class membership, independent events in the patient's life, and expression of emotion by the patient's family members. Several studies of milieu indicate that milieu can influence course of illness for better, or for worse. One study of group psychotherapy suggests that groups help improve social function of schizophrenics in the community. Studies of individual psychotherapy fail to demonstrate its efficacy. Business cycle fluctuations clearly relate to admission rates of schizophrenics to hospitals; independent life events are associated with onset and relapse. Community attitudes and family emotional expression relate to relapse and rehospitalization. Clearly, social events, especially those occurring outside the care system, do influence the course of illness. There is also evidence for the influence of psychosocial treatment but at the present time is less consistent the evidence for the influence of other social events on the prognosis and course in schizophrenia.
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PMID:Social influences on the prognosis of schizophrenia. 3 11

Catastrophe theory is a new mathematical technique relating variables in a novel, discontinuous way. It suggests ways in which neurochemical and environmental influences could interact so that very small changes in either variable may produce rapid changes in intensity of psychosis that are characteristic of schizophrenia. Other behavioural and pharmacological characteristics of schizophrenia previously considered paradoxical may be similarly explicable, and the model predicts factors most likely to generate relapse.
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PMID:Catastrophe theory: a model interaction between neurochemical and environmental influences in the control of schizophrenia. 3 5

A study was made of platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO) activity in non-medicated, newly-admitted schizophrenics and institutionalized chronic schizophrenics both on and off medication. These patients were compared to two control groups: normal subjects and brain-damaged institutionalized patients. No relationship was found between platelet MAO activity and the severity or duration of illness, duration of psychotropic medication, presence of auditory hallucinations or institutionalization. Mean platelet MAO activity did not differ significantly between the schizophrenic subgroups and control groups. Thirty-one patients studied before and after treatment with phenothiazines showed no significant change in platelet MAO activity. The findings did not indicate a relationship between schizophrenia, its treatment or outcome and platelet MAO activity.
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PMID:Platelet monoamine oxidase activity in schizophrenia. Relationship to disease, treatment, institutionalization and outcome. 3 92

Schizophrenia is a continuing and relapsing disorder that begins in early adulthood and lasts indefinitely. Effective treatment, therefore, needs to be long-term and comprehensive. The physician must be able to control disabling symptoms while minimizing the side effects of neuroleptic medication. The lifetime risk remains of depression and suicide, paranoid crisis, social distress and frequent rehospitalization. It is a medical responsibility not only to look after the schizophrenic patient's health but also to coordinate social and emergency services, improve the quality of life, support the family and anticipate problems in offspring. At the time, the physician needs to consider the welfare of the community in which the schizophrenic patient lives.
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PMID:Management of the schizophrenic patient. 3 18

A survey of 46 randomly selected schizophrenic residents of six board-and-care homes in the Los Angeles area found that the schizophrenic who adjusts to the setting experiences a schizoid-compliant pattern of outcome on antipsychotic drugs that is characterized by blunted affect, passivity, and lack of initiative, interest, and spontaneity. The authors conclude that it is those negative symptoms of schizophrenia, mistakenly attributed to the presumed inadequacies of the board-and-care environment, that have given the board-and-care home a bad press both in the newspapers and in the psychiatric literature.
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PMID:The board-and-care home: does it deserve a bad press? 3 35

A total of 102 patients with progressive forms of schizophrenia with a pronounced deficital symptomatology were treated. The dynamics of some indices of nonspecific reactivity (properdin, lysozyme, complement) were studied parallely. Yeast sodium nucleinate promotes a softening and reverse development of some deficital symptoms (mainly in an emotional-volutional sphere), decreasing the threshold of sensitivity to neuroleptics. When remission occurred, the immunological indices returned to normal.
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PMID:[Use of sodium nucleinate in the therapy of schizophrenia]. 3 27

We report a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study utilizing a within-subjects design on 20 hospitalized, psychiatric patients who participated in sodium amobarbital interviews to determine if the drug has a specific effect in eliciting clinically useful information. The patients selected had difficulty communicating with their primary therapists during the postadmission, diagnostic interviews. Two raters completed a Hamilton Depression Scale, a New Haven Schizophrenia Index, and a Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale after each interview. Although both the amobarbital and saline interviews were moderately useful in obtaining new information, we found no significant difference in the primary therapists' assessments of clinical usefulness. In addition, the drug interview did not uncover material that would aid in the differential diagnosis between depression and schizophrenia. There was, however, a significant negative correlation between the assessment of general usefulness and the time interval between admission and interviewing. We report our only exception, a case of catatonic schizophrenia, in which the patient responded specifically to the drug.
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PMID:Clinical usefulness of sodium amobarbital interviewing. 3 65

The theory that alterations of dopaminergic synaptic transmission may play a role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia is widely accepted. A more recent theory links the endorphin system to the etiology of schizophrenia. We propose that these two theories may be combined into a single model. Recent neurochemical and pharmacological findings have indicated close functional relationships between the endorphin and dopamine systems. Endorphins modulate dopaminergic synaptic transmission by exerting both presynaptic and postsynaptic effects. On the molecular level, this modulation may involve the activity of nucleotide cyclases and protein phosphorylation systems. Thus, the dopaminergic neuronal hyperactivity, currently believed to be related to schizophrenia, may be caused by a primary alteration in the endorphin system. Several hypotheses about the nature of that alteration have been advanced and tested in therapeutic experiments with schizophrenic patients. These experiments have not yet yielded definitive results.
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PMID:Endorphins, dopamine, and schizophrenia. 3 95

It has been suggested that the newly discovered endogenous opiate peptides (called endorphins) might play a role in the symptoms of schizophrenia. The administration of narcotic antagonists provides both a test of the hypothesis and a potential treatment. In this article, we review the methods by which data have been gathered to test endorphin involvement in schizophrenia. Alternative strategies, which hold greater promise of producing conclusive positive or negative evidence, include exploitation of individual differences, use of psychophysiological measures, genetic strategies, and multivariate statistical techniques with larger sample sizes.
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PMID:Research in endorphins and schizophrenia. 3 96

Oculomotor signs were evaluated in 172 psychiatric patients. Schizophrenic patients demonstrated a significantly higher incidence of staring, pursuit breaks, and lateral glances than did controls or other psychiatric patients. Oculomotor signs may help to differentiate schizophrenia from affective and nonpsychotic disorders. Patients with tardive dyskinesia and patients treated with tricyclic antidepressants demonstrated a significant elevation in mean blink rate. Elevated blink rates may be on early indicator of tardive dyskinesia.
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PMID:Oculomotor signs in a psychiatric population: a preliminary report. 3 48


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