Episodic memory deficits are consistently documented as a core aspect of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia patients, present from the onset of the illness and strongly associated with functional disability.
During the last several decades, evidence has accumulated that schizophrenia is associated with significant impairment in cognitive functioning. Specifically, deficits in attention, memory, and executive function have been consistently reported in patients with schizophrenia (1–3).
Furthermore, previous behavioral studies have found that children with schizophrenia tend to present more slow response time and low accuracy in different types of working memory tasks including visual, auditory, and verbal tasks (44–47).
Schizophrenia has been described as the “worst disease” to afflict mankind. It causes psychosis, which is an abnormal state of mind marked by hyperarousal, overactivation of brain circuits, and emotional distress. An untreated episode of psychosis can result in structural brain damage due to neurotoxicity.
Schizophrenia does not typically get better as you get older. The symptoms of schizophrenia may become worse over time, or they may remain the same for some people. Schizophrenia is a chronic illness that can be managed with medication and therapy, but it does not typically go away as you get older.
Older adults with schizophrenia have significant cognitive deficits in executive functioning, speed of processing, attention/vigilance, working memory, verbal learning, visual learning, reasoning, and problem-solving.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the decline in life expectancy among people with more severe mental illness ranges from 10–25 years . Most studies of schizophrenia show a life expectancy reduction of 10–20 years.
Schizophrenia is frequently associated with significant distress and impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, and other important areas of life. People with schizophrenia are 2 to 3 times more likely to die early than the general population (3).
Can a brain scan show schizophrenia? It is not currently possible to determine that a person has schizophrenia simply by looking at a brain scan, but certain changes in the brain that can be observed on a brain scan have been associated with schizophrenia.
The negative symptoms of schizophrenia include volitional (motivational) impairment manifesting as avolition, anhedonia, social withdrawal, and emotional disorders such as alogia and affective flattening. Negative symptoms worsen patients' quality of life and functioning.
Sz patients show prominent deficits in some aspects of episodic memory (e.g. relational encoding, intentional forgetting) while other aspects appear to be spared, which is a pattern of selective deficits that is seen across a range of cognitive domains including attention, working memory and cognitive control.
Dementia is commonly found in chronic schizophrenic patients who underestimate their ages by 5 years or more, a symptom known as “age disorientation”.
Would you recognize that something was wrong? Unfortunately, most people with schizophrenia are unaware that their symptoms are warning signs of a mental disorder. Their lives may be unraveling, yet they may believe that their experiences are normal.
Retrieval practice is an efficient long-term episodic memory strategy in healthy subjects. Our study is the first to demonstrate that retrieval practice is also superior to restudy in improving later recall in patients with schizophrenia presenting with episodic memory impairment.
Schizophrenia is a disorder that impacts many domains. Some of its more recognizable symptoms involve difficulties in thinking (e.g., disorganized thinking, delusions) and perception (e.g., hallucinations).
Because the mind itself feels fuzzy or dull, there's limited perception that it's possible to feel differently and little memory of a time when you felt differently. Many people who have experienced depression will understand this feeling of being in a mental fog.
Most commonly though, people diagnosed with schizophrenia will hear multiple voices that are male, nasty, repetitive, commanding, and interactive, where the person can ask the voice a question and get some kind of answer.”
If left untreated, schizophrenia can worsen at any age, especially if you continue to experience episodes and symptoms. Typically, early onset schizophrenia in the late teens tends to be associated more with severe symptoms than later-life onset. But aging can change the trajectory of how symptoms show up.
A clinical syndrome with a profound influence on public health, schizophrenia has been called “arguably the worst disease affecting mankind, even AIDS not excepted”5. The worldwide lifetime prevalence of the disorder is about 0.85 percent across diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic categories.
“People diagnosed with schizophrenia struggle to start relationships and show their emotions. That can make it difficult for them, and later on for their partners, due to the lack of emotional response. Talking to a mental health professional about ways to overcome this issue can help a couple in many ways.”
Living with family can be a good option for someone with schizophrenia if their family members understand the illness well, have a strong support system of their own, and are able to provide whatever assistance is needed.
“Adults with schizophrenia are about 10 times more likely to die of COPD and 7 times more likely to die of diabetes,” says a co-author of the study, Mark Olfson, MD, a psychiatrist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
Schizophrenia tends to run in families, but no single gene is thought to be responsible. It's more likely that different combinations of genes make people more vulnerable to the condition.