Schizophrenia Prevention and Treatment Guidelines

Schizophrenia is a neurological disease. This disease is actually relatively rare. It is rare to encounter a few schizophrenia patients in life. It is generally a mental illness caused by various wishes. This disease can be cured, but it requires a slow process, and there are some precautions and other requirements. So what are the guidelines for the prevention and treatment of schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a group of severe mental illnesses with unknown etiology. They usually develop slowly or subacutely in young and middle-aged people. Clinically, they often manifest as a syndrome with varying symptoms, involving multiple disorders in perception, thinking, emotion, and behavior, as well as incoordination of mental activities. Patients are generally conscious and have basically normal intelligence, but some patients will experience cognitive impairment during the course of the disease. The course of the disease is generally protracted, with repeated attacks, aggravation or deterioration. Some patients eventually decline and become mentally disabled, but some patients can remain cured or almost cured after treatment.

Schizophrenia is a clinical syndrome consisting of a group of symptoms and is a multifactorial disease. Although the cause of the disease is still unclear, it is generally acknowledged that the individual's psychological susceptibility and the adverse factors of the external social environment play a role in the occurrence and development of the disease. Both susceptibility and external adverse factors may lead to the occurrence of the disease through the combined effects of internal biological factors. The factors that cause the disease in different patients may be more important in one aspect.

The commonly used diagnostic standards abroad include the United States' Classification of Diseases and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM-Ⅳ-TR and the WHO's International Classification of Diseases ICD-10. The commonly used diagnostic standards in China are the Chinese Classification and Diagnostic Criteria for Mental Disorders CCMD-3.

Schizophrenia usually needs to be differentiated from mental disorders caused by organic diseases, mental disorders caused by drugs or psychoactive substances, mood disorders, paranoid disorders, obsessive-compulsive neurosis and other diseases.

Antipsychotic drug treatment is the first choice for the treatment of schizophrenia. Drug treatment should be systematic and standardized, emphasizing early, adequate, and sufficient course of treatment, and paying attention to the principles of single medication and individualized medication. Second-generation (atypical) antipsychotics such as risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, etc. are generally recommended as first-line drugs. Clozapine, a first-generation and atypical antipsychotic, is used as a second-line drug. Electroconvulsive therapy can be used in combination with some patients in the acute phase or those with poor therapeutic effects.

10% to 30% of schizophrenia patients do not respond to treatment and are known as refractory schizophrenia.