1. Schizophrenia & Dissociative Disorders
Misunderstood and Stigmatized

2. The Most Stigmatized Disorder
People with schizophrenia have historically been highly misunderstood, feared, and even persecuted

3. Schizophrenia “Split-Mind” - A Mind Split from Reality
Affects 1% of the population

4. Schizophrenia A chronic condition
Onset: Men in their early-mid 20’s and women in their late 20’s
A point on a spectrum of disorders (Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders)

5. Characteristics
Disorganized thinking, emotions, and behaviours that are often incongruent with their situation and disturbed perceptions including delusions and hallucinations

6. Characteristics Psychotic Symptoms: Loss of contact with reality
Disorganized speech and thinking
Breakdown in selective attention – cannot focus on one thing and ignore other things
Word Salad: strings of words with no coherent meaning

7. Delusions Delusions: False beliefs Delusions of Grandeur
Delusions of persecution & paranoia

8. Hallucinations Seeing or hearing something that is not there
Auditory or Visual Hallucinations

9. Positive, Negative, & Disorganized Symptoms
Positive: Symptoms which are added (ex. Hallucinations, delusions, inappropriate behaviour)
Negative: Symptoms which are taken away (ex. Expressions, emotions)
Disorganized: Symptoms which are disorganized (ex. Word salad)

10. Neurological Roots
Extra dopamine (emotional regulation, pleasure & reward)
Antipsychotic – blocks dopamine
Abnormalities in several parts of the brain (not just one – amygdala – fear processing area, thalamus – filtering signals)

11. Roots
Neurological, Genetic, & Environment all work together to determine how likely a person is to develop Schizophrenia

12. Genetic Roots
If a parents has schizophrenia, odds of the child developing schizophrenia are 1/10 (compared to 1/100 without a parent with Schizophrenia)
50-50 chance if an identical twin has it

13. Environmental Roots
Stress

14. Famous People with Schizophrenia
John Nash (famous Mathematician)
Mary Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s wife)
Syd Barret (from Pink Floyd)
Jack Kerouac (Author)
Peter Greene (from Fleetwood Mac)
Darrell Hammond (Saturday Night Live)

15. Culture
The major difference was that “the Chennai (India) and Accra (Ghana) participants were more comfortable interpreting their voices as relationships and not as the sign of a violated mind,” she wrote in the study. “Participants in the USA were more likely to use diagnostic labels and to report violent commands than those in India and Ghana.”
Luhrmann hypothesized that if patients diagnosed with schizophrenia can change the way they perceive the voices in their head, they might be able to better control the disorder.

16. A Beautiful Mind

17. Dissociative Disorders
An interruption in conscious awareness

18. Dissociative Identity Disorder
2 or more distinct and alternating personalities
Most Research comes from the “Sybil” case - which turned out to be false
Response to stress or anxiety