Schizophrenia is often associated with “split personality”, but in fact, the two disorders are not the same at all. Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously called “Multiple Personality Disorder”), is what most people think of as “split personality”, a disorder where one individual displays multiple “identities”. This is quite different to schizophrenia which is characterised by delusions, hallucinations, impaired perception of reality and disorganised speech or thinking patterns. While schizophrenia can be managed with appropriate medications, it is often hard to diagnose as there is no laboratory test for the disease.
It’s long been considered that schizophrenia is a combination of multiple causes, including genetics, early environment, and neurobiology. Some recreational drugs have also been thought to contribute to the onset of the disease. People with schizophrenia have been consistently found to have increased dopaminergic activity. Antipsychotic medications work by reducing the dopamine activity in the brain.
Now scientists are beginning to link certain genes with schizophrenia. Recent research has found that two types of abnormalities in the DNA of people with the disease. Three studies of more than 60,000 people have found that single letters in the DNA code and large groups of DNA code were either repeated or were missing in some people with schizophrenia. The DNA gaps and duplications were found to be rare, but increased the risk of schizophrenia between 3 and 15 times. While this is a promising prospect for indicators of the disease, these gaps and duplications in the genetic code don’t account for all cases.
Read more about the research here>
Interestingly, another line of research is also showing the female hormone, Estrogen, may help reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia. Researchers noticed that women tend to get the disease an average of 5 years later than their male counterparts. Females with schizophrenia have more symptoms after childbirth and menopause, when estrogen levels are low. According to Jayashri Kulkarni, a psychiatrist at Monash University and the Alfred Psychiatric Research Centre, “The evidence is very clear that estrogen in the brain has a very powerful antipsychotic effect.”
Read more about the research here >
