Information about Schizophrenia

The Finnish approach to recovery from psychosis called "Open Dialogue" is achieving a 83% rate of full recovery from first break psychosis. This is the highest recovery rate in the world. New York psychologist and film maker Daniel Mackler has produced a documentary about how they achieve these results.

It is commonly known that: major mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, run in the family; that around 1% of the population in the U.S. suffer from schizophrenia, and that 10% of people in the U.S. who have a first-degree relative with the disorder, such as a parent, brother, or sister suffer from schizophrenia. People who have second-degree relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, or cousins) with the disease also develop schizophrenia more often than the general population. The risk is highest for an identical twin of a person with schizophrenia. He or she has a 40% to 65% of developing the disorder (See Harrison PJ and Weinberger DR. Schizophrenia genes, gene expression, and neuropathology: on the matter of their convergence. Molecular Psychiatry. 2005;10(1):40-68.)

During a recent casual conversation with some new friends, I asked them what they understood the term schizophrenia to mean. Without pausing, they replied, "schizophrenia, that's the split personality mental condition". I knew that their backgrounds were not in medicine, and I assumed, from our conversations, that none of their family members suffered from the condition, but I was still taken back by their lack of understanding of what I believed was a well understood mental condition.