Treatments for schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a medical problem that might last a lifetime, but in many cases it is recoverable. Only a third of the patients will have schizophrenia for life, for the rest of them a chance for recovery exists.

We cannot find a treatment special for schizophrenia. Even though, it is treatable with antipsychotic medications and especially with home or professional counseling. This treatment is very important for schizophrenics because it considerably reducing symptoms. Medication and counseling need to go together because one without the other has low chances to succeed in curing schizophrenia.

The antipsychotic treatment does not always bring up the awaited results. The normal results of the treatment are reducing the episodes, increasing time between episodes. In general, after this treatment the symptoms reduce in intensity. As we said before, not all reactions are the same. For example we can say that these symptoms reduce in 70 % of the cases, but in the rest of the cases symptoms are the same or even advancing.

Brain chemicals that enable communications between the nerve cells are the ones affected by antipsychotic medications. The treatment with this type of medications assures to milder symptoms in most of the cases, symptoms caused by multiple neurotransmitter systems problems, including dopamine, serotonin and glutamate.

Even though antipsychotic medications are usually benefic for treating schizophrenia, the treatment is not the same in every case. Depending on the patient the treatment must be prescribed in different types or dosage of medicines because of the side effects that may occur. The medication can be determined only by a specialist that is a psychiatrist, or an allied medical professional working with one. The effect of the treatment begins after a few weeks or even months so the schizophrenics must be armed with patience.

The treatment used for schizophrenia, antipsychotic, is divided into two categories first generation (typical) and second generation (atypical) drugs. The first generation of antipsychotics, the typical ones, are called this way because they were the first drugs discovered that had antipsychotic properties. Some of these drugs are chlorpromazine, fluphenazine, haloperidol, molindone, trifluoperazine and loxapine. Atypical drugs for schizophrenia were discovered later and got the following names to distinguish from the first generation drugs: clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, ziprasidone, and aripiprazole. The difference in what these drugs do is what they affect. The typical drugs affect dopamine, but the second generation of drugs is working through other neurotransmitter systems. The atypical medications for schizophrenia seem to have an advantage over the first generation antipsychotic medicines because it reduces the negative symptoms.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.com

For more information about schizophrenia or even about symptoms of schizophrenia please review this page www.schizophrenia-info-center.com/symptoms-of-schizophrenia.htm