Aside from being a lifelong chronic disorder, schizophrenia is a mystery to researchers as its exact cause still remains undetermined. Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that makes people interpret reality abnormally or in a distorted manner. Symptoms include continuous or relapsing mental episodes of psychosis where the individual develops delusion, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking, eventually leading to apathy, social detachment, and decreased emotional expressions.
There have been several theories on the causes of the disease, all of which mainly link the mental disorder to genetics, making schizophrenia a hereditary disorder.
However, scientists have also found multiple postnatal environmental factors that can give rise to schizophrenia.
- Urban Environment
In 2004, psychiatrists Spauwen J et al., looked at 10 different studies in their work: “Does urbanicity shift the population expression of psychosis?” and found that the rates of schizophrenia in urban areas are about twice the rate in rural areas.
This shows that being raised in a city during early development in childhood and adolescence proved to be more crucial than moving to a city in adulthood.
- Substance Abuse
Substance abuse also makes treatment for schizophrenia less effective.
- Vitamin D
Epidemiological studies have indicated that “those born in late winter/early spring, at higher latitudes, and in urban settings have an increased risk of schizophrenia, leading to suggestions that this risk may be mediated by vitamin D deficiency.”
Vitamin D insufficiency is found to be highly prevalent in people with schizophrenia and many other psychotic disorders.
Unlike many other incurable disorders, schizophrenia can be very well managed and lived with. Treatment can include different individual psychotherapies, cognitive behavior therapy, and also psychosocial therapies.
