COIMBATORE:More and more patients are approaching hospitals in Coimbatore for treating schizophrenia, even as psychiatrists say the cause of the mental disorder is still unknown.
Though there is often a genetic component to schizophrenia, there have been many cases where no reason could be attributed to it.
Schizophrenia is a disorder that affects a person’s ability to think, feel and act. Patients find it difficult to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. They behave strangely and find difficult to express normal emotions.
On an average, 50-60 schizophrenia patients visit CMCH everyday, with four to eight of them being new cases. Till a few years back, there were hardly 50 schizophrenia patients per year.
“The causes of schizophrenia are still unclear. Studies have found that it tends to pass down from ancestors. Many develop schizophrenia due to chemical imbalance in the brain, but what causes the imbalance is still not known,” said Dr Raj Kumar, a psychiatrist with a private city hospital.
“Any imbalance in the levels of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters that allow nerve cells in the brain to send messages for various activities, makes it difficult for a patient to react sensibly to stimuli like sound, light and smell. This can lead to hallucination, delusion and other complications,” he added.
Stress can be another reason, but it is not the cause in many cases. “Stress at home, school, office, etc, play a role in the development of schizophrenia. A child or even an adult, may do well in his studies or work for a long time. But the disease may appear all of a sudden without any valid reason. Medical researchers are still in the dark about its exact cause,” Dr Raj Kumar said.
A good number of schizophrenia patients at CMCH are children, said Dr A Shanmugaiah, Head of the Psychiatry Department at CMCH.
“Bio-psycho-social factors play a key role in it. I think the stress put on them by parents and teachers causes psychological disorders. A few days ago, a sixth standard boy came with the complaint that he felt some thread being passed through his nose always. The boy developed it because of the stress on him. Parents have a major role in providing a stress-free life for their children,” he added.
‘Survey to Find Details of Prevalence Essential’
In view of the increasing number of schizophrenia cases in the district, a home-to-home morbidity survey is necessary to assess its prevalence, nature, and cause so that appropriate steps can be taken to control it, say psychiatrists.
“The global prevalence rate of schizophrenia is one to two percent, but it may be different here. Without a proper survey, we cannot identify all patients and the details. Once we have the details, we can decide on the treatment and the drugs,” said Dr A Shanmugaiah, Head of the Psychiatry Department at CMCH.
There are different types of schizophrenia - paranoid, disorganised, catatonic, residual, schizoaffective, etc, he said.
“The nature and symptoms of each type are different. Treatments, too, vary. A survey will enable us to identify the type that prevails in a particular area. Unless we find the root cause, eliminating the problem would be difficult,” he added.
The nature of of schizophrenia has a connection with a region’s religious, social and cultural aspects. “Knowledge of an area after finding the prevalence rate there is also important. For example, I attended to a case in which a woman believed that she had been sent to the world by Madurai Meenakshi Amman. Had she been from Coimbatore, she would have given the name of another goddess,” said Dr Shanmugaiah.
Psychiatrists also stress the need to make the public aware of its symptoms and the importance of timely medication.
“No medicine that can cure schizophrenia fully, but it can be controlled, like diabetes. If there is awareness, people will take treatment in time, without letting it progress,” said Meena Balasubrahmanyam, a psychiatrist with a private hospital.
Symptoms
■ Hearing or seeing something that is not there in reality
■ Constant feeling of being watched
■ Feeling indifferent to important situations
■ Inability to sleep or concentrate
■ Change in personality
■ Strange body positioning
■ Angry and fearful response to loved ones
■ Increasing withdrawal from social situations