Nine Myths about Schizophrenia

This video describes nine myths about schizophrenia.
Myth number one: Schizophrenia is a rare mental disorder. Schizophrenia affects about 0.3 to 0.7% of the population and schizoaffective disorder affects another 0.3% of the population. Schizophrenia might not be as common as a number of other mental disorders, but it is by no means rare.
Myth number two: Schizophrenia is the same thing as split personality. I think this comes from the origin of the term schizophrenia which means “split mind,” but actually schizophrenia really has nothing to do with split personality or split mind.
Myth number three: Schizophrenia is the same thing as severely and persistently mentally ill (SPMI). There is some overlap between these two terms but SPMI covers the effects of mental disorders, not specifically any particular mental disorder. Usually we think of SPMI as encompassing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and sometimes antisocial personality disorder. Someone who is categorized as severely and persistent mentally ill may have schizophrenia, but they also may have other mental disorders.
Myth number four: Individuals with schizophrenia are violent. There is a slight increase in risk of violence associated with schizophrenia and also associated with a few other mental disorders, like bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. This isn't a dramatic increase in risk, just a slight risk and we see more of the risk around the psychotic phase of these mental disorders. We see the greatest risk and if a substance use disorder is comorbid with schizophrenia.
Myth number five: Schizophrenia is really just a fear of the government. When we look at the themes of the delusions that occur with schizophrenia, a fear of the government is a popular theme, but there are many other types of presentations of schizophrenia that don't involve paranoia. Someone can have a fear of the government and a fear of being spied on and that can be completely unrelated to schizophrenia.
Myth number six: Schizophrenia is caused by dysfunctional or abusive parents. Specifically, we see with this myth the idea that schizophrenia is caused by an overprotective or abusive mother. This comes from an old term referred to as the schizophrenogenic mother and that later expanded to the schizophrenogenic family. This theory was really based on this idea that somehow a mother or a family could cause schizophrenia through certain behaviors. The term schizophrenogenic means to cause schizophrenia. We know from research that there is no such thing as the schizophrenogenic mother or the schizophrenogenic family. There are environmental contributors to the development of schizophrenia, but parenting is not a substantial contributor.
Myth number seven: Schizoaffective disorder is a more severe version or type of schizophrenia. I can understand why this myth persists. If we look at schizoaffective disorder, it has the features of schizophrenia plus major mood disturbances like mania or depression. It kind of makes sense that we would think of schizoaffective as being more severe, but actually schizoaffective disorder is often not more severe than schizophrenia. The prognosis for schizoaffective disorder is actually a little bit better than the prognosis for schizophrenia.
Myth number eight: Schizophrenia is caused through genetics only. There is a substantial genetic contribution to the development of schizophrenia, for example, if somebody has an identical twin who has schizophrenia there's a 40 - 65% percent chance that that individual will develop schizophrenia themselves, but that leaves a lot of other possible causes to schizophrenia. We call these environmental causes, like stress, exposure to trauma, and other different elements. There is a genetic contribution that is strong in schizophrenia, but that's not all that causes this disorder.
Myth number nine: Schizophrenia is not treatable. There are various treatments available for schizophrenia including talk therapy and medication. Usually, we see talk therapy and medication combined when treating schizophrenia. There's a lot of different research about what type of recovery pattern we could expect with schizophrenia. Overall, we know that about 25% of individuals with schizophrenia will experience significant improvement and about 50% will experience mild to moderate improvement of their symptoms. That leaves 25% that really don't see much improvement at all, which is unfortunate. We need to work harder in terms of research about schizophrenia to improve the treatments available. That leaves 75% that do improve significantly or improve somewhat, so schizophrenia is treatable.