John is fifteen year old youth on his second admission to hospital. John was diagnosed with early on-set of schizophrenia last year and has been tried on numerous medications. John suffered the loss of a close friend last year and his father states that “john has gone down hill rapidly since”. Johns mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of twenty five but she reports feeling abnormal at an earlier stages in her life. John reports his Quality of life to be non existent, and that he has no social skills or aspiration to complete college. Johns attending hospital due to relapse of his symptoms and he is currently been tried on a new antipsychotic called clozapine which is a second generation antipsychotics used to treat both the negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia, this will be further discussed in the assignment.
When the disorder appears in adolescence this means more life years of disability particularly as the prognosis and outcome for early onset cases is often worse than for adult onset cases. Specifically, adolescent onset predicts less independence, poorer educational achievement or access to further education, less likelihood of employment and poverty of social relationships in adult life (e.g. Hollis, 2000).
Schizophrenia is often a lifelong illness linked with high rates of morbidity and disability for sufferers. Stanley et al (2007) describes Schizophrenia as a complex, debilitating brain disease impairing perception, cognition, volition, social communication, emotions, and causing delusional and hallucinatory experiences. The exact cause of