“Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness characterized by a highly variable set of symptoms: the most impressive are delusions and hallucinations, but the most disabling are social withdrawal and cognitive difficulties.“, reminds Inserm on the occasion of World Schizophrenia Day, March 14. But how does it arise? What are its risk factors? Does she take care of herself? Decryption.
Schizophrenia affects around 600,000 people in France. It is a complex psychiatric pathology that disturbs the perception of reality. It has productive aspects such as paranoia, megalomania, hallucinations… “Negative” symptoms that cause isolation, affective and emotional impoverishment. And dissociative symptoms causing the patient to lose attention, coherence and logic. Above all, it can be very variable from one patient to another and begin at different times in life, following a psychotic episode which gives rise to more or less intense chronic symptoms thereafter.
At what age does schizophrenia develop?
Schizophrenia often appears during adolescence, over a period estimated between 15 and 25 years. Several parameters can explain its triggering: intense stress, infectious disease, exposure to substances. These events play on the biology of the brain which is structured and restructured over time and life events.
Between the ages of 10 and 30, the brain matures very actively and the cerebral regions are continually reorganized. Disrupting brain processes during this crucial period of development therefore endangers the proper functioning of the brain.
What are the risk factors?
We note that most schizophrenic patients live in urban areas or have gone through an immigration process. This suggests that environmental factors have a real impact on the disease. A genetic vulnerability can also be associated with it, while rarely being the main driver of triggering.
Stress and the use of drugs such as cannabis, which are clearly identified risk factors:
– Stress can “alter different biological mechanisms (neurogenesis, activity of growth factors and survival of neurons, etc.) at the level of several cerebral structures (hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, etc.). high level of the disease in urban areas or among subjects who have had a migration route, particularly during childhood and adolescence”, underlines Inserm.
– Psychogenic substances (such as cannabis) can double the risk of schizophrenia: “delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) would disrupt cerebral maturation by acting on the receptors it activates, numerous in the areas of the brain involved in psychiatric pathologies, and particularly in regions where plasticity is important in adolescence”, stipulates Inserm following studies.
Although more moderate, lifestyle also plays a role. It is important to pay attention to nutrition, sleep and neutrophic factor intake (which allows neurons to grow).
Read also:
Schizophrenia: an interactive experience to better understand the disease
The same virus causing schizophrenia and mononucleosis?
