 Schizophrenia is a severe mental health issue that is seen across the globe. It would affect one's ability to function well and also quality of life. I am Dr. Vanish Sri, I am a consultant psychiatrist at Manipal Hospital, Sajapura Road. I am here to talk about schizophrenia today. Schizophrenia is a mental health condition where in a person's mood can get affected and their behavior and most importantly there is a blurring or the disturbances in the reality that they experience due to which there is a lot of difficulty to manage day to day activities and the quality of life also gets affected. Causes of schizophrenia would include genetic factors like if the close family relatives are affected with schizophrenia then the chances of child having schizophrenia is very high. Other risk factors include having chronic stress that is a long standing stress, having a major loss, loss of allowed ones, having a trauma or a continuous traumatic negative experiences in the life or having a certain kind of medical conditions wherein there is a medical issue that is long standing for a very long period of time. These are the risk factors. When we say the symptoms it can be divided into two things. It can be like a negative symptoms that is nothing but it is equivalent to having a depression that can be feeling very low. They are not interested in doing any of the activities. Most importantly lack of self care. The care that they take to themselves in terms of not bathing for days together, not trimming their nails, not dressing very well, do not worry about going to work. Their day to day activities would start getting affected. There can be crying spells as well. When we look at the other category of the symptoms of schizophrenia it is what we call it as a positive symptoms in the medical terms. That is nothing but having a hallucinations. If someone is not around them they feel that they can see someone. It can be like I can see a ghost or I can see God. It can be something like I can see a dead person as well. And then comes hearing of the voices that is nothing but whenever there is nobody around them they hear the voices trying to talk to them. It can be threatening to them. We have seen cases where because of the voices they have tried to hurt themselves because these voices can be commanding to them by stating do this to yourself. So these are one of the serious symptoms of the schizophrenia. One should take it into account as well. Then comes the delusions. They are nothing but the assumptions. For example, a patient might say that there are group of people who are trying to hurt me. They are planning against me. They are trying to harm me. This group of people can be someone within the family. They can be someone within outside the family. It can be neighbors in most of the instances where we see. They say that they have been planning very hard against us so that someday they are trying to kill me. Sometimes it can be against the police as well. Where in the family thinks that it's not true. It is not the reality. Why are they thinking in this way? Well, this is because of the symptoms of a schizophrenia wherein they feel that though it's not a reality it is something that is happening in the patient's mind wherein they feel that these things are actually happening to them. Then comes talking to self. They are alone. They are isolated. You don't know why they are talking to themselves. That is because they might be responding to some of the voices that they are hearing. So sometimes they can be laughing to self as well. So you should never get confused with the symptoms that they are deliberately doing all of them. The answer is no. It is because of the symptoms and the certain changes in the chemicals in the mind is where they are experiencing these things. To diagnose it, one has to understand the family or the friends have to identify it in the first place because it's not like depression or anxiety where a person feels that I am depressed or I am very anxious. I'll have to go to the doctor. It's all about the people around you who are trying to identify that there is a change in your mood. There's a change in a certain behavior. There's a change in the way from you were there in the earlier days. Now after the identification, you would get the patient or a person to the doctor where the doctor would do the initial screening and the analysis where having a family member or a friend or a person whom the patient or a person knows since a very long period of time would become very important to ask a couple of questions by a doctor to arrive at a diagnosis to say it is schizophrenia. So for that a couple of questions like how was their behavior? How was their mood around? How are they behaving? Are they talking to self? Are they laughing to self? These are the questions that we usually ask. Schizophrenia can be treated with the tablets. This is one of the good options that is the medications wherein when we start the medication to a person their symptoms in terms of having hearing of voices or having a certain doubts that there are a group of people who are trying to harm me. These are the symptoms that would come down with the medication. And also there are other part of the symptoms like feeling low, sad, not interested in doing any of the activities, not taking their self-care. All of the symptoms would improve with the medications. Other options would also be therapy. Once a person is stabilized on the treatment they are doing okay. Then we also say therapy is one of the options because in schizophrenia most of the time in terms of their intellectual ability to do a certain things, to do their work or the other forms of activities would have gotten affected. So to manage this therapy also becomes very important that is to help them to get back on the activities that they were doing earlier that can be rejoining their work as well. The quality of life would improve very well with the medication to an extent wherein they'll be able to work well, they'll be able to do day-to-day activities as well. So this is one of the major changes that you're seeing in their life in terms of adding on the treatment.