Is Age a Factor When It Comes to Schizophrenia? Posted: 02-19-07 12:17pm
My mother is in her 50's and she has shown
all the signs of schizophrenia.
Hearing voices, suddenly becoming
religious, thinking people can hear her
thoughts by getting close to them,
thinking see could see the future when it
comes to people dieing. Thinking someone
died when they didnt got dressed up as if
she were going to the person funeral. She
was paranoid thought someone was trying to
poison her. Her social worker told us when
she was in the hospital that it is rare
for someone in their 50's to get
schizophrenia. Is this true? Do you have
some ideas what this could be?
THANK YOU
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Stan
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Posted: 02-19-07 20:56pm
It can happen, but it is quite rare. That
is about the age for late-onset
schizophrenia though, I believe. Is she
taking any medications that might have
caused this? Some blood pressure
medications have disastrous results over
time but the people who take them don't
know or don't care until it's too late.
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Birch
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Posted: 02-19-07 21:07pm
It might be schizophenia, it might be an
onset of dementia, or it could be from
somatic injury.
It is hard to tell the difference between
schizophrenia and dementia. The paranoia
leads one to think schizophrenia, but even
so, medical professionals don't like to
diagnose someone until they've had six
months of substance free observation time.
Then they can generally see what's going
on.
Good luck to you! This sounds really
rough.
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Stan
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Posted: 02-20-07 08:54am
Does anyone know what exactly is the
difference between the two? I believe
dementia is more to deal with memory, but
seeing people with both it's kind of
blurred as to what is what. Speaking of
late-onset, here is a short video showing
an artist's downfall into schizophrenia.
I've seen this series used in textbooks,
but apparently there is some discussion
that the paintings may be out of order
since he didn't date anything. Still, if
correct it offers a rare glimpse into the
disease.
You might want to check out the DSM-IV-TR,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders for a better
understanding of the difference between
the two.
Thanks for the youtube video; it was
really interesting.
From my understanding, dementia and
schizophrenia differ in etiology.
Dementia can be detected in testing such
as mri's and psychology testing as well.
Schziophrenia is harder to 'see'.
Dementia is generally untreatable, but
schizophrenia is treatable.
Schizophrenics generally develop their
first break in their early twenties, adult
onset dementia is much later. Dementia
concurs with diagnoses of alzheimer's,
brain injury, stroke, etc while
schizophrenia stands alone.
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Stan
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Posted: 02-22-07 08:44am
Makes sense then. I need to get a new
DSM, I just have this pocket-size
spiral-bound job.
