Perspectives on schizophrenia

[soaringheights]

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In my clinical internship last month, I had to make home visits for patients with schizophrenia. The culture I come from predominantly has joint families, so all my patients were staying with their parents (some even as old as 50 yrs were doing so). The one striking aspect that I noticed was how the families were pathological in their communication and relationship styles...in all the cases the patient was overprotected to the point of being smothered by the family members. This also resulted in most patients showing regressive behaviours and an inability to take responsibility. There was a high degree of emotional expression of most of the family members.

My interest here is:have people in this forum with patients of schizophrenia also experienced similar situations (with pathological families), or is it a manifestation of the culture of the land? In other words, is this a universal phenomenon?

Another thing I noticed was how the incidence and prevalance of catatonic schizophrenia has reduced in contemporary times. Is industrialization the only reason for this, or may it also reflect changes in the diagnostic criteria? I'd also like to know the incidence of catatonic schizophrenia in the various countries of the world.

Thanks
soaringheights

 

[LM02]

In my clinical internship last month, I had to make home visits for patients with schizophrenia. The culture I come from predominantly has joint families, so all my patients were staying with their parents (some even as old as 50 yrs were doing so). The one striking aspect that I noticed was how the families were pathological in their communication and relationship styles...in all the cases the patient was overprotected to the point of being smothered by the family members. This also resulted in most patients showing regressive behaviours and an inability to take responsibility. There was a high degree of emotional expression of most of the family members.

My interest here is:have people in this forum with patients of schizophrenia also experienced similar situations (with pathological families), or is it a manifestation of the culture of the land? In other words, is this a universal phenomenon?

Another thing I noticed was how the incidence and prevalance of catatonic schizophrenia has reduced in contemporary times. Is industrialization the only reason for this, or may it also reflect changes in the diagnostic criteria? I'd also like to know the incidence of catatonic schizophrenia in the various countries of the world.

Thanks
soaringheights

There is an extensive literature on schizophrenia and a construct called Expressed Emotion (EE) in families. This research goes back a couple of decades, and has since been extended to other disorders such as bipolar disorder and major depression. If you do a lit search, you should be able to find a wealth of empirical papers on the topic.

 

[soaringheights]

I know about EE. I was only wondering whether its manifestation differs from one culture to another.