Overcoming Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disease that causes people to have strange thoughts, feelings and behavior. There is no known cause for schizophrenia. It is a lifelong disease that with treatment can allow a person to function better. For adults the disease affects 1 in 100, however fortunately for children, which is a rare case, schizophrenia affects about 1 in 40,000 children. Although the average age of onset for the disease is 18 for men and 25 for women; some children could get schizophrenia over the age of five, but it is very uncommon before adolescence. Early symptoms and behaviors of schizophrenia in children are gradual shyness, clinging to parents, and delayed speech and motor skills, usually before hallucinations and delusions set in, around the age of seven or later. Children with schizophrenia are commonly confused with children with autism, which affects 1 in 500 children. The difference is children with autism are usually diagnosed with the disease by age three, while chil...