Medication assisted treatment combined with therapy has been effective for schizophrenia. At La Jolla Recovery, we believe that mental health deserves professional attention and the proper therapy and program for successful reintegration with society.
Understanding the history and classification of schizophrenia is key for the right intervention, approach and awareness.
The classical subtypes of schizophrenia include the paranoid, hebephrenic, undifferentiated, residual, catatonic, and simple.
Psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, supportive therapy and family interventions were the only available psychotherapies for a long time. Consensus was reached in that psychoanalysis is not indicated in patients with schizophrenia. Orthodox behavioral therapy made valuable contributions, but was mostly aimed at compensating behavioral deficits. Family therapy has shown positive effects in important clinical outcomes like psychotic relapse, medication compliance and rehospitalization. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been introduced not only for helping to compensate certain deficits of schizophrenia, but also to complement medication in the treatment of positive, emotional and negative symptoms.
The “first clinical description of a case of schizophrenia, was described in the English physician John Haslam´s “Illustration of Madness” although the term schizophrenia appeared up to a century later. It presented the case of James Tilly Mathews, who was a tea merchant, married and the father of two children. France imprisoned him in 1793 because he claimed the existence of telepathic communications between France and the United Kingdom. He wrote to British ministers to denounce conspiracies against his country. According to him, a gang of villains in London, very skilled in “Pneumatic Chemistry”, assaulted him with a mind control machine, built by French Jacobin revolutionaries to lead England into a war disaster.