Nightmares occur more frequently in patients with schizophrenia than they do in the general population. Nightmares are profoundly distressing and may exacerbate daytime psychotic symptoms and undermine day-to-day function. Clinicians do not often ask about nightmares in the context of psychotic illness and patients may underreport them or, if nightmares are reported, they may be disregarded; it...
Sleep problems are recognized as widespread in patients with psychosis. Other facts are known as well – that not only can psychiatric illness result in sleep problems, but that these same problems can exacerbate psychopathology and that they constitute risk factors for suicide. Sleep difficulties are known to respond well to appropriate treatment and yet, with the exception of insomnia, sleep...
Adolf Meyer (1866-1950) did not see schizophrenia as a discrete disorder with a specific etiology but, rather, as a reaction to a wide variety of biopsychosocial factors. He may have been right. Today, we have evidence that gene mutations, brain injury, drug use (cocaine, amphetamine, marijuana, phencyclidine, and steroids), prenatal infection and malnutrition, social isolation and...
This paper reflects the intersection of three cultures: the rave (all night dance party and use of the drug, Ecstasy) culture; the ward culture of an inpatient psychiatric program for First Episode Psychosis; the spirit healing culture of the Philippines. All three intersected in Toronto, Canada in the mid 1990s, as illustrated by the clinical case of a 19-year-old university student who was...