by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: August 25, 2010

Schizophrenia used to be thought of as mainly a childhood disease. At least it was most prevalent in post-pubescent children. It was then called dementia praecox or precocious dementia.

What is different today is that the age of onset of schizophrenia is decreasing. It is also increasing as older individuals are now having psychotic breaks. It should be noted that children are suffering more diseases early in life than ever before, including things like diabetes.

Children with schizophrenia exhibit many of the same symptoms as adults, hallucinations, delusions, ideas of reference, and paranoia. But because the younger child is still developing social skills, ordinary social behavior can be overwhelming and almost impossible to deal with.

Adult schizophrenics often must also be re-socialized and taught to take care of their room and learn basic chores like cooking. Therapy is often directed at successfully completing everyday tasks such as doing laundry, the dishes, and even taking a bus.

For ordinary children, learning these kinds of tasks is the work of years. For those with schizophrenia, such tasks can seem insurmountable. For a schizophrenic child, ordinary social behavior, like eating dinner with the family or trying to function in a regular school, is extremely challenging.

For adult or post puberty schizophrenics most of these skills have already been learned and are somewhat second nature. So the child schizophrenic has more issues, in general, than the adult.

Symptoms

Hallucinations are common to all sufferers of schizophrenia, although all do not suffer hallucinations. And not all experience hallucinations all the time. One of the purposes of anti-psychotic drugs is to decrease hallucinations and delusions.

Are child hallucinations different from those of adults? The hallucinations of adults are quite different from one another. We would expect child hallucinations to be different from adults and also from one another.

One thing we know about children is that nightmares are common to all. It is likely that child hallucinations may take on more sinister aspects than those of adults. Children in general experience more of a sense of powerlessness due to their size and age. For the schizophrenic this is heightened and exacerbated by their age and lack of experience.

The same can be said for delusions. Delusions are very individual and usually tailored to the individual psyche. Some common motifs appear in all age groups. Paranoia is certainly ubiquitous

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