Plain-language, educational articles on schizophrenia, psychosis, antipsychotic medications, and lived experience — by ColdAI.
Decades of PET imaging have shown elevated presynaptic dopamine in the striatum of people with schizophrenia. The associative striatum, not the limbic striatum, is where the abnormality is largest.
Expressive therapiesDance/movement therapy is not a dance class. It is a structured psychological therapy that uses the body and movement as a way to engage with experiences that often resist words.
HousingBoard and care homes have been part of the US mental health landscape since deinstitutionalisation. They are uneven in quality and largely invisible — but for many people with schizophrenia, they are home.
ResearchCopy number variants are larger structural changes in DNA — duplications or deletions of whole gene-containing segments. A handful are now established as strong, rare risk factors for schizophrenia.
Medical comorbidityHepatitis C is several times more common in people with schizophrenia than in the general population — and modern direct-acting antivirals can cure it in 8 to 12 weeks.
MedicationCariprazine is a D3-preferring partial agonist with an unusually long half-life. The pharmacology shapes how it feels, how slowly it works, and how slowly it leaves the system.
TherapyCompassion-focused therapy was built for people for whom self-criticism is the deepest layer of suffering. For many people with psychosis, that fits.
TherapyTherapy for voices doesn't aim to silence them — it aims to change the relationship a person has with them. The approach has surprisingly strong evidence.
TechnologyTelepsychiatry exploded in 2020 and has not contracted back. The evidence in schizophrenia is now substantial — and largely reassuring, with caveats.
Crisis & safetyBeing restrained or secluded is one of the most common but least talked-about sources of trauma in psychiatric care. Naming it is where healing begins.
Special populationsThere is a striking and unexplained observation in the literature: people who are congenitally blind almost never develop schizophrenia. People who lose vision later in life have a different — and more complicated — relationship with psychosis.
Side effectsClozapine is the most effective antipsychotic for treatment-resistant schizophrenia — and the only one that requires blood monitoring for life. Here is what the REMS program is, and where it is heading.
Medication managementSurgery is stressful enough without losing track of psychiatric medication. Here is how patients and prescribers plan around the operating room.
HallucinationsSomatic hallucinations are perceived sensations from inside the body — organs moving, blood flowing in unusual ways, foreign objects within. They overlap with but differ from somatic delusions.
Drug interactionsCannabis interacts with antipsychotics in several layered ways — through liver enzyme induction, through additive sedation and cognitive effects, and through worsening of psychotic symptoms.
SleepNightmares in schizophrenia are not random. They have specific drivers — REM rebound, medication effects, trauma, and circadian disruption — and there are practical things that help.
StoryI retired six months ago at 62 from a forty-year career. I have schizophrenia. The retirement transition has been harder and better than I expected, and nobody warned me about either part.
Negative symptomsExecutive function is the family of high-level cognitive processes that organise behaviour toward goals — planning, problem-solving, flexibility, inhibition. In schizophrenia, these are often substantially reduced.
SeasonsEight nights of candles, latkes, and gathering can be wonderful — and tiring. A calm guide to keeping medication, sleep, and family dynamics steady through Hanukkah.
DisparitiesSchizophrenia is not a one-shape illness. Onset, course, treatment response, and side-effect risk all differ between men and women — and ignoring these differences leaves both groups under-served.
Substance useHarm reduction is not the opposite of recovery — it is one of its most effective foundations. Here is how the framework applies to people with schizophrenia who use substances.
Legal & FinancialCalifornia's IHSS program pays family members and others to provide help with cooking, cleaning, and personal care. Other states have similar programs under Medicaid HCBS waivers. Schizophrenia can qualify.
StoryA year and a half on the apps, three serious dates, two disclosures, one relationship. Here is what I would tell my past self about dating with schizophrenia in your late twenties.
StoryA composite story about what happens when you stop your antipsychotic on your own. The first weeks felt like clarity. The next year did not.
CaregiverNot every psychiatrist is comfortable treating schizophrenia. Here is how to find one who genuinely is — and what to do when the first one isn't a fit.
LifestyleLiving near green space is associated with measurably better mental health outcomes — including reduced schizophrenia risk. Here's what the evidence shows and how to use it.
HospitalWhen a loved one is admitted to a psychiatric unit, the family experience is its own ordeal. A small amount of preparation makes the first 48 hours dramatically easier.
HospitalPsychiatric admission is unfamiliar and often frightening. Knowing what actually happens — intake, daily structure, treatment, discharge — makes it less so.
Side EffectAkathisia is a hard-to-describe inner restlessness — a need to move that is impossible to satisfy. Recognising it early matters; it is treatable and is linked to suicide risk if missed.
MedicationAristada is a long-acting aripiprazole prodrug with multiple dosing intervals — from every month to every 8 weeks — and a separate Aristada Initio form that can shorten the oral overlap to a single day.