Plain-language, educational articles on schizophrenia, psychosis, antipsychotic medications, and lived experience — by ColdAI.
Peter Green founded Fleetwood Mac and wrote some of the most admired guitar music of the 1960s. After a notorious 1970 acid trip in Munich, he spent more than two decades largely withdrawn from public life with a schizophrenia diagnosis.
SymptomsCatatonia is an under-recognised but highly treatable syndrome that can appear in schizophrenia. Most cases respond rapidly to lorazepam.
PsychosisSubstances can trigger psychosis acutely, or in vulnerable people contribute to long-term psychotic disorders. The evidence varies considerably by drug class.
OverviewMen with schizophrenia are typically diagnosed earlier than women and face a slightly more difficult average course. The reasons are not fully understood — but the patterns matter for how care is organised.
FAQEarly signs of schizophrenia include social withdrawal, declining performance, sleep changes, and unusual perceptual experiences — usually appearing in the late teens or early twenties.
HallucinationsVisual hallucinations occur in roughly a quarter of people with schizophrenia. The texture of those experiences differs in subtle but useful ways from visual hallucinations of other causes.
City guidesHouston's mental-health system runs through the Harris Center, UTHealth, Baylor's Menninger Department, and Harris Health. This is a practical guide for families navigating schizophrenia care in Houston.
StoryMy grandmother died in February. She had raised me. I have schizophrenia. I stayed stable through her illness, her death, and the funeral — and that quiet fact is its own kind of recovery.
MindfulnessTai chi pairs slow, flowing movement with relaxed attention. The evidence in schizophrenia is small but encouraging, particularly for negative symptoms, balance, and physical health.
MediaAugusten Burroughs's 2002 memoir is a darkly comic account of a 1970s childhood spent inside the household of his mother's psychiatrist. The Turcotte family later sued. The book remains a complicated artefact of how psychiatry has been depicted in popular culture.
StoryAfter my third hospitalization, the state pulled my driver's license. It took eighteen months to get it back. The story is not the lecture I expected.
Peer supportMindFreedom International is a long-running coalition of psychiatric survivors that has spent decades organising against forced treatment and for the human rights of people in the mental health system.
RecoveryThe recovery movement and the psychiatric survivor movement share roots in lived experience but ask different questions. Understanding both helps people choose what frameworks fit their lives.
TransitionsGoing from a psychiatric ward to a stable place to live is harder than it sounds. Supportive housing — when it works — is one of the most powerful interventions in serious mental illness.
Differential diagnosisAutism and schizophrenia share social withdrawal and unusual perceptions but are distinct neurodevelopmental and psychotic conditions — and they can co-occur in the same person.
MythsSchizophrenia changes how the brain processes information, but it does not reduce a person's underlying intelligence. The relationship is more complex than the stereotype.
TherapyMany people with psychosis carry years of shame and self-criticism. Compassion-Focused Therapy directly addresses those emotional drivers and has shown promising results in voices and paranoia.
StoryI was hospitalised in July, diagnosed in August, and started college in October — three weeks behind every other freshman. Here is how the next four years went.
CaregiverAn only child with schizophrenia changes the math of caregiving. There are no siblings to share the load — but there is a path through, planned for the long horizon.
WorkplaceRemote work can be a genuine accommodation for people with schizophrenia — or it can erode the structure that holds recovery together. Here is how to think about it.
LifestyleSmoking rates in schizophrenia are roughly three times higher than the general population, and the resulting health gap is enormous. Quitting is hard but possible — and it is safer than most people think.
TherapyLong before Open Dialogue, Finnish psychiatrist Yrjö Alanen built Need-Adapted Treatment — a flexible model that treats every first episode of psychosis as unique.
Side EffectStopping antipsychotic medication is rarely simple. This guide covers discontinuation symptoms, supersensitivity, relapse risk, and how to taper safely with a clinician.
MedicationLoxapine is one of the few antipsychotics that exists as both a daily oral tablet and an inhaled rescue medication for acute agitation. Here is how it works and where it fits.
MedicationZiprasidone is one of the most weight-friendly antipsychotics — but it requires food with every dose, modest QT monitoring, and patience with akathisia.
MedicationPaliperidone is the active metabolite of risperidone, sold as a once-daily extended-release pill and as long-acting injections lasting from a month to six months.
NeuroscienceSchizophrenia increasingly looks like a disorder with an immune component. Microglia, complement proteins, and cytokines are now central to research — though many questions remain.
StoryMy sister died when her daughter was four. I was the only family member who could take her in. I was also living with schizophrenia. Five years later, we are doing okay.
Rating scalesSixty years after it was first published, the BPRS is still in use because it is short, broad, and easy to teach. It is the rating scale equivalent of the screwdriver in the toolbox.
Thought disorderCircumstantial speech eventually arrives at the point but only after a long, detail-heavy detour. It is the gentlest of the disorganised speech patterns and easily mistaken for ordinary verbosity.