Childhood onset schizophrenia

Forums: Health, Childhood, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, Psychopharmacuticals
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I read this article yesterday about a 7 year old schizophrenic: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-jani29-2009dec29,0,2251427,full.story

The article says:

Quote:

It was a little more than a year ago that January Schofield, at age 6, began to drift from reality. Suicidal, violent and plagued by hallucinations of rats and cats who conversed and played with her, she began the first of seven psychiatric hospitalizations.

As of today, Jani, 7, has been out of the hospital for 56 days, the longest period in 15 months.

Quote:

She takes a combination of the antipsychotic drugs Clozaril and Thorazine and the mood stabilizer lithium.

She's 7 years old!

I thought this article was especially interesting in light of the "parents and Santa" thread's debate about children's abilty to grasp the differences between reality and fantasy.

I wonder how someone could tell if their child was schizophrenic.

It all just seems very strange to me so I thought I would open it up for discussion.

Thanks for your thoughts!

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Type: Question • Score: 7 • Views: 2,683 • Replies: 7

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@boomerang,

Schizophrenia is a horrible, horrible disease.

It comes on slowly, but eventually it's pretty clear that folks are responding to internal stimuli.

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According to the NIH, people who get Schizophrenia are usually between the
ages of 16 - 30. Very rarely do children get Schizophrenia. Perhaps that child
has a different problem, or it is one of these rare cases.

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@DrewDad,

I can't even imagine how hopeless that family must feel. There is a link in that story to a previous story about the little girl. Truly frightening.

I had no idea that children could be schizophrenic. Reading around on it I see that it is very rare but not unheard of.

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@CalamityJane,

I admit that I thought it must be something else -- then I read the first article.

EVERYbody thought it was something else but nothing was helping.

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I know very little about the onset of schizophrenia but the child of a family friend started showing strange behaviors in high school. Some of those behaviors were physical manifestations, such as walking on her tip-toes, which the family was later told were sometimes indicative of this disorder. It's truly a tragic diagnosis for the family.

Here's a link on childhood onset schizophrenia.

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My brother is schizophrenic.

He started young too.

believe me. You know when something is wrong. And I dont know that I can explain why. Not because I dont want to.. because there are certain behaviors that do not portray well in written word..

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@boomerang,

Schitophrenia with children starts at the age of about seven, eight but before 13 years aka Very Early Onset Schizophrenia (VEOS).
It's later called Early Onset Schizophrenia (EOS), that is before the child is 18.

But though it happens rarely, the psychiatric children hospital for our region deals with about 20 patients per year stationary and about about 10 in day care (in three day care clinics) (600 children per year stationary).

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Childhood onset schizophrenia

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