Treating Schizophrenia: What ... Video Transcript

Participants

Joseph Battaglia MD, Nathaniel Lachenmeye , Marty Moss-Coane , Anthony Salerno PhD

Summary

Schizophrenia is a disease that can have devastating effects on a person's ability to function effectively in his or her world. Though there is no cure for schizophrenia, a combination of treatment strategies can often help. Join our panel of medical experts, along with Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, author of The Outsider: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness, as they discuss medical treatments, rehabilitation strategies and support programs for schizophrenia.

Webcast Transcript

MARTY MOSS-COANE: I'm Marty Moss-Coane. Welcome to our webcast. Schizophrenia is seen around the world, and it's a painful medical disorder which affects 1% of the population. The millions who have schizophrenia can be haunted with delusions, paranoias and hallucinations which prevent them from functioning and relating in the world. Before there was treatment, the diagnosis of schizophrenia was like a life sentence with no parole. Today there are treatment options and rehabilitation for people with schizophrenia, as well as support for patients and their families. How successful are these strategies in getting schizophrenics back on track? Joining us to discuss this top we have three guests. Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is the author of "The Outsider: A Journey of My Father's Struggle with Madness." His father, Charles, was a Ph.D. sociologist who eventually ended up homeless, diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. The book he has written is about a son's coming to terms with his father's life. Nice to have you with us on our webcast.

NATHANIEL LACHENMEYER: Thank you.

MARTY MOSS-COANE: Joining us as well, Dr. Joseph Battaglia, clinical director of the Bronx Psychiatric Center. Nice to have you with us.

NATHANIEL LACHENMEYER: Thank you.

MARTY MOSS-COANE: And Dr. Anthony Salerno is with us as well, director of rehabilitation services at Rockland Psychiatric Center in New York. Nice to have you with us, as well.

ANTHONY SALERNO, PH.D.: Thank you.

MARTY MOSS-COANE: Dr. Battaglia, perhaps I'll begin with you. What is the common treatment for schizophrenia?

JOSEPH BATTAGLIA, MD: The mainstay has been medication. There have been some recent developments, but prior to the last 10 years, the mainstay was medications that blocked dopamine. What they would do was reduce hallucinations and delusions. But they didn't improve someone's cognitive abilities. They didn't improve their emotional feelings. If anything, dopamine is in the reward system, so if you block dopamine in someone, they actually feel less of a reward for something that would make you happy if you did it. There was a realization that just by reducing hallucinations and delusions didn't guarantee someone was going to get better.

The newer medications may improve, or at least don't make cognitive functions worse, but there's an appreciation now that that just brings them to be able to participate and get more from therapies. There's evidence to show that cognitive therapies are very helpful, vocational, reintegration with work, family therapies -- that the three combined actually give someone the best chance of continuing to do well.

MARTY MOSS-COANE: Let me turn to you, Dr. Salerno, about the rehabilitation process and what you find works with someone with schizophrenia.

ANTHONY SALERNO, PH.D.: One of the outcomes of schizophrenia is functional problems. Basic things in terms of living, learning and working and establishing relationships over time, and there is a deterioration in the person's skill level, so that we need a lot of opportunities to help a person learn, and to learn how to get along with others, learning the basics of managing one's environment, learning to get back to work, actually choosing a goal, the whole process of deciding on a direction in life, to find some meaning in life. Once this illness has occurred, it can be so disruptive to the original plans that a person had, and original goals. So how do you help somebody say, "Listen, I have these limitations, I have these problems, how do I fashion out and identify some goals that are realistic for me, and that also improve the quality of my life?" So that's what rehabilitation is all about.