Pathology

Schizophrenia is a disease that affects people in every aspect of life. Patients suffer from reduced capacities to:

• develop creative and imaginative thinking
• have harmonious social relations
• express their ideas clearly
• experience and exchange emotions such as love or fear
• exercise an autonomous professional activity

Their suffering is often worsened by tormented and persecuting feelings; some patients hear voices and believe that they are insulted or threatened by some strange evil power.

Symptoms related to schizophrenia are generally divided into positive symptoms (hallucinations, confusion, incoherent behaviour) and negative symptoms (defects on the level of language, communication, emotions). Dysfunctions also affect patients' cognitive capacities (memory, abstraction, attention) and, moreover, include perceptive disorders.

In addition, patients suffering from schizophrenia present non specific symptoms: anxiety, depression, aggressiveness, addiction (drugs) and suicidal tendencies among others.

The outbreak of the disease depends on combined factors, both genetic and linked to the environment, which lead to subtle abnormalities in the brain. Schizophrenia probably develops unnoticed from birth onwards, becomes generally apparent between 18 and 25 years of age, and often handicaps patients for the rest of their lives.

To this day, no preventive treatment has been developed; available medication has an effect on positive symptoms but does not improve negative symptoms, nor cognitive or basic (perceptive disorders) symptoms, which represent a major obstacle to social and professional rehabilitation. Furthermore, existing medication often causes very painful side effects and does not guarantee a normal life.

 

Frequency

Schizophrenia is a very frequent disease as it affects 1% of the world population, regardless of cultures, countries or social levels. For Switzerland, this corresponds to approximately 76'000 people.

Given the social taboo still surrounding the disease, it remains largely hidden, tucked away in the silence of affected families. These circumstances prevent the awareness needed to promote research, and represent an additional obstacle to scientific and therapeutic progress.
 

Costs

Schizophrenia not only forces many torments on patients and their families but is also prejudicial for society. Indeed, direct costs of the disease (long term treatments, frequent and repeated hospitalizations, socioprofessional rehabilitation, disability allowances, etc.) amount to CHF 3 to 4 billion per year in Switzerland (a figure corresponding to the budget of the army).

Facts and figures mentioned above highlight the issues at stake in the field of research: gain a better understanding of schizophrenia in order to improve its treatment, and ultimatly prevent it, are objectives that concern patients in the first place but also benefit their often deeply troubled families as well as society at large.