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Home › Articles › Mental Health › Teenage Schizophrenia

Teenage Schizophrenia

A World of Their Own

By Carma Haley Shoemaker

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

Heredity May Play a Role
Teens who have a family member with schizophrenia are 30 percent more likely to develop the disorder themselves, NARSAD reports. If both parents have the disorder or a history of the disorder, the teen is then 40 percent more likely to develop schizophrenia.

"My brother struggled with what took us years to diagnose paranoid schizophrenia," says Tammie McElligott of Berrien Springs, Mich. "Before becoming ill, he was a friendly boy who loved to play, laugh and be with people. As the illness began to show itself, he seldom joined the rest of the family."

During her brother's junior high years, teachers reported that the boy seemed distracted. By age 22, he left the house with a gun, walked down the street and fatally shot himself.

"It is amazing to my family how this particular illness has been making headlines more and more with boys in their teenage years and early 20s," McElligott says. "There are concerns as to the possibilities of either my sister or myself having the illness and what about our children?"

Different Symptoms Than Adults
The disorder expresses itself differently in teens. It is often difficult to recognize it in the early stages unless evaluated by an adolescent psychiatrist who specializes in teenage schizophrenia. Yet the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry offers the following warning signs, which may indicate the onset of teenage schizophrenia: