Why Does Schizophrenia Develop at Late Adolescence?

Governments around the world have given priority to "early intervention", i.e. the early diagnosis and treatment of young adults with psychotic symptoms. One of the main problems with this approach, is that only a small proportion of these young adults can be expected to go on to develop schizophrenia, yet all the treatment regimes are derived from work with adults who have had full psychotic episodes. Why Does Schizophrenia Develop at Late Adolescence? proposes a controversial new model of how schizophrenia develops in late adolescence and presents clinical material aimed at influencing the way psychosis is treated, building on a state-of-the-art reassessment of the field. A major reconceptualisation of how schizophrenia develops A controversial approach Early intervention programmes are now extremely widespread, so there is much interest in the area and how best to treat this serious psychotic disorder

About the Authors ix Acknowledgements x Introduction xi Section One: What Is This Schizophrenia? Chapter 1 Schizophrenia: What is it? 3 Chapter 2 Biological Disease or Psychological Problem? Who is Right? 13 Chapter 3 Why Young Men? What the Hell is Going On in Late Adolescence? 33 Chapter 4 Why Might Some People be Blocked? 51 Section Summary 60 Section Two: Psychosis and the Self Chapter 5 The Crisis of the Adolescent Self 63 Chapter 6 The Mystery of the Self: Why have it? What is it? 65 Chapter 7 The Potential and the Limit 73 Chapter 8 How is the Self Constructed?. 77 Chapter 9 The Insecure Self (Le Neant) 79 Chapter 10 Alienated/Engulfed Self (Objectité) 83 Section Summary 90 Section Three: Personal Accounts Chapter 11 How We Asked People to Give Their Personal Accounts 93 Chapter 12 Results I: Anger and Catastrophes 104 Chapter 13 Further Results: Linking Conflict Interactions to Symptoms. 111 Chapter 14 Peer and Romantic Conflicts 133 Section Summary 144 Section Four: What Can Be Done? Therapeutic Ideas Chapter 15 ‘‘Character-based’’ Training. 151 Chapter 16 Overcoming Interpersonal Blocks to Self-construction 168 Chapter 17 Overcoming Symptoms 186 Section Summary 201 Concluding Remarks 202 Appendix The Self and Other Scale 203 References 205 Author Index 217 Subject Index 221