The World of the Schizophrenia Child

Schizophrenia in children is something I knew absolutely nothing about until I watched Oprah on her October 6, 2009 television show about schizophrenia in children. At that moment I was hooked, both with the struggling parents and the child in the show who had been born with the schizophrenia condition, even though she was not diagnosed with it until 5 to 7 years of age.

Reading and studying about schizophrenia, I found that a later diagnosis in schizophrenia children was because of the symptom overlap in pediatric psychiatric disorders, with a major focus on children who had schizophrenia running in the child's family.

Thank goodness schizophrenia in children is a very rare cognitive disorder, affecting only one child in approximately 40,000 cases as compared to the adult schizophrenia, which affects one out of every 100 cases.With schizophrenia, the average age onset is 18 for men and 25 for women. It is ranked among the top 10 causes of disabilities in worldwide developed countries.

If schizophrenia runs in the family, several obvious symptoms may develop in an infant or toddler that otherwise would appear normal. In schizophrenia children, the symptoms are looked at as a whole, instead of individually :

· An infant may have trouble eating or sleeping.

· The infant may develop hypotonia or "floppy baby" syndrome which looks like poor muscle tone.

· The infant may develop a fear of any objects moving too quickly.

· The infant may have complete inactivity.

· Later on, a toddler may begin wandering around at night while the family is sleeping.

· The toddler may develop a leaning behavior of the body or a slumping posture.

· The toddler may develop a very short-attention span.

· The infant or toddler may have a facial expression that appears worried or distracted.

· The toddler may be overly fearful and anxious about new things, even though in a normal child this is considered normal behavior. (When diagnosed with schizophrenia, the fear and anxiety is seen as much more severe)

· High fevers are seen in a toddler with schizophrenia between the ages of two and five.

· Many other things may be seen---fear of the dark; fear of clothing labels; fear of rapidly moving things; playing in a repetitive manner other than one of imagination; and a possible fear of hair-cuts.

Once the schizophrenic child is over age six, they may begin hallucinating. What is heard as auditory hallucinations are bangs, clangs, loud scrapes, explosions, door slamming, and whispering voices.

Their visual hallucinations appear like dark streaks or wiggling snakes, rolling balls, or a dark background with streaks of light appearing against it. They will appear to talk, smile or converse at something or someone unseen—described as children who are "inner-directed".

The child who is a schizophrenia has been viewed as putting his/her hands over their ears while remarking that someone was speaking to them in their head. Because this thing, person or persons are unseen by the parents, teachers or doctors, what the child sees as a very real situation is actually unreal.

But what is real is their paranoia, or the idea that someone is out to get them or is talking about them as they get older.

Paranoia causes the schizophrenia child or adolescent to develop severe anxiety and become withdrawn, developing an increased isolation as the condition worsens. Their thinking and perception of reality becomes confused and changes slowly over time.

The schizophrenia child is convinced that every gesture they see, every posture of surrounding people, animals and things—both real and unreal combined with their every look and noise---has severe significance that will do them harm, based on what they are hearing from their "inner voices" or sensing with their distorted reality.

Any unknown shadow or vague outline becomes an instant threat, causing the child to size up their surroundings instantly and placing it in comparison to everything they know, both past and current, while always thinking it is doing damage to them or telling them to hurt someone or them self.

Parents need to understand that even if a child is officially diagnosed with schizophrenia, all the listed symptoms may not match that particular child. The earliest symptoms are only possibilities and based on statistics. Some hereditary components may be more hereditary than others, depending on the child and its genetics.

A child who has no background of schizophrenia in the family  has a 1% chance of developing schizophrenia. This will increase to 13% if one or the other parent has it, with only a 4% chance if one of the child's grandparents have it. If BOTH parents have it, then the rate jumps to 36%.

It has not been found if schizophrenia is a group of disorders or not, but some of the symptoms also could lead to excess stress, PTSD, anxiety, depression, bipolar mood disorder, SID, Cushings Disorder, Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS), PANDAS, severe OCD, and other neurological conditions. So before a diagnosis can be correctly made for schizophrenia in the child, many tests need to be done:

• From one to three EEGs to rule out seizure disorders
• Brain MRI
• Endocrinologist tests for Thyroid and Pituitary functions to rule out other conditions
• Testing for yeast, strep (PANDAS) nutritional evaluation, allergy evaluation, and so forth
• Psychiatrist studies for early onset bipolar disorder, autistic-spectrum illness, and other mood disorders