Schizophrenia is one of the most traumatic psychiatric disorders, both for the affected person and their family. It also carries an unfortunate stigma and suffers from frequent misinterpretation by the popular media. The disorder usually manifests itself through significant periods of hallucinations, bizarre delusions, and disorganized behaviour, but the individuals who suffer from this brain disorder are not generally violent, and do have periods of remission. However it is often difficult for these individuals to maintain a regular lifestyle and relationships at home and at work, and many individuals with schizophrenia end up unable to live independently or, worse, homeless. This new edition in the popular Facts series provides a concise and up-to-date account of the underlying causes and symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as current theories about the disorder. The authors look at all the current treatment options, both medical and psychological, together with likely side-effects and the problem of compliance with treatment. The role of the family and the community in caring for individuals with schizophrenia is also considered. The authors are experienced psychiatrists and psychologists with many years' experience in the treatment and study of schizophrenia. This book will provide a welcome source of information for individuals with schizophrenia, their family members, and those involved in caring for them.
This book presents a long-term study in genetic isolates of indigenous small ethnics of Dagestan, located in the North-East part of Caucasus in Russia. Dagestan is characterized by extreme cultural and linguistic differences in a small geographic area and contains 26 indigenous ethnic groups. According to archeological data these indigenous highland ethnics have been living in the same area for more than ten thousand years. Our long-term population-genetic study of Dagestan indigenous ethnic groups indicates their close relation to each other and suggests that they evolved from one common ancestral meta-population. Dagestan has an extremely high genetic diversity between ethnic populations and a low genetic diversity within them. Such genetic isolates are exceptional resources for the detection of susceptibility genes for complex diseases because of the reduction in genetic and clinical heterogeneity. The founder effect and gene drift in these primary isolates may have caused aggregation of specific haplotypes with limited numbers of pathogenic alleles and loci in some isolates relative to others. The book presents a study in four ethnically and demographically diverse genetic isolates with aggregation of schizophrenia that we ascertained within our Dagestan Genetic Heritage Research Project. The results obtained support the notion that mapping genes of any complex disease (e.g., schizophrenia) in demographically older genetic isolates may be more time and cost effective due to their high clinical and genetic homogeneity, in comparison with demographically younger isolates, especially with genetically heterogeneous outbred populations.
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