Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain but it causes many mental problems. The root cause of this disease is not known but bad genes seem to be a hot favorite. It affects both the sexes. Though there are some cases of children being affected, it is normally a disease manifesting during the teenage years.

The symptoms of schizophrenia vary with the type of schizophrenia that a person suffers from. The most common form is paranoid schizophrenia. The patient imagines himself a victim of all sorts of conspiracies. Everyone is out to get him. To bolster this view, hallucinations and delusions are quite common. He hears voices inside him. With this persecution complex it becomes extremely difficult to maintain interpersonal relationships with family and friends.

Disorganized schizophrenia affects the person's abilities to think logically. A normal thought process recognizes the relevance of a particular thought at that moment, focuses on it and moves to the next in sequence. In disorganized schizophrenia the thoughts crowd the brain together and nothing gets sorted out. Catatonic schizophrenia causes a person to be emotionally flat. A normal emotional response of a particular situation will be missing in this person. He becomes dull, withdrawn and apathetic. There may be a psychomotor problem also involved in catatonic schizophrenia. Residual schizophrenia is a condition in which a person may have been treated and rid of most of the symptoms of schizophrenia, but lacks a positive attitude to get on with life. He needs help to kick-start his thought process towards the positive side, away from the zero that he is wallowing in. Schizoaffective disorder sufferers have the symptoms of schizophrenia and some more. These persons develop mood disorders like depression and mania. Undifferentiated schizophrenia is all that cannot be pigeonholed as a particular type. It may have some symptoms of different types of schizophrenia.

Treating schizophrenia only treats the symptoms of it. There is no cure. But symptoms can be very effectively treated with anti-psychotic, anti-depressive and anti-convulsive drugs. Electro-convulsive therapy, as a last resort, is very effective.