Schizophrenia is a psychotic neurological disorder that causes sufferers to abnormally interpret reality. Hallucinations like hearing "voices"; disordered thinking, speech and behavior; and delusions, as well as memory loss, are typical results of the disorder. Memory loss is caused by the abnormalities that schizophrenics display in the frontal lobes and the hippocampus. These are the two areas that influence how the brain records, orders and stores memory. While you cannot restore full memory function to a schizophrenic because of the nature of the disorder, you can help reduce memory loss.
Instructions
1. Avoid procyclidone and risperidone, two antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia and its symptoms. Those two drugs, in particular, have been shown to increase memory loss as a side effect.
2. Talk to your doctor about olanzapine, a newer drug that has been shown to reduce the deterioration and loss of gray matter that takes place in schizophrenics. Researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute studied schizophrenics who were given haloperidol, a commonly prescribed antipsychotic, and ones that olanzapine. The ones on haloperidol lost about two percent of their gray matter, while the olanzapine patients did not.
3. Try cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat hallucinations or delusions and reduce the amount of drugs like procyclidone and risperidone you need to take. Subjects in a British study showed improvements in symptoms by as much as 50 percent.
4. Explore nonmedical therapies, such as talking therapies, art/music therapies, exercise and diet/nutritional changes to control symptoms and reduce dependence on antipsychotics. This will help to minimize the side effects these drugs have on memory. The majority of the 2,500 patients surveyed by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship who tried these therapies reported that they found them to be helpful or very helpful.
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