Neuroimaging studies have identified patterns of brain abnormalities in various stages of schizophrenia, but whether these abnormalities reflect primary factors associated with the causes of illness or secondary phenomena such as medications has been unclear.
Recent work conducted within the prodromal risk paradigm suggests that progressive change in brain structure and function occurs around the time when clinically high-risk individuals transition into full-blown psychosis, effects that cannot be explained by exposure to medications or illness chronicity.
This bears out my decision a couple of decades ago to treat my Sz as it if were a brain injury and to try and do those things the brain injured do to regain function.