mpairments in social activity began 12 years before hospitalization for the illness.
Clinicians and patients would benefit from the identification of early schizophrenia symptoms. To learn more about early symptoms, researchers cross-referenced a national hospitalization database in Israel with data from mandatory psychological and functional assessments of draft eligibility in 723,316 Israeli males aged 16 to 17 (mean follow-up, 10 years).
The data provided pre-illness information about functioning in 3929 individuals who were eventually hospitalized for schizophrenia. The investigators compared 1659 of these individuals plus a matched nonaffected sibling with 167,616 well sibling pairs.
Social activity (ability to make and maintain friends), independent behavior (ability to make decisions and resolve conflict in interactions), and school/work functioning were correlated with each other. For patients, early impairments began in social activity and school/work functioning. Social impairments began 12 years before the first hospitalization and increased as hospitalization got closer, but deterioration paused for a few years preceding the 5 years prior to hospitalization. Independent behavior began to worsen 5 years before first hospitalization. Compared with controls, unaffected siblings of patients had much smaller impairments in social activity and school/work functioning; these impairments did not increase.
That’s interesting. Considering even at the age of 6, my Teacher said I was day dreaming alot and recommended I go to summer school. Thankfully the doors were locked when my Dad took me and it didn’t ruin my summer.
That explains my decision to vie for a meteorology degree even after failing Algebra 2 and passing Honors American History in High School rather than a History degree in the first place. I also remember social and school grades deterioration beginning at age 11. I previously thought it was the events like the divorce of my parents and other things like the first girl I fell in love with leaving town. But I now think it was going to happen anyway.
Not diagnosed any longer with schizophrenia and schizoaffective but my social activity functioning was poor from the age of 8 or even earlier and my school work functioning went on a downward slide compared to before from the age of 9. Not sure about independent behaviour but think it wasn’t that good as a teenager.
I was first admitted when I was 18 having been seeing a pdoc as an outpatient for about 18 months.
I had trouble in 8th grade with Algebra. It was also, because I didn’t have glasses at the time. I don’t know how I made it through my senior year in high school. I was sick the maximum number of days. I wouldn’t have been able to graduate.