Plain-language, educational articles on schizophrenia, psychosis, antipsychotic medications, and lived experience — by ColdAI.
Interpersonal therapy was developed for depression but has been adapted for schizophrenia and the affective episodes that often accompany it. The focus: relationships as both stressor and resource.
Side effectsPersistent stuffy nose on an antipsychotic is usually not allergy or infection — it is alpha-1 receptor blockade dilating nasal blood vessels. Here is the workup and treatment.
MedicationPerphenazine was once one of the most prescribed antipsychotics in the world. After CATIE, it had a renaissance. Today it occupies a quiet but real role in modern psychiatric care.
BehaviorsMost people with schizophrenia can drive safely. The exceptions usually involve specific medications, active symptoms, or recent dose changes — not the diagnosis itself.
StoryI developed postpartum psychosis four days after my daughter was born and was hospitalised within a week. The year that followed taught me what recovery actually looks like for new mothers.
StoryAn honest composite account of the years it can take to find an antipsychotic that works without breaking other parts of your life.
CaregiverMedication adherence in schizophrenia is rarely about willpower — it's about routine, side effects, and trust. Here are the practical levers that families can actually pull.
StigmaYou can't single-handedly fix public stigma — but the stigma you actually encounter in your own life is more navigable than it feels. Here's a playbook drawn from the research.
LifestyleMusic therapy has solid Cochrane-reviewed evidence for improving negative symptoms and social functioning in schizophrenia. Here's what the practice looks like and how to access it.
TherapyThe ABC model is the conceptual backbone of CBT for psychosis: it teaches the person that distress comes not from events alone but from the beliefs we attach to them.
MedicationClozapine has the strongest evidence base for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, reduces suicide risk, and is the only antipsychotic with that specific approval. It is also one of the most under-prescribed medications in modern psychiatry.
MedicationValproate is one of the most commonly added medications to antipsychotic regimens, particularly in inpatient settings. The evidence is much weaker than its prescribing rates suggest.
MedicationLurasidone is one of the more weight-friendly atypicals, but akathisia is common and the 350-calorie meal requirement is non-negotiable. Here's what to know.
ProfileLong before modern psychiatry existed, John Perceval wrote a clear-eyed account of his psychotic episode and what asylum care did and didn't do for him. His advocacy helped start English mental health reform.
ProfileZelda Fitzgerald was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930 and spent much of the next eighteen years inside psychiatric hospitals. Modern biographers and clinicians have argued the diagnosis was probably wrong.
ProfileVincent van Gogh experienced severe psychotic episodes during the last two years of his life and spent twelve months as a voluntary patient in the Saint-Rémy asylum. The precise diagnosis remains genuinely contested.
ProfileElyn Saks, MacArthur 'genius' grant recipient and USC law professor, has lived openly with chronic schizophrenia. Her memoir 'The Center Cannot Hold' changed how many clinicians think about the disorder.
PsychosisSchizophreniform disorder is the diagnostic label for psychosis lasting one to six months. It often, but not always, becomes schizophrenia.
DiagnosisSchizophrenia is one diagnosis among many that can produce overlapping symptoms. Here is how clinicians sort schizophrenia from bipolar disorder, drug-induced psychosis, autism, OCD, and PTSD.
StoryI was diagnosed at 22. The day I turned 50 felt impossible — partly because I had not expected to live this long, and partly because I no longer remembered how to be a person without this illness.
Side effectsSome antipsychotics raise diabetes risk even in patients who do not gain weight. Here is the mechanism, the monitoring, and the management.
StoryI was 32 and an atheist when I had my first psychotic episode. Three years later I started attending a Quaker meeting. The faith I have now is small, careful, and one of the steadiest things in my life.
Substance useAlcohol use disorder co-occurs with schizophrenia at roughly three times the general population rate. Cutting back is achievable — and the benefits show up faster than most people expect.
InternationalWhen Franco Basaglia closed the asylum in Trieste, he replaced it with 24-hour community mental health centres. Fifty years on, the Trieste model is still studied as a benchmark for community psychiatry.
InteractionsMost patients on clozapine drink coffee. Most clinicians don't ask about it. The interaction is mild for moderate use but can become clinically significant at the extremes.
DelusionsDelusions of reference are the eerie experience of feeling that ordinary events — a song lyric, a stranger's glance — carry hidden personal meaning meant just for you.
CopingProgressive muscle relaxation is one of the oldest and best-studied relaxation techniques. With small adjustments, it is a workable tool for the anxiety and tension that often ride alongside psychosis.
StoryClozapine gave me my life back and twenty pounds I did not want. Learning to cook real food in a small apartment was how I got the weight stable and the constipation under control. Here is what worked.
StoryI was diagnosed at nineteen and given an antipsychotic. Twenty years later, at thirty-nine, I started therapy for the first time. It changed my life.
StoryI am 35 and I have decided not to have biological children. The decision was not simple, the grief was real, and the life I am building is my own.