Plain-language, educational articles on schizophrenia, psychosis, antipsychotic medications, and lived experience — by ColdAI.
Quetiapine's most common side effects are sedation and metabolic changes. Both are predictable, both are manageable — but only with proactive monitoring and honest conversations.
ProfileArnhild Lauveng spent ten years inside the Norwegian psychiatric system with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Today she is a practising clinical psychologist whose books are translated into a dozen languages.
ProfileDiagnosed with schizophrenia in college, astronomer-turned-advocate Cecilia McGough founded Students With Psychosis, one of the largest peer-led organisations for young people with the diagnosis.
ProfileBrian Wilson, the principal songwriter of the Beach Boys, lived with schizoaffective disorder for more than fifty years and continued to write and perform throughout. His story is honest about both the cost and the possibility.
SymptomsDisorganised thinking is the symptom that makes conversation hard to follow during a psychotic episode. It reflects a disruption in how thoughts are sequenced, not a loss of intelligence.
PsychosisLong before a first episode of psychosis, there is usually a quieter phase of subtle changes. Catching it can change the entire course of the illness.
OverviewSchizophrenia affects men and women at similar rates over a lifetime, but the timing, hormonal interactions, and life-stage challenges look very different. A practical overview for women and their clinicians.
Rating scalesNegative symptoms are the hardest to measure because they are absences rather than presences. The SANS was the first scale that took them seriously, and it still anchors much of the field.
StoryI went back to my old high school last spring, ten years after my first hospitalization. The visit was small, ordinary, and one of the most healing things I have ever done.
StoryI refused antipsychotics for seven years after my diagnosis. The reasons made sense to me at the time. The reasons I finally said yes are the part I want to write about.
TherapyMindfulness has moved from monasteries into mainstream mental health. For psychosis, it can be powerful — but it needs careful adaptation, and it is not safe in every form for every person.
StoryI lost my warehouse coordinator job after a relapse and spent more than a year rebuilding. The path through unemployment, supported employment, and back to a paycheck was longer than I expected.
CaregiverAn adult child moving home is rarely Plan A — but it can be a stable foundation for recovery if the household is set up thoughtfully.
WorkplaceFor people living with schizophrenia, pacing is not laziness — it is a survival strategy that protects everything you have built. Here is how to do it on purpose.
RecoveryPeer support specialists — workers in recovery from their own mental illness — are now part of mainstream care. The evidence for what they add is strong.
TherapyOpen Dialogue is a Finnish approach to first-episode psychosis built around rapid family meetings, minimal medication, and treating the network rather than the individual.
LAIHaloperidol decanoate has been a workhorse LAI for decades — given monthly, inexpensive, and effective at preventing relapse. The tradeoff is a higher movement-side-effect profile.
MedicationThiothixene is a chemically distinctive but pharmacologically familiar first-generation antipsychotic. Here is what to expect from its side effect profile and how to manage it.
NeuroscienceNMDA receptor hypofunction is one of the most testable and best-supported neuroscience models of schizophrenia — and one of the hardest to translate into new drugs.
DiagnosisAmerican psychiatrists use the DSM-5-TR. Most of the rest of the world uses the WHO's ICD-11. Both define schizophrenia — but they emphasise different things.
FAQSchizophrenia is diagnosed by a psychiatrist or qualified clinician using the DSM-5-TR or ICD-11 criteria. There is no blood test or brain scan — the diagnosis is clinical.
StoryMy monthly medication bill went from $480 to $42. None of it was magic. All of it was phone calls.
Thought disorderTangentiality is when a question gets a related but off-target answer that never circles back. It is one of the more common and easily missed forms of thought disorder.
StoryI told my manager I had schizophrenia on a Wednesday in March. Twelve months later, I am still in the same job. Here is everything that led up to and followed that conversation.
Culture and faithFor many African American families, the Black church is the first place a person experiencing psychosis is taken. It is also a source of community, hope, and increasingly, partnership with mental-health professionals.
VocationalTransitional employment is a clever solution to a hard problem: how do you give someone a real-job experience when the employer can't yet take the risk of an unproven worker?
Differential diagnosisUp to 30% of people with borderline personality disorder report brief psychotic-like experiences, which can lead to misdiagnosis. Here's what actually separates the two conditions.
MythsThe assumption that schizophrenia rules out employment is wrong. Evidence-based supported employment helps the majority of participants find competitive work.
How-toThe ADA covers schizophrenia. Here is what reasonable accommodations actually look like — and how to navigate disclosure, the interactive process, and your legal protections.
NutritionMagnesium plays a real role in NMDA receptor function and sleep, both of which matter in schizophrenia. The supplementation evidence is preliminary but reasonable to consider.