Plain-language, educational articles on schizophrenia, psychosis, antipsychotic medications, and lived experience — by ColdAI.
A first episode of psychosis often arrives during college. Staying enrolled — or returning successfully — is harder than it should be, but there is a roadmap.
Co-occurringAnxiety affects roughly half of people with schizophrenia at some point — and is often the symptom that causes the most day-to-day distress. It's also treatable.
LifestyleThe gut-brain axis is real and increasingly studied in schizophrenia — but probiotics are not a treatment. Here's an honest look at what the evidence shows and what it doesn't.
CrisisWarm lines exist for the call you don't quite want to make to 988 — the lonely Tuesday night, the long afternoon, the days when something is brewing but isn't a crisis yet.
HospitalInpatient psychiatric units must respect a long list of patient rights — but few patients ever read the document handed to them at admission. Here is what is actually in it.
TherapyNegative symptoms — apathy, low motivation, blunted emotion — drive much of the long-term disability in schizophrenia. CBT cannot eliminate them, but it can reliably move the needle.
TreatmentPsilocybin is being studied for depression, addiction, end-of-life distress, and more. Every major trial excludes people with personal or family history of psychosis — here's why that matters.
MedicationBrexpiprazole was designed as a less activating, less akathisia-prone cousin of aripiprazole. The pharmacology supports the idea — and the clinical evidence partly does too.
MedicationMetformin is now considered first-line pharmacological treatment for antipsychotic-induced weight gain — modest in effect size, but better-evidenced than any other option.
MedicationChlorpromazine was the first antipsychotic ever discovered and arguably the medication that emptied the asylums. It is still in use today — but its role has narrowed.
ProfilePatricia Deegan was a teenager when she was told she had chronic schizophrenia and would never recover. She has spent the rest of her life proving — and helping others prove — otherwise.
ProfileEsmé Weijun Wang's essay collection 'The Collected Schizophrenias' has done as much as any single book in the past decade to change how literary culture writes about — and listens to — people living with psychosis.
ProfilePeter Green founded Fleetwood Mac and wrote some of the most admired guitar music of the 1960s. After a notorious 1970 acid trip in Munich, he spent more than two decades largely withdrawn from public life with a schizophrenia diagnosis.
SymptomsCatatonia is an under-recognised but highly treatable syndrome that can appear in schizophrenia. Most cases respond rapidly to lorazepam.
PsychosisSubstances can trigger psychosis acutely, or in vulnerable people contribute to long-term psychotic disorders. The evidence varies considerably by drug class.
OverviewMen with schizophrenia are typically diagnosed earlier than women and face a slightly more difficult average course. The reasons are not fully understood — but the patterns matter for how care is organised.
FAQEarly signs of schizophrenia include social withdrawal, declining performance, sleep changes, and unusual perceptual experiences — usually appearing in the late teens or early twenties.
HallucinationsVisual hallucinations occur in roughly a quarter of people with schizophrenia. The texture of those experiences differs in subtle but useful ways from visual hallucinations of other causes.
City guidesHouston's mental-health system runs through the Harris Center, UTHealth, Baylor's Menninger Department, and Harris Health. This is a practical guide for families navigating schizophrenia care in Houston.
StoryMy grandmother died in February. She had raised me. I have schizophrenia. I stayed stable through her illness, her death, and the funeral — and that quiet fact is its own kind of recovery.
MindfulnessTai chi pairs slow, flowing movement with relaxed attention. The evidence in schizophrenia is small but encouraging, particularly for negative symptoms, balance, and physical health.
MediaAugusten Burroughs's 2002 memoir is a darkly comic account of a 1970s childhood spent inside the household of his mother's psychiatrist. The Turcotte family later sued. The book remains a complicated artefact of how psychiatry has been depicted in popular culture.
StoryAfter my third hospitalization, the state pulled my driver's license. It took eighteen months to get it back. The story is not the lecture I expected.
Peer supportMindFreedom International is a long-running coalition of psychiatric survivors that has spent decades organising against forced treatment and for the human rights of people in the mental health system.
RecoveryThe recovery movement and the psychiatric survivor movement share roots in lived experience but ask different questions. Understanding both helps people choose what frameworks fit their lives.
TransitionsGoing from a psychiatric ward to a stable place to live is harder than it sounds. Supportive housing — when it works — is one of the most powerful interventions in serious mental illness.
Differential diagnosisAutism and schizophrenia share social withdrawal and unusual perceptions but are distinct neurodevelopmental and psychotic conditions — and they can co-occur in the same person.
MythsSchizophrenia changes how the brain processes information, but it does not reduce a person's underlying intelligence. The relationship is more complex than the stereotype.
TherapyMany people with psychosis carry years of shame and self-criticism. Compassion-Focused Therapy directly addresses those emotional drivers and has shown promising results in voices and paranoia.
StoryI was hospitalised in July, diagnosed in August, and started college in October — three weeks behind every other freshman. Here is how the next four years went.