Are post traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia related?

Answer 1

ANSWER 1 :Not directly. Flashbacks and similar episodes are not the same things, nor caused by the same influences, as schizophrenia.

However trauma, especially to the head, can cause or trigger schizophrenia and similar problems, while at the same time creating PTS. Thus, the two sometimes occur together. Also, since schizophrenia usually manifests at about the same age as young soldiers tend to be injured, and young civilians to be involved in accidents, etc., there are doubtless some cases that would have developed anyway, without trauma.

There is a lot left to learn.

ANSWER 2 : Just to expand on above answer, NO they are not related apart from both being mental health issues affecting humans. But schizophrenia is essentially a general term for a group of psychotic illnesses in which inheritance has been found to play a role in its development, and its onset usually occurs between the age of 15 and 30 being on average 5 years later with women than with men. It is the commonest of all psychotic illnesses affecting about 1% of the total human population in all nations.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the other hand is a specific form of anxiety/depression that can affect men and women but only comes on as a consequence of somebody having suffered a very stressful or frightening experience in their life which may happen to them at any age. Common causes of PTSD include natural disasters such as being in an earthquake, violence, torture, rape and suffering serious personal injury such as from a serious road accident. PTSD can also result from military combat, where it may be termed shell shock.

For a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia to be made on you, you must have continuous signs of a profound break with reality as well as evidence of fragmentation of your personality for at least 6 months during some period in your life, and this one or more six month periods must include at least one phase of hallucinations (such as hearing voices or seeing faces that are not real), delusions or marked thought disorders.

Whereas a clinical diagnosis of PTSF may be made if in your own life you have recurring memories or nightmares of the event, a sense of personal isolation, disturbed sleep and inability to concentrate but without losing contact with reality. With PTSF you may also experience deadening of your feelings or irritability and sometimes painful feelings of guilt in you believing you are personally to blame for some terrible situation affecting others as well as yourself. This can sometimes build up in you to form a true clinical depressive illness. With PTSF these symptoms may begin immediately after the trauma or may develop after a few months or later.