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Schizophrenia
Making a Diagnosis

National Institute of Mental Health

It is important to rule out other illnesses, as sometimes people suffer severe mental symptoms or even psychosis due to undetected underlying medical conditions. For this reason, a medical history should be taken and a physical examination and laboratory tests should be done to rule out other possible causes of the symptoms before concluding that a person has schizophrenia. In addition, since commonly abused drugs may cause symptoms resembling schizophrenia, blood or urine samples from the person can be tested at hospitals or physicians' offices for the presence of these drugs.

At times, it is difficult to tell one mental disorder from another. For instance, some people with symptoms of schizophrenia exhibit prolonged extremes of elated or depressed mood, and it is important to determine whether such a patient has schizophrenia or actually has a manic-depressive (or bipolar) disorder or major depressive disorder. Persons whose symptoms cannot be clearly categorized are sometimes diagnosed as having a "schizoaffective disorder."

NIH - 1999
Posted 04/09/2004

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This Week's Bipolar News

U.S. Kids Take More Psychotropic Drugs Than Europeans
HealthDay via Yahoo! News
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 24 (HealthDay News) -- American children are three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medications for conditions such as ADHD and bipolar disease than European children are, a new study finds.

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Making mania understood
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Featured Article:

Sleep Disturbances Cause Major Problems for People

Most of us have normal sleep patterns, with no complaints; however, many people have a hard time getting to sleep (insomnia). Others are able to get to sleep at first, but have a hard time sleeping through the night (sleep disruption). In fact, many people have been diagnosed with actual sleep disorders, such as Sleep Apnea, where they stop breathing in their sleep. Sleep disturbances cause major problems for many people.

The advent of the diagnoses of sleep disorders brought with it the development of medications to combat these sleep disorders. Unfortunately, many of these medications are either habit-forming, or even addictive.

If you choose to take a sleep aid (whether prescribed or over-the-counter), you must do three things:

Click here to read the entire aritcle

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