Skip to main content
Accessibility help
Home
    Have a question? Call 888-402-LVHN (5846) Contact Us
    0700 2000 0900 1700 0900 1700 2019-07-04

    Utility Nav

    • MyLVHN
    • Make an Appointment
    • Pay Your Bill

    Main navigation

    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Services
    • Give
    • Careers

    Search LVHN

    Lehigh Valley Health Network

    Utility Nav

    • MyLVHN
    • Make an Appointment
    • Pay Your Bill

    Main navigation

    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Services
    • Give
    • Careers

    Secondary navigation

    • COVID-19 Help Center
    • Patients & Visitors
    • Financial Services
    • Education
    • Research
    • Institutes
    • Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital
    • Community Health
    • Events, Classes, Groups
    • Health Tips, News and Stories
    • About Us
    • Get a Price Quote
    • Give
    Have a question? Call 888-402-LVHN (5846) Contact Us
    0700 2000 0900 1700 0900 1700 2019-07-04
    Magnifying glass

    Main navigation

    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Services
    • Give
    • Careers

    Utility Nav

    • MyLVHN
    • Make an Appointment
    • Pay Your Bill

    Search LVHN

    Secondary navigation

    • COVID-19 Help Center
    • Patients & Visitors
    • Financial Services
    • Education
    • Research
    • Institutes
    • Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital
    • Community Health
    • Events, Classes, Groups
    • Health Tips, News and Stories
    • About Us
    • Get a Price Quote
    • Give

    Make an Appointment

    Which would you like to do?

    Make an appointment with your current doctor.
    Make an appointment with a new doctor.
    Find the first available appointment from our providers.
    Schedule a Video Visit.
    ×

    Are you currently a patient of ?

    Yes I am currently a patient of
    No I am not currently a patient of

    Schizophrenia

    Schizophrenia is one of the most complex of all mental health disorders. It involves a severe, chronic and disabling disturbance of the brain. What once was classified as a psychological disease now is classified as a brain disease.

    • More Information
    • More

      • Home
      • Doctors
      • Services
    • Home
    • Doctors
    • Services

    Page Hierarchy

    1. Conditions
    2. Schizophrenia

    Even though schizo- does mean “split,” people who have schizophrenia do not have a split personality. But schizophrenia may be viewed as a person’s split from reality.

    Symptoms include delusions (“Someone’s putting thoughts in my head”), paranoia (“They’re out to get me”), hallucinations (hearing voices), emotional flatness and trancelike behavior.

    Causes of schizophrenia

    There is no known single cause responsible for schizophrenia. It is believed that a chemical imbalance in the brain – too much dopamine – is an inherited factor that may cause schizophrenia to develop. However, it is likely that many factors – genetic, behavioral and environmental – play a role in the development of this mental health condition. One theory is that a virus may get transmitted to the fetus before birth.

    Schizophrenia risk factors

    Schizophrenia affects 2.2 million Americans over age 18, and they’re typically diagnosed in early adulthood. There is no hint that anything is wrong through childhood and adolescence; symptoms often begin to appear after the young person leaves home.

    The condition affects males and females about equally, although symptoms often appear a few years later for women than for men. In most cases, schizophrenia first appears in men during their late teens or early 20s. In women, schizophrenia often first appears during their 20s or early 30s.

    A child born into a family with one or more schizophrenic family member has a greater chance for developing schizophrenia than a child born into a family with no history of schizophrenia.

    After a person has been diagnosed with schizophrenia in a family, the chance for a sibling to also be diagnosed with schizophrenia is 7 to 8 percent. If a parent has schizophrenia, the chance for a child to have the disorder is 10 to 15 percent. Risks increase with multiple affected family members.

    People with schizophrenia are at an especially high risk of suicide. About 10 percent die by suicide, especially young adult males. It’s hard to predict which people with schizophrenia are prone to suicide. Anyone who has suicidal feelings, talks about suicide or attempts suicide should be taken seriously and should receive immediate help from a mental health specialist.

    Customer Service

    Call 888-402-LVHN (5846)
    Contact Us
    Mon - Fri:
    7 a.m. – 8 p.m.
    Saturday:
    9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
    Sunday:
    9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

    Support

    • For Referring Physicians
    • For Health Professionals
    • For Employers
    • Website Feedback
    • Accessibility
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms & Conditions

    About LVHN

    • About Us
    • Give
    • Careers
    • Volunteer
    • Health Tips, News & Stories
    • Events
    • Shop

    Social

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    ©2022 Lehigh Valley Health Network

    Cookies on LVHN.org

    This website uses cookies to better understand how visitors use our site and to offer you a more personal experience. See our Policy Notice for more information. You can manage how cookies are used by clicking the “Cookie Settings” button.

    We use the following Cookies:

    • These cookies cannot be turned off because they are needed for the website to function. They help us understand the sections of our website that are visited most frequently and supply information that can be used to make the website even better. They are set for website analytics and in response to actions made on the website, such as requesting a service, setting privacy preferences, logging in and completing forms. These cookies do not store personally identifiable information. Rather, they collect information about how all visitors use this website.
    • To provide a better browsing experience and customize the information presented to you, various types of data may be used. This data may be collected by your web browser, or cookies may be used to gather data to enable a more personalized experience. The data collected may include first-party data from your activity on our website, data from our partners or from third parties. Your data will never be sold to third parties and will be used only by us and our direct partners. We may use data cookies to gather information that may be shared with our partners. This information may be used with other data to create specific experiences, improve our website, and augment the information we have about people who use our website.
    • These cookies show how viewers interact with this website. They may be used by organizations with which we partner to build a profile of viewer interests so that the information that is most important to each viewer can be shared with them.
    • These cookies allow us to understand how viewers use this website on multiple devices, such as a cellphone, computer or smart TV. They link viewer activity on multiple devices so that the information that is most important to each viewer can be shared with them.
    • Third-party organizations use information from these cookies. They track a viewer’s interests on multiple websites so that specific marketing can be sent to the viewer based on interests.