Schizophrenia And Teenage Development

Schizophrenia is an enemy of the brain that interrupts and takes over the development of the frontal cortex that controls the different functions of the brain. It is responsible for the disruption of how we think, reason, memorize and deal with certain emotions. According, to the video it is a crucial time where we are trying to discover our identities, as well as how we fit in society. It was also mentioned how schizophrenia is as complex as the brain itself. It is difficult to discover how it forms or why it is most vulnerable to the teenage development, nonetheless, many theories emerge. Using MRI, they were able to observe how the ventricles were bigger in patients with schizophrenia as oppose to normal patients. Oversized ventricles

caused other parts of the brain to become smaller, (including the frontal cortex) since the skull is made of hard bones as mentioned by Dr. Hyman. Damage towards the frontal cortex suggest reasons as to why schizophrenia emerges mostly during teenage years. This is a complex, yet essential stage of development in the brain because of the bursting growth. Neurons reach out to connect to other neurons much just like our childhood. An area where the brain decides what connections to keep based on activities. Therefore, since the teenage year is the last developmental maturation of the brain it is believed to be a trigger as to why certain people are diagnosed with schizophrenia.

In class, we discussed precocious puberty in males and females. Over the years, early puberty has been an interesting subject as to why we are developing more rapidly. Different theories have been addressed such as; the increase of estrogen in the female sex hormone, evocative heritability, epigenetics, hypothalamus producing GNRH followed by the pituitary gland. During puberty, our environment alters our genes we are malleable to our surroundings. That being said if puberty can occur at an early age, so can schizophrenia. In the video, we could observe two different examples. Kourtney was 18 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, as oppose to Sabrina who was diagnosed at 12 years of age. Dr. Walker also displayed a theory where she describes how babies motor skills could predict this mental disease, however, other normal patients displayed similar motor movement as children so it was taken lightly.