Understanding and Caring for People with Schizophrenia

This book challenges professional and public misconceptions of schizophrenia as an illness with intractable symptoms and inexorable mental deterioration, educating clinicians and researchers on the effectiveness of treatment to change the course of or prevent the onset of illness.

The authors illustrate such effectiveness through fifteen case studies examining psychosis in diverse clients. These case studies are divided into the three phases of the illness―prodromal/clinical high risk, first-episode, chronic, and treatment-refractory―with accompanying analyses of the causes, symptoms, interventions and treatments. By depicting patients at different clinical stages of the illness, with accompanying explanations of how they got to that point, what might have been done to avoid – or has been done to achieve – this outcome, the reader will gain an appreciation of the nature of the illness and for the therapeutic potential of currently available treatments.

Readers will learn about the various clinical aspects of schizophrenia and treatment including diagnosis, prognosis, clinical presentation, suicide risk, cognitive deficits, stigma, medication management, and psychosocial interventions.

Ragy Girgis, MD, MS, is an associate professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute. He has published 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers has also recently authored On Satan, Demons, and Psychiatry: Exploring Mental Illness in the Bible, published in 2020.

Gary Brucato, PhD, is an associate research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. An expert on psychosis and violence, he has published nearly 40 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics. This is his second book. He was also the author, with Dr. Michael H. Stone, of The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime, published in 2019.

Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, is the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry, Columbia University, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He has published hundreds of peer reviewed journal articles, including some of the most seminal articles in the field of schizophrenia. In addition, Dr. Lieberman has written or edited 11 books on mental illness, psychopharmacology, and psychiatry.