Prgnostic Conundrums In Schizophrenia with reference to the philosophical validity of its nosological status

primarily becauseSchizophrenia is one of the most complex and puzzling diseases to affect mankind. It is the most common of the severe mental illnesses (psychoses) with an estimated prevalence of 0.5 - 1% in the general population and accounts for a very large portion of the day to day workload of the average psychiatrist. 50% of long-term psychiatric patients in mental hospitals are schizophrenic.

There is a great deal of controversies about the causes, diagnoses and treatment of schizophrenia with the consequence that a huge amount of research is carried out in the field by psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists and pharmacologists. For the average practising psychiatrist seeing schizophrenics on a regular basis, making sense of the vast body of information on the subject and filtering out what is of clinical relevance can be very difficult. Kraepelin had when he wrote his…