ABSTRACT
Adolescent schizophrenia frequently presents with an insidious as opposed to an acute onset. It is characterised both by more prominent negative symptoms and by relatively fewer well-informed systematised delusions and auditory hallucinations when compared with adult schizophrenia. Some studies have found that the disorganised and undifferentiated sub-types were predominantly of adolescent onset, whereas the paranoid sub-type was most frequently first diagnosed in adult life. Adolescent schizophrenia tends to run a chronic course, with only a small minority of cases making a full symptomatic recovery from the first psychotic episode. The case in this chapter shows up the weakness in the services that young people with schizophrenia receive. Educational services bowed out of his life when he was 16; the locality had no mental health social workers for this age group; there was no occupational therapy or other supports and the family and Matt had to cope with the problem all by themselves.
