!!! Closing down temporarily to conduct repairs. I'm going to have to explain working memory capacity in a simpler, use it in a better way. Help is always welcome! [ N.B there is a useful startingsummary online ... working memory ]

"To hold truth up to power" ... thank you, Marie Colvin.

index

a site for family carers :- Schizophreniawatch: a website for carers, family and community, who should - must ! - give voice for those cared for who can't, and don't, voice for themselves.

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, in thy most need to be by thy side"

The site is edited by a retired consultant psychiatrist who has looked after someone with the condition, at home,
affected by the negative form of schizophrenia, for the last twenty years.

The highlit links take you to another page. You return via the back arrow at the top of your screen or from a link at the bottom of a page



contact me if you want to talk about some issue that is unsettled and unsettling : at davidwatch@btinternet.com or tel no 01208 81 6035

a page for Those in the early days of caring

!! Memory failure is the core feature in schizophrenia that is continuing to some extent, which if not addressed, leads to service failure, frustrating enough recovery.

A loss of stem cells in the hippocampus area of the brain , at the time of the start of the illness , leads to a smaller 'reach', a smaller capacity in working memory.Arriving usually in adolescence or early adult life, it is the underlying cause of continuing schizophrenia


how
- the full evidence
New cell formation in the hippocampal area of the brain is essential to acquire and manage new experience, to access stored experience, to suppress unwanted experience from within or from without.

If you don't have enough hippocampal neurogenesis you don't have enough capacity in memory management to organise yourself to cope with everyday matters, particularly if the illness arrives early, before maturing experience is stored away.
To get from experience and recent memory what is required to prepare and complete the sequence required for a task ahead, the necessary processing of information has to pass through a hippocampus that is short of new connecting cells.
You just can't move on from what you already have. You can't rehabilitate yourself. You can't take the first steps, yourself.
You don't get better unless you are helped into a simplified life routine.

When the outside world is simplified enough, you can.
You can if you are mentored in engagement by people who have become trusted, , if you are given time, if there is a service, if there are activities and a place for them, with an introductory 'pace' that allows a step by step participation.

*** New !!! This week

... cognitive behaviour therapy [CBT}for schizophrenia: art 'therapy' : both thumbs down

heard from NHS mental health staff, heard with dread by carers

... it was their choice .... they were not sufficiently ill as I saw him/her ... we were prevented by 'confidentiality'
they are to be offered Home Treatment !!!!

How to deal with these 'walls' apply immediately for a Carer Assessment and be already prepared with a written account, to be recorded, copied to the Chief Executive of the local Mental Health Trust, of the difficulty you are being placed in by the services; especially the absence of sharing care; particularly the absence of a programme of activities, occupying the family patient, outside the home on three days during the week, giving a routine for the patient, and a life to the family of their own. <>the local Advocacy service or the local PALS may give you help. Carer Support workers may live near you - in Cornwall the previous service of six, one per district, supported by it's own manager has been replaced by two out of nineteen - now managed by a local Local Authority led Adult Care management, bound to be dominated by generic physical health caring and age dementia, , -the focus now on a so-called 'new service'- a telephone call centre, without serious mental health caring experience , that will divert you appropriately.
I hope things are better in your area.


Cognitive Therapy - the latest thing - coming your way ?
The Schizophrenia Commission ... yet to find it's way

*** New !!! marks new
Cognitive Remediation

*** New !!! marks new Risk management

direct DOH Mental Health

'Basic' Psychiatry;
anxiety
alcoholism, ADHD etc Carers know a thing or two

Carer user and professional

Carer and confidentiality













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Reif et al 2006 ...Hippocampal neural stem cell proliferation is decreased in schizophrenia, but not in depression
And then - maybe - this .....

the abstract: ..... *** New !!!
Adult hippocampal neurogenesis buffers stress responses and depressive behaviour.
Nature August 2011 Volume: 476, Pages: 458–461 Jason S. Snyder et al
Snyder
Never mind the puff for depressive ilness - the mice equivalent doesn't stand up.

........ ' The hippocampus, a brain region densely populated with receptors for stress hormones, stress and glucocorticoids strongly inhibit adult neurogenesis'
..... 'Here we show that adult-born hippocampal neurons are required for normal expression of the endocrine and behavioural components of the stress response.' ......

Stress - what is that if not High Expressed Emotion - one of the most robust associations with breakdown in schizophrenia !!! ???

The factual bit is the effect on dental cell neurogenesis
Add that effect on to reduced dental neurogenesis in schizophrenia, then you get a further down turn onto the already reduced neurogenesis in the hippocampus in schizophrenia .

If Reif et al is right schizophrenia will be worse.


If you don't have enough hippocampal neurogenesis you don't have enough capacity in memory mangement to organise yourself to cope with everyday matters, particularly if the illness arrives early before maturing experience has buit up has been stored away.
To get from experience and recent memory what is required to prepare and complete the sequence required for a task ahead. The necessaryprocessing of information has to pass through a hippocampus that is short of new connecting cells.
You just can't move on from what you already have. You can't rehabilitate yourself. You can't take the first steps. You don't get better unless you are helped into a simplified life routine.

When the outside world is simplified enough you can.
If you are mentored in engagement by people who have become trusted, , if you are given time, if there is a service, if there are activities and a place for them, with an introductory 'pace' that allows a step by step participation.


a good ' insider' website, with a forum :- pamshouse: a guide for carers


contact me davidwatch@btinternet.com

01208 81 6035













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Carers Strategy One Year On
More Help For Carers

help about , assessments, allowances,
direct payments , personal budgets etc.
probably slanted for general caring
[ never an understanding that schizophrenia is different ]
but the facts are there

carers allowance


*** New !!!

Aftercare
*** R !!!

an advanced declaration

Coroner

Carers
and Caring

Caring and confidentiality

Community Treatment Order's

NHS
Mental Health
Services

Police

Schizophrenia ... revising ...

Tragedies

Inquiries after Homicide: Reports
a remarkable website for victims
of homicide by the mentally ill

Homicide Report Inquiry List -
still updating - the NorthWest Strategic Health Authority
have refused to a Freedom of Information request
to see their 'Homicide legacy cases' Reports online.

They seem to want to keep
information about possible failures
in the delivery of care, to themselves
fro them to learn lessons
rather than let carers generally
- who are very often involved
as principal monitors, sometimes as victims
- examine where the faults were,
to see that they do not arise
in their local mental Health Trust area.
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