Emile Kraepelin (1856 – 1926), one of the founders of modern psychiatry, described “dementia praecox” as a distinct illness, with subtypes of hebephrenia, catatonia, and paranoid dementia. Prior to Kraepelin, all mental illnesses were categorized as “madness.”

Eugen Bleuler (1857 – 1939), a Swiss psychiatrist, coined the term "schizophrenia," and described the symptoms of schizophrenia as "positive" or "negative."

Henri Laborit (1914 – 1995), a Parisian surgeon, discovered in 1952 that chlorpromazine (trade name Thorazine) was effective in reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) was developed in the 1970s, in response to large numbers of patients being discharged from state psychiatric hospitals into communities with few or no services or systems to provide for the mentally ill. ACT model based systems have become a gold standard for service delivery to people with severe mental illness.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) was founded in 1979 as an advocacy group for people with mental illness and their families. NAMI and other consumer organizations have effectively lobbied for the rights of the mentally ill and made great advances in reducing the stigma of mental illness.

The Decade of the Brain (1990 – 2000) was a joint initiative of the Library of Congress and the National Institutes of Mental Health to promote public awareness of brain research. During the 1990s, the use of new research tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) expanded our understanding of schizophrenia as a disease of the brain that profoundly changes the way the brain processes emotion and experience. Also during the 1990s, atypical antipsychotics like olanzapine, risperdone and quetiapine were developed, which posed less risk of extrapyramidal side effects than first-generation antipsychotics.

The 21st century continues to witness breakthroughs in our understanding of the causes and mechanisms of schizophrenia. The list of current clinical trials in schizophrenia sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) only scratches the surface of promising research that will produce more effective treatments for schizophrenia in the future.

Sources:

Meuser, K. and Gingerich, S. (2006) The Complete Family Guide to Schizophrenia New York: The Guilford Press.

Pinel, J. (2005) Biopsychology (with Beyond the Brain and Behavior CD-ROM), 6th Edition. New York: Allyn & Bacon Publishers.

Shorter, E. (1998) A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac, 2nd Edition. New York: Wiley Publishers.

Torrey, E.F. (2006) Surviving Schizophrenia: a Manual for Families, Patients and Providers, 5th Edition. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.  Medical Review Board