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Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a severe mental illness that occurs in an estimated 1 in 40,000 children.  By definition COS is schizophrenia that has an onset of psychosis before age 13.  For COS the average age at onset is 9. Due to the rarity of this disorder very few psychiatrists have ever seen a COS case. A psychiatrist not familiar with COS may well spend many months testing medications on a child with a first psychotic episode and not reach the correct diagnosis. It is only in the past decade that COS has come to be recognized as a distinct childhood mental disorder by the medical community.  The disorder is very difficult to diagnose in children. Generally, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses is still largely a trial and error process, and one that is inherently quite slow.  For example, the diagnosis of schizophrenia requires (among other things) an unbroken period of psychosis. 

One of the major consequences of having this rare childhood-onset psychiatric illness is that children's support services (child psychiatrists, child psychiatric hospitals, child welfare workers and so forth) typically have little or no experience with schizophrenia and it becomes the burden of the family members to educate them as to their child's specific needs. Indeed very few families are equipped with the resources (financial, educational, emotional) needed to cope efficiently and effectively with a COS child. 

This website was established to provide a window through which to view life as experienced by parents and siblings of children afflicted by COS. These are lives deeply affected by a major psychiatric illness, one that forces parents to commit their young children to psychiatric wards, then return day after day at visiting hours to see them. Parents can do little more than watch as the disease erodes away their child's intellect and personality over a period of a few months. Some, with persistence and luck, find medications that control to some degree the debilitating effects of schizophrenia: the hallucinations, delusions, diminished emotion/motivation/energy, social withdrawl, and so forth. 

The stories presented here were written by the family members themselves, and are strictly non-fiction.  Some of the details in these stories have been altered to preserve confidentiality as desired. No material on this site may be copied or otherwise broadcast for any purpose without permission of the webmaster.

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Note: the information presented in this website is not to be construed as medical advice.  Medical advice can only be provided by licensed medical doctors. The owners of this website accept no liability arising from the use of this website or the information contained herein or via link from other websites.