Rehabilitation of Schizophrenia: At the End or in the Beginning?

The Majority of the long stay psychiatric patients who are in need of rehabilitation suffer from schizophrenia. Most of them enter the old age with this illness, and besides the consequences of schizophrenia, they are facing the deprivation and misery due to the old age. In contrast to the previous decades in which there was no effective treatment for schizophrenia, today with the immediate diagnosis of schizophrenia and its treatment with effective medications, we can prevent chronicity and resistance to the treatment. By these means, we can improve the prognosis and the quality of life of patients and their care givers. Sine last decade, the unfair discrimination of schizophrenic patients to chronic and non-chronic has lost its validity. It is widely recommended that instead of constructing the special and isolated hospitals for the mentally ill, psychiatric wards in the general hospitals be established. By all these efforts, the schizophrenics can have a better treatment and rehabilitation, and can be saved from the social and psychological consequences of staying in the isolated mental hospitals.