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considered to be multifactorially inherited

Multifactorial inheritance means that "many factors"

where a combination of genes from both parents, in addition to unknown environmental factors, produce the trait or condition

factors are usually both genetic and environmental

Often, one gender (either males or females) is affected more frequently than the other in multifactorial traits

means that one gender is more likely to show the problem

Slightly more males develop schizophrenia in childhood, however, by adolescence schizophrenia affects males and females equally.

Although schizophrenia affects men and women equally, symptoms in men generally begin earlier than in women

schizophrenia first appears in men during their late teens or early 20s

women, schizophrenia often first appears during their 20s or early 30s.

schizophrenia affects 2.7 million Americans

child born into a family with one or more schizophrenic family member has a greater chance of developing schizophrenia than a child born into a family with no history of schizophrenia.

chance for a sibling to also be diagnosed with schizophrenia is 7 to 8 percen

If a parent has schizophrenia, the chance for a child to have the disorder is 10 to 15 percen

Risks increase with multiple affected family members.

Distorted perception of reality (i.e., difficulty telling dreams from reality) Confused thinking (i.e., confusing television with reality) Detailed and bizarre thoughts and ideas Suspiciousness and/or paranoia (fearfulness that someone, or something, is going to harm them) Hallucinations (seeing, hearing, or feeling things that are not real such as hearing voices telling them to do something) Delusions (ideas that seem real but are not based in reality) Extreme moodiness Severe anxiety and/or fearfulness Flat affect (lack of emotional expression when speaking) or inability to manage emotions Difficulty in performing functions at work and/or school Exaggerated self-worth and/or unrealistic sense of superiority of one's self Social withdrawal (severe problems in making and keeping friends ) Disorganized or catatonic behavior (suddenly becoming agitated and confused, or sitting and staring, as if immobilized) Odd behaviors

The symptoms of schizophrenia are often classified as positive (symptoms including delusions, hallucinations, and bizarre behavior), negative (symptoms including flat affect, withdrawal, and emotional unresponsiveness), disorganized speech (including speech that is incomprehensible), and disorganized or catatonic behavior (including marked mood swings, sudden aggressive, or confusion, followed by sudden motionlessness and staring).

diagnosed by a psychiatrist

Specific treatment for schizophrenia will be determined by your physician based on: Your age, overall health, and medical history Extent of the disease Your tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies Expectations for the course of the disease Your opinion or preference

Types of treatment that may be helpful to an individual with schizophrenia may include: Medications (also called psychopharmacological management; to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia), including the following: Neuroleptics--a specialized class of medications used to treat schizophrenia. Neuroleptics are used primarily to treat the pervasive, intrusive, and disturbing thoughts of a person with schizophrenia. They are designed to help minimize the severity of delusions and hallucinations the individual is experiencing. Antipsychotic medications--medications that act against the symptoms of psychotic illness, but do not cure the illness. However, these medications can reduce symptoms or reduce the severity of symptoms; a specialized class of medications used to treat schizophrenia. Individual and family psychotherapy (including cognitive and behavioral therapy) Specialized educational and/or structured activity programs (i.e., social skills training, vocational training, speech and language therapy) Self-help and support groups

Preventive measures to reduce the incidence of schizophrenia are not known at this time

Children born to teenage parents are more likely to lack proper prenatal care

also more likely to be born prematurely, have low birth weight, or become hospitalized during their childhood than children born to adults, states the March of Dimes. The same source says that babies of teenage mothers are more likely to die during their first year of life

the children of teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, or become unemployed than the children of older women. They experience abuse and neglect quite often, and many of them become parents as teenagers.

The model examines the looking-learning behavior of infants as young as 6 weeks through one year of age, through 4,800 simulations at various points in development involving multiple stimuli and tasks. As would be expected, most infants introduced to new objects tend to look at them to gather information about them; once they do, they are “biased” to look away from them in search of something new

an infant will linger on something that’s being shown to it for the first time as it learns about it, and that the “total looking time” will decrease as the infant becomes more familiar with it.

infants who don’t spend a sufficient amount of time studying a new object—in effect, failing to learn about it and to catalog that knowledge into memory—don’t catch on as well, which can affect their learning later on.

Sammy Perone, a post-doctoral researcher in psychology at the UI and corresponding author on the pape

To examine why infants need to dwell on objects to learn about them, the researchers created two different models. One model learned in a "responsive" world: Every time the model looked away from a new object, the object was jiggled to get the model to look at it again. The other model learned in a "nonresponsive" world: when this model looked at a new object, objects elsewhere were jiggled to distract it. The results showed that the responsive models“learned about new objects more robustly, more quickly, and are better learners in the end,

infants can familiarize themselves with new objects, and store them into memory well enough that when shown them again, they quickly recognized them

“if that’s the case, we can manipulate and change what the brain is doing” to aid infants born prematurely or who have special needs, Perone adds.

“Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.” - Jonah Lehrer from his piece in the New Yorker, “Don’t”

“The future is always ideal: The fridge is stocked, the weather clear, the train runs on schedule and meetings end on time. Today, well, stuff happens.” - Hara Estroff Marano in Psychology Today

Interestingly, these results suggest that although almost everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognize and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilize available tools for precommitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it. - Dan Ariely, from his book “Predictably Irrational”

Compared to the normal control group, the children with ADHD showed abnormal functional activity in several regions of the brain involved in the processing of visual attention information

"What this tells us is that children with ADHD are using partially different functional brain pathways to process this information, which may be caused by impaired white matter pathways involved in visual attention information processing," Dr. Li said.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is no single test capable of diagnosing a child with the disorder. As a result, difficult children are often incorrectly labeled with ADHD while other children with the disorder remain undiagnosed.

"Too often, people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. As a clinician, it was clear to me that this was unlikely to be the case. Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease and that the brains of children with this condition develop differently to those of other children."

The condition is highly heritable -- children with ADHD are statistically more likely to also have a parent with the condition and a child with an identical twin with ADHD has a three in four chance of also having the condition.

"Children with ADHD have a significantly higher rate of missing or duplicated DNA segments compared to other children and we have seen a clear genetic link between these segments and other brain disorders," explains Dr Nigel Williams. "These findings give us tantalising clues to the changes that can lead to ADHD."

ADHD is not caused by a single genetic change, but is likely caused by a number of genetic changes, including CNVs, interacting with a child's environment," explains Dr Kate Langley.

ADHD diagnoses depend on a child's age relative to classmates and the teacher's perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.

ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder for kids in the United States, with at least 4.5 million diagnoses among children under age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, there are no neurological markers for ADHD

Overall, the study found that about 20 percent -- or 900,000 -- of the 4.5 million children currently identified as having ADHD likely have been misdiagnosed.