Managing schizophrenia

This booklet is for you if:

• you think you may be having psychotic experiences
• you think a family member or friend may be having psychotic experiences
• you work with people who may be having psychotic experiences
• you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia; or
• a family member or friend has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This booklet aims to make adult patients and their families aware of the treatment and care they should expect to receive when they are experiencing psychosis or when they have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Most parts of the booklet are for patients but we acknowledge that family members and carers will also read this.

There is a lot of stigma surrounding schizophrenia and some people do not accept the term ‘schizophrenia’ to describe their symptoms. We use the term in this booklet because a better one has not been agreed to describe the symptoms. Even if you do not accept the term ‘schizophrenia’ to describe your symptoms, we hope that you find the information in this booklet helpful.

This booklet is based on the recommendations from the SIGN national clinical guideline on managing schizophrenia. This guideline is available to download here.

If you would like to order copies of the patient booklet, please email sign@sign.ac.uk

We are happy to consider requests for our publications to be made available in other languages or formats. We ask you to complete a form to help us make a decision on whether to proceed. Factors affecting the decision include level of demand, cost to translate, availability of interpretation services, other format(s) available and subject matter of the publication.