[Schizophrenia: an organic disease? Current status and debate]

Schizophrenia may be interpreted as a group of conditions with various etiologies and pathogeneses but with common clinical features. In chronic forms with negative symptoms, CT scanning reveals atrophy of the brain. Other imaging techniques such as MR and PET confirm these findings and neurochemical, physiological and anatomical investigations demonstrate, similarly, that organic changes in the brain occur in patients with schizophrenia. The changes are probably due to a developmental defect and not to tissue degeneration. The results of the numerous neuroscientific investigations suggest that the therapeutic contributions for schizophrenia should have altered priorities. Medical therapy and psychotherapy must be supplemented by neuropsychological and social rehabilitation. Prophylaxis and early diagnosis will probably be possible in the near future so that the poor prognosis of this disease may be altered. Danish psychiatry is still characterized by development in neuroscience to a limited extent on account of marked technological delay. Establishing of a neuropsychiatric speciality now opens an interesting future perspective.