Causes of schizophrenia

Hi all,

I just want to express my sincere gratitude for this subreddit. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to find.

I’m 10+ years into this journey now with my little sister.

Not so much anymore, but for a very long time after her diagnosis I was really wounded by the idea that it was something my parents did or didn’t do in her childhood that caused it. She had a CPTSD diagnosis before her first psychotic break.

She was extremely sensitive, extremely sensory as a child, often lost in her own world and daydreaming. Intelligent. Gifted. And chronically disorganized, confused, misunderstood and unhappy, in ways that mirrored my own experience growing up as an artistic, sensitive young person.

Her first break came after she was attacked while jogging. This sent her down a horrible rabbit hole culminating in an intense coma-like prodrome that I didn’t feel like my parents handled very well. And ever since then it’s just been nonstop horror.

I’m curious about research you all have done into the causes of this disease… nature, nurture, etc, from a scientific perspective, or if anyone else has had similar thoughts about their own family members. If it could have been prevented, what the lived experience is like for the diagnosed person. Understanding the structural brain abnormalities and how and why it happens. Thank you.