Schizophrenia - Demographic Factors

While reading about schizophrenia I noticed some information that I believe is worth mentioned in this post. It is very interesting to know about the demographic factors that are related to schizophrenia.

1% of people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia at some point in life- if you get the total amount of people on this planet and then get the 1% of that it is a lot of people that we are talking about. Of course here we are talking about all cases from mild to severe.

Another point is that since mid-1900s schizophrenia has been declining over the years in many countries. Now, we have to think about what could be the possible explanation for this to occur. One possibility is that doctors could have been diagnosing schizophrenia differently, or could be that there is something that it is happening in our society that it’s contributing to this without us knowing what it is.

The fact of the matter is that this condition occurs in all parts of the world and in different ethnic groups, although it is more common in cities than in rural areas. Also it is more common in the United States and Europe than in Third World countries for reasons not well known.

On my last point I have to say that it got me thinking that if researchers do not have a well-known reason we can then speculate what could be the cause that schizophrenia is more common here in the United States and Europe than in Third World countries. At least I believe that since much of the symptoms of this condition are similar to those of the illegal drugs like LSD or PCP, like hallucinations and delusions, and here in this country we have a great deal of drug consumption, that it could have some relation to the last fact that I just mentioned. In some Third World countries they have these same types of conflicts but even then I still believe that drugs are a good reason why the rate of schizophrenia is higher here than other parts of the world.
Here is a graphic that I found on this webpage :http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html about the relation of consumption of cannabis and schizophrenia, my computer would not let me post it but you can go to the page and chek out the information there, it is very interesting.
I found a good video that let us know about the symptoms of schizophrenia, and since those resemble the ones of drug use, we then can get a good sense of what people with these conditions have to go thru.