Understanding Schizophrenia: The Human Impact, the Clinical Challenges and the Importance of Stability in Care

Schizophrenia affects an estimated 24 million people worldwide, yet stigma and misconceptions continue to shape how the condition is perceived and experienced. While advances in treatment have transformed care over recent decades, challenges such as relapse, medication adherence, and the long-term impact on patients' lives remain significant. 

In Teva’s ongoing commitment to supporting patients with schizophrenia, we recently brought together clinicians, medical experts, Teva leaders, and patient advocate Sarah Merritt Ryan. The discussion explored the realities of living with schizophrenia, the clinical challenges of managing the condition and the importance of improving awareness and understanding of the condition and its far-reaching consequences.  

Through a combination of scientific insight, clinical expertise and lived experience, the discussion highlighted the need to look beyond the diagnosis and recognize the profound impact schizophrenia can have on every aspect of a person's life. As Rob Kempton, who leads the Global Product Strategy Team for Teva’s innovation portfolio and who has been working in psychiatry for approximately 26 years stresses: “We need to see the person, not the diagnosis.” 

This article highlights the key themes from that discussion, reflecting Teva's commitment to supporting the schizophrenia community through raising disease awareness and fostering dialogue around the challenges faced by people living with the condition.

Mark Suett leads the Neuropsychiatry therapy area for Teva’s Global Medical Affairs and worked in clinical practice for 15 years before joining the pharmaceutical industry, treating people with severe mental illness, including schizophrenia. He explains that because of the usual onset age of schizophrenia “it’s often striking at a time that's particularly difficult for people, when they're particularly vulnerable and before they have had the opportunity to establish themselves, in a career or in a relationship, or in fact to be successful in independent life.” 

What stigma does schizophrenia carry? 

Schizophrenia carries one of the heaviest stigmas of any psychiatric condition. This is largely driven by harmful media portrayals and myths—such as the false assumption that people with the condition have multiple personalities or are inherently violent. 

Sarah Merritt Ryan was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a 33-year-old after having three psychotic breaks, when, she says, “I didn’t think my life was fixable, I thought everything was hopeless.” 

Sarah explains that while she was diagnosed with bipolar, schizoaffective disorder, unspecified psychotic disorder, major depression with psychotic features, and schizophrenia, it was the diagnosis of schizophrenia she dreaded the most because: “the word ‘schizophrenia’ had so much power.”

“Even though whatever I'm diagnosed with doesn't change what I have, and even though I had a good prognosis because I was stabilizing, the trauma and stigma of that word was devastating to me. It meant it wasn't just an illness: that word has a life of its own where it changed who I was, and how other people saw me,  and whether people would ever give me a chance again. I live in an affluent area, highly educated, surrounded by universities, but I'm still the subject of stigma occasionally.” 

She gives an example of the stigma she encountered after her son was born.  

“When my son was 18 months old, he was a little delayed with speech and learning how to walk [it wasn’t serious and he is fine now.] And so, we saw a specialist who did some screening questions on us before he was referred to speech therapy.  

“The specialist asked: ‘Is there any history of mental illness in the family?’ And I told her, ‘I have schizophrenia,’ and she looked at my husband, and not at me, and said, ‘You can't leave your son alone with her.' 

“This was devastating, and it made me feel like a second-class citizen. I had come so far feeling so great about myself. Finally feeling, ‘normal', like everyone else. And then that just knocked me off my feet.” 

Sarah’s experience effectively illustrates that schizophrenia is far more than a collection of symptoms—it affects every aspect of a person's life. 

Why is schizophrenia so isolating?  

Mark Suett outlines the lived realities behind the technical explanations:  

“The so-called positive symptoms of schizophrenia, which we also call psychosis, are symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. The technical definition for a hallucination is that it's a false perception about a stimulus. In real terms, just think about hearing voices when there's no one there. Delusions are fixed false beliefs. 

“So let's imagine for one minute these hallucinations are derogatory or persecutory. The voices that you're hearing are saying the most awful or frightening things. And you can't move away from them. You can't get away from them. You can't close your ears or shut them down. They're with you all the time. And now let's imagine that these delusions are paranoid. People are out to get you. You're in fear for your life.

“We can see that the symptoms of psychosis are in fact a waking nightmare. And because your thinking and speech are confused, those around you may not understand you. So, you're terrified, and yet people may be running away. You are, in fact, on your own.  

“Fortunately, antipsychotics are highly effective against positive symptoms. And as a clinician treating psychosis, this can be really rewarding. But treating acute psychotic episodes, which typically is done in hospital, is only part of the story.  

“And there's more to schizophrenia than just positive symptoms. There are other clusters, including negative and cognitive symptoms as well. And these combine to lead to so-called functional deficits. Functional deficits, to my mind, mean a lost life. Lost is the opportunity to have a career, a relationship... to lead a full and rich life that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted."  

“Positive symptoms typically follow a relapsing and remitting course, he explains. “With each relapse, there's often devastation, because often patients end up back in hospital. And this disrupts everything - their relationships, their self-esteem, their careers.” 

What is it like living with schizophrenia? 

While it may be difficult to imagine the “waking nightmare” of living with schizophrenia, a Teva AI experiment, presented at a recent SIRS conference, helps to illustrate the reality. 

In this experiment patients with schizophrenia were shown a photo, which they were then asked to describe. AI looked at their description, interpreted it and constructed an image based on that description.  

As Mark Suett observes, “Imagine if this is how you’re seeing the world around you – as I said previously, a waking nightmare.” 

What are the clinical challenges of schizophrenia? 

Relapse is common on the patient journey and there are many risk factors for relapse, including occupational status and ability of daily living, but research shows the most prominent risk factor is non-adherence to medication. 

“It’s a fact that the most prominent modifiable factor related to the risk of relapse in schizophrenia is partial or non-adherence to antipsychotic medication,” says Mark Suett.  
“Psychosis is bad, and relapses and schizophrenia are bad, but antipsychotics can be highly effective. They can get patients well, treat the psychotic/positive symptoms. But importantly, they also keep patients well by reducing the risk of relapse. But of course, they don't work very well if they're not taken correctly.” 

Is adherence a problem for people living with schizophrenia? 

“Unfortunately, adherence is a huge problem for patients”, says Mark, adding “even partial adherence is a problem.” Some of the reasons for this are common to the population at large: “not many of us are actually very good at taking our pills” he explains, “or perhaps we don’t believe the medication is the right thing for us because of side effects. Sometimes people struggle to get their prescription because of practical access difficulties like getting to a pharmacy.” 

But there are other reasons that someone with living with schizophrenia can be particularly at risk of non-adherence, according to Mark. “Often people living with schizophrenia may also have problems with alcohol or substance misuse and that brings about a whole new level of complication. And schizophrenia often comes with a particular problem called anosognosia.”  

Anosognosia is a condition that makes someone believe they're healthy despite being unwell. The name comes from a Greek word that means “without knowledge of disease.” - Lesley McCuaig, Clinical Therapist and Schizophrenia Patient Advocate from her article Understanding Anosognosia: Believing You're Mentally Healthy When You're Not Well 

“This means the patient is unaware that they're ill or that they have schizophrenia. So there are many reasons why taking medications can be a challenge.” 

Sarah Merritt Ryan has also spoken about the stigma around antipsychotics themselves in Psychology Today:  

Sarah has also written an academic paper delving deeper into the specific cultural myths that impact psychiatric drug adherence that you can read here.  

Professor Christoph Correll is consistently ranked as the world's leading expert on schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. As well as working closely with Teva in this area for the past eight years, he is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Zucker School of Medicine in New York and Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Charité University Medicine in Berlin, and his research spans the entire continuum of severe psychiatric disorders 

Professor Correll echoes Sarah Merritt Ryan’s quote when he says “people with schizophrenia are among the highest non-adherent patients that we know in psychiatry, which has to do with struggling with having to accept that they have the illness, side effects, lack of efficacy, maybe even stigma of the medication, and the environment telling them that they shouldn't take this.”

Studies published by the National Library of Medicine say that preventing relapse is one of the most important goals in schizophrenia care. One of the key ways to do this is to raise awareness and address misconceptions about the realities of living with schizophrenia.  

It is vital to tackle the severe stigma surrounding the condition and promote greater understanding, replacing fear with empathy and improving quality of life for patients by fostering better community support, employment opportunities, and access to medical care. 

Improving awareness is about more than correcting misconceptions. It is about encouraging people to recognise the individual behind the illness, understanding the challenges they face, and creating a more supportive environment for those living with schizophrenia. To support these objectives, Teva is: 

• Engaging with physician communities and building confidence among healthcare professionals.  
• Ensuring HCPs are empowered to effectively discuss the full range of treatments with patients early in their treatment journey 
• Improving communication with patients and caregivers. 
• Working with multidisciplinary teams to educate on the key values of LAI 

What does the past and future of schizophrenia care look like?  

As we’ve seen, before the 1950s, there were no targeted or genuinely effective treatments for schizophrenia, with the condition treated in a rudimentary manner. Most people were put in confinement in asylums, chemically sedated or exposed to lobotomies. A breakthrough came in 1952, with the launch of the first antipsychotic medicine.  

Then followed a period of stagnation until the late 1980s when a second-generation antipsychotic was launched, with lower side effects. Despite all the advances, today the problem of non-adherence persists, resulting in relapse and repeat hospitalizations.  

In addition to raising awareness and educating on the condition to improve outcome for patients and healthcare professionals, Teva is working with cutting edge science and collaborators to expand its innovative medicine pipeline to support unmet needs and improve access for patients globally, helping to raise the standards of health care options and help patients live more stable, fulfilling lives. 

NPS-ALL-NP-01854 SEPTEMBER 2026