Preventing schizophrenia

A scenario I worried about last weekend has come not to pass but to discussion, but their plan for doing it is better than the one I worried about.

If people work the same way as rats, the brains of people who become adult schizophrenics start diverging from normal during rat adolescence, but giving them a particular set of drugs at the appropriate time can arrest the brain changes.

These researchers propose, after further study, to image the brains of kids at genetic risk of becoming schizophrenic at appropriate intervals, and put those kids who show signs of brain changes on meds to stop the changes.

This sounds like a good plan to me. Use genetics to determine whom to test, and then medicate only the ones who actually show physical signs of the problem.

Now we need to develop similar plans for kids who are at risk of other fixable problems.