Ageing
In all, it is impossible to say the course that schizophrenia will take throughout a person’s life as they age. There are is a wide range of variables that as yet has not been accounted for in the studies done on schizophrenia among an elderly population. Poverty, education, substance abuse, frequency or infrequency of taking medications, exposure to therapy, and incidence of other diseases, mental or physical, have a huge effect on the course that schizophrenia takes as its victims age. What can be confidently stated is the disease rarely causes progressive degeneration in cognitive abilities, like Alzheimers disease would, and people afflicted with the early onset version of the disorder quite often experience a “mellowing” of the symptoms as they grow older, though whether that is because of ongoing treatment, or a natural result of the ageing process is unclear so far. People who suffer from a later onset of the disorder experience the same rapid peaking of the symptoms, but no not often have the symptoms lessen with time as they do in victims with the early onset of the disorder. This may indicate that it is the long course of treatment that is responsible for the recovery, but it might also belie a fundamental difference in the onset mechanism of the disorder. Until further research has been done all we can do is speculate.