For the first time in the country, the Fountain House Lahore, which is a charitable organisation engaged in rehabilitation of as many 250 schizophrenic patients, is going to start "Adopt me programme". Under this programme philanthropists will adopt one "abandoned patient" of the House and share some moments with him, apart from providing monthly charges of Rs 6,000 for meeting his medical and other expenses.
The launching ceremony of the programme is being held here at the Fountain House on Wednesday at 10.30 am. Punjab Governor Lieutenant General Khalid Maqbool (Retd) will be the chief guest. As many as 10 schizophrenic abandoned patients in the House will be adopted by well-to-do people on the occasion.
Talking about the programme, Fountain House Honorary Director and Fatima Jinnah Medical College (FJMC) Department of Psychiatry Head Professor Dr Haroon Rashid Chaudhry told Business Recorder here on Tuesday that there are 250 schizophrenic patients in the Fountain House and out of them 107 are abandoned patients, as they have lost contact with their family members.
The objective of the programme is to provide sense of being a member of family to the schizophrenic patients who on occasions of festivals miss their families. He said this programme would go a long way in rehabilitation of these patients.
Talking about the schizophrenic patients, he said that the role of families and caregivers is very important in management of schizophrenic patients. In joint family system, schizophrenic patients could be identified early, as the patient gives up routine activities and move towards isolation.
Professor Haroon said that an abnormal pattern in an area of the brain that governs hearing might be an accurate method of diagnosing schizophrenia. "Using this imaging test, we were able to identify patients with Schizophrenia with 97 percent accuracy," he said.
Currently, the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia is based on a constellation of psychiatric symptoms. The mental illness also has been associated with both structural and functional abnormalities in neocortical networks, including frontal, parietal, and temporal regions of the brain, but there has been no diagnostic test for the disorder, he added.
He also said that abnormalities in auditory cortex structure and function are prominent features of the brains in people with schizophrenia, particularly in the superior temporal gyrus (SRG).