It can happen, but it is quite rare. That is about the age for late-onset schizophrenia though, I believe. Is she taking any medications that might have caused this? Some blood pressure medications have disastrous results over time but the people who take them don't know or don't care until it's too late.

It might be schizophenia, it might be an onset of dementia, or it could be from somatic injury.

It is hard to tell the difference between schizophrenia and dementia. The paranoia leads one to think schizophrenia, but even so, medical professionals don't like to diagnose someone until they've had six months of substance free observation time. Then they can generally see what's going on.

Good luck to you! This sounds really rough.

Does anyone know what exactly is the difference between the two? I believe dementia is more to deal with memory, but seeing people with both it's kind of blurred as to what is what. Speaking of late-onset, here is a short video showing an artist's downfall into schizophrenia. I've seen this series used in textbooks, but apparently there is some discussion that the paintings may be out of order since he didn't date anything. Still, if correct it offers a rare glimpse into the disease.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8MIe7_u_tA

You might want to check out the DSM-IV-TR, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for a better understanding of the difference between the two.

Thanks for the youtube video; it was really interesting.

From my understanding, dementia and schizophrenia differ in etiology. Dementia can be detected in testing such as mri's and psychology testing as well. Schziophrenia is harder to 'see'. Dementia is generally untreatable, but schizophrenia is treatable. Schizophrenics generally develop their first break in their early twenties, adult onset dementia is much later. Dementia concurs with diagnoses of alzheimer's, brain injury, stroke, etc while schizophrenia stands alone.

Makes sense then. I need to get a new DSM, I just have this pocket-size spiral-bound job.