Schizophrenia is a common severe mental illness with high rate of relapse and disability, but the pathogenesis is unknown. Gama-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter, which is relevant to pathophysiological mechanisms of schizophrenia. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a non-invasive technique for directly measuring the regional GABA level of patient’s brain in vivo, which provides a novel idea for investigating the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and developing new intervention measures. This paper reviews progresses of studying GABA of patients with schizophrenia by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy.