Schizophrenia - A Discussion

[dumb]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

offhand i can remember coming across the link between dementia and schizophrenia. something to do with degeneration (of the frontal lobe)? later in life thing.

looking up data..

STUDIES OF NEVER-TREATED PATIENTS CONFIRM SCHIZOPHRENIA IS A BRAIN DISEASE

Abnormalities in brain structure and function not caused by medications

A paper published in the October 2002 edition of the journal Schizophrenia Research (released September 20) confirms that schizophrenia is a brain disease, in exactly the same sense that Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and multiple sclerosis are brain diseases.

The paper reviewed 65 research projects carried out on individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with any antipsychotic medication. In many, the individual had only recently been diagnosed with the disease. In recent years, many critics of psychiatry have suggested that the brain abnormalities described in schizophrenia are caused by medications being taken by the patients. This review refutes that thesis.

It is clear that schizophrenia, like many other brain diseases, produces abnormalities in brain structure and function. These abnormalities are inherent in the disease process and not caused by medications.

ABOUT THE PAPER. The study reviewed 65 research projects carried out on individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with any antipsychotic medication. In many, the individual had only recently been diagnosed with the disease. The projects measured the structure and function of brains of individuals with schizophrenia and compared these with normal controls. Neurological and neuropsychological measures of brain function showed the most consistent and largest differences between patients and controls. Measures of brain structure, such as MRIs, and measures of brain metabolism, such as PET scans, were also significantly different but less impressive. The brain abnormalities were not localized to a single part of the brain but instead implicated a variety of interrelated regions at the base of the brain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR. The paper's author, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, is executive director of The Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., and president of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va. "Studies of Individuals with Schizophrenia Never Treated with Antipsychotic Medications: A Review," is the lead article in the October 2002 Schizophrenia Research. Dr. Torrey is a leading research psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness. He is the author of 20 books and more than 200 lay and professional papers.

His full bio is available at http://www.psychlaws.org/PressRoom/Bio1.htm

View the full paper online at:
http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/report-nevertreated.htm

while i do understand that things like personality disorders are somewhat 'made up' problems in response to the way people are wired up (that is - and i have not really followed these subjects lately - personality disorders are not walk-up diagnoses and require ongoing evaluation and essentially no-one has a disorder until they are unhappy with their life and walking into the psych clinic), schizophrenia is a different kettle of fish.

much like most health problem manifestations - a patient is only going to seek help after what is happening to them is troubling. i think that even if it were symptoms of a deeper conciousness or whatever, the pertinent point is that the individual is uncomfortable with it. there is also the likelihood that they've already explored the deeper conciousness aspect of it, you know, magical thinking / schizoaffective type stuff (i have two schizophrenic friends who are both on weird spiritual tangents).

furthermore - psychs are just as likely to allow any individuals theories to remain on deeper conciousness so long as it doesn't overlap what they feel the need to be treating. there's a fine line between it all anyway. you could be exploring your deeper conciousness or just another schizotypal. treatment ideally focuses on what makes a patient unhappy rather than telling them an entire way to live.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

DSM IV disagrees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_Codes#Schizophrenia_and_other_psychotic_disorders

 

[evo]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

DSM IV disagrees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_Codes#Schizophrenia_and_other_psychotic_disorders

I defy anyone to read all of the DSM IV and claim they HAVEN'T got some type of mental disorder.

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

At the risk of sounding like a "PC Knob", there are NO schizophrenics, but people with schizophrenia.

 

[BarneyBent]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Did this topic have to be separated and therefore bumped? It really should have been left to die in the other thread.

 

[dumb]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

also look up the term dementia praecox

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

And furthermore, ego is NOT a dirty word.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I defy anyone to read all of the DSM IV and claim they HAVEN'T got some type of mental disorder.

So true. I think V is out soon. Should be a good read.

http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx

 

[obscura]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Draw the line Vealesy. If you are fighting the good fight against PC and all those horrible people with schizophrenia in the real world, what are you doing on bigfooty trying to preach to other people to join in your philisophies?

 

[Pie eyed]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Schizophrenia is clearly a recognised metal disorder so this thread, spawned from a pigheaded refusal to accept the fact by a single poster should be closed.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Re: London Olympics "Racist" Logo

So what, it's a condition of the legs is it? I mean geez people, this paranoia against sections of the medical community is just ridiculous. Yes, Schizophrenia is a real illness, and no, psychiatrists and psychologists are not in some evil cable to convince us to buy drugs for illnesses we don't have. Yes, there is misdiagnosis, but the level of paranoia by the likes of vealesy is ridiculous. People do not naturally behave in such manners without some sort of reason. In reality, most of them just explore rabid delusions rather than the "deeper consciousness" (which you admit it has something to do with the brain).
I second J Moore's comment.

You sure about that?

 

[cancat]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Schizophrenia is clearly a recognised metal disorder so this thread, spawned from a pigheaded refusal to accept the fact by a single poster should be closed.

Not so fast Kimosabe. There are a range of differing views in the mental health field, and indeed amongst some philosophers, on schizophrenia.

Like morality, insanity is wholly subjective. It varies across cultures and changes with time. For instance, homosexuality was once 'treated'. Or, in a room full of atheists someone praying to a saint might be classed as deluded.

When you talk about 'clearly a recognised metal disorder' you are only talking about right now in Western society. In other times, someone whose views of reality were not consistent with society's might have been treated as enlightened. Many societies have the concept of a Shaman. We might classify many of such people as schizophrenic in current society.

Shamans gain knowledge and the power to heal by entering into the spiritual world or dimension. The shaman may have or acquire many spirit guides in the spirit world, who often guide and direct the shaman in his/her travels. These spirit guides are always present within the shaman though others only encounter them when the shaman is in a trance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

 

[Pie eyed]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Not so fast Kimosabe. There are a range of differing views in the mental health field, and indeed amongst some philosophers, on schizophrenia.

Like morality, insanity is wholly subjective. It varies across cultures and changes with time. For instance, homosexuality was once 'treated'. Or, in a room full of atheists someone praying to a saint might be classed as deluded.

When you talk about 'clearly a recognised metal disorder' you are only talking about right now in Western society. In other times, someone whose views of reality were not consistent with society's might have been treated as enlightened. Many societies have the concept of a Shaman. We might classify many of such people as schizophrenic in current society.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

The thread topic is about the existence of the disease not the diagnosis or who has it.
Shaman may be sufferers. Different topic though.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Not so fast Kimosabe. There are a range of differing views in the mental health field, and indeed amongst some philosophers, on schizophrenia.

Like morality, insanity is wholly subjective. It varies across cultures and changes with time. For instance, homosexuality was once 'treated'. Or, in a room full of atheists someone praying to a saint might be classed as deluded.

When you talk about 'clearly a recognised metal disorder' you are only talking about right now in Western society. In other times, someone whose views of reality were not consistent with society's might have been treated as enlightened. Many societies have the concept of a Shaman. We might classify many of such people as schizophrenic in current society.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

Was in DSM until the 1980's.

 

[BarneyBent]

Re: London Olympics "Racist" Logo

You sure about that?

Seriously?

Every drug trial is peer reviewed, and only ones that pass such trials can be deemed fit for diagnosis. So if you think that it's possible that psychiatrists (not psychologists, they can't prescribe drugs) are in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies, then you are essentially claiming that the entire peer review system is working with them. And if that's true, then the same must can be true for any technology in any field.

The fact is that the drugs prescribed by psychiatrists are imperfect, but they serve a purpose. Medical researchers, psychiatrists and psychologists are always looking for better drugs, with fewer side-effects, at lower cost, and they are also always looking for alternatives. In fact, looking at alternatives to drugs is one of the biggest and most popular areas in research. Pretty much all of the recent literature suggests that cognitive therapies are the best long-term method, but drugs are important for stabilising people in the short term. That is why a very common way of treating severe anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar, etc, is to prescribe an appropriate drug to stabilise a patient, and then perform a cognitive therapy (depending in the disorder, it might be cognitive-behavioural therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, amongst others), while steadily lowering the drug dosage as the therapy takes effect (this is ideal, not all patients respond to drugs, nor do they all respond to cognitive therapy).

There was a time when the fashion in psychological research was very much towards drugs. This was arguably a product of increased emphasis on and understanding of the neurobiological nature of mental disorders, and so the assumption that such disorders could be healed with drugs, just as other parts of the body can be healed with drugs. This approach has since been replaced by the appproach I described above, which is in no small part due to the discovery of brain plasticity; that is (amongst other things) that, basically, forcing yourself to think in certain ways, changing your "cognitions", can actually change the physical structure of your brain. So, cognitive therapies and neurobiological approaches to mental disorders suddenly became compatible. Drugs still have their uses, but cognitive therapies are the way of actually "repairing" the brain.

So yeah, don't know whether you were serious with that post or not, but if you weren't, if there are any other conspiracy theorists out there thinking that psychiatry is out to stuff pills down your throat and make money off you doing it, the field is actually making every effort, now, to reduce the amount of drugs prescribed.

The more you know.

 

[cancat]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

The thread topic is about the existence of the disease not the diagnosis or who has it

But I'm saying the 'existence of the disease' is subjective. It is a about a classification of behaviours. A classification of views of reality.

 

[BarneyBent]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Not so fast Kimosabe. There are a range of differing views in the mental health field, and indeed amongst some philosophers, on schizophrenia.

Like morality, insanity is wholly subjective. It varies across cultures and changes with time. For instance, homosexuality was once 'treated'. Or, in a room full of atheists someone praying to a saint might be classed as deluded.

When you talk about 'clearly a recognised metal disorder' you are only talking about right now in Western society. In other times, someone whose views of reality were not consistent with society's might have been treated as enlightened. Many societies have the concept of a Shaman. We might classify many of such people as schizophrenic in current society.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism

Yes, well, someone with sickle-cell anaemia might not consider themselves as having a disease when in the tropics because it protects them from malaria, but it also shortens their life span by about 30 years.

Mental health has been a mercurial concept for many years, by virtue of it having few, sometimes no, physical symptoms. Only recently has there been concrete steps taken in defining what constitutes a mental disorder. Of course, it's nowhere near perfect, and it won't be for some time, if ever, but schizophrenia is not considered a disease in any danger of losing such status. Addiction is an example of something that is borderline. ADD even. Not schizophrenia.

 

[evo]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

But I'm saying the 'existence of the disease' is subjective. It is a about a classification of behaviours. A classification of views of reality.

Yep, you're right. It is hard sell to most people, however.

 

[The OBSTacle]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I once met a bloke that was incarcerated for attacking a person he believed was a Tarantula from the 7th dimension. He believed that he could disable this giant Tarantula by reaching up inside it and pulling out one of it's 21 kidneys. (True story)

Now either

A) He has a diagnosed illness that disappears when he is medicated.

Or

B) There are shape shifting Tarantula people out there waiting to get me.

 

[cancat]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Yep, you're right. It is hard sell to most people, however.

The other side of it is that people's thoughts and behaviours can be disturbing to themselves. I had a mate who episodically thought he was the devil. He wasn't at odds with society's norms, he had uncontrollable thoughts that were at odds with his own norms. If a classification of 'schizophrenia' helps people like this then I guess it is valid.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I once met a bloke that was incarcerated for attacking a person he believed was a Tarantula from the 7th dimension. He believed that he could disable this giant Tarantula by reaching up inside it and pulling out one of it's 21 kidneys. (True story)

Now either

A) He has a diagnosed illness that disappears when he is medicated.

Or

B) There are shape shifting Tarantula people out there waiting to get me.

No C) he's full of shit

?

 

[Garibaldi]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I would suggest that you keep up your meds. Your delusional and obviously having early episodes. You know what happened last time you stopped your medication.

 

[Clay Davis]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I defy anyone to read all of the DSM IV and claim they HAVEN'T got some type of mental disorder.

I always love the self or otherwise diagnosis of people having Aspergers because they can be annoying twats every so often.

 

[mdc]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

Jacques Derrida thought it was a "language disorder"

You don't mean Lacan?

I defy anyone to read all of the DSM IV and claim they HAVEN'T got a few dozen mental disorders.

efa At least future generations are sure to find it hilarious (Major Laughing Disorder).

 

[BarneyBent]

Re: Schizophrenia is not a disease.

I always love the self or otherwise diagnosis of people having Aspergers because they can be annoying twats every so often.

Aspergers, like ADD, is one of the most unfortunately overdiagnosed disorders in history. It's actually out of control. ADD diagnosis is actually calming down a bit I think, but Aspergers is kinda replacing it. Most kids diagnosed with ADD are just little shits. Most kids diagnosed with Aspergers are just losers. Unfortunately, people see this mass overdiagnosis, and occasionally you get kids that genuingely do suffer from either and it's not taken seriously.