It might be an exciting time for psychiatrists, but not so exciting for their victims. Countless people having their brain chemistry altered by psychiatric drugs, and now they're even talking about drugging babies and foetuses in the womb. The future looks very scary indeed.
@Isisbridge I'm sorry that you feel that way about psychiatrists. Certainly here in the UK psychiatrists are all bound by the same duty of care to their patients as all other doctors, and are regulated by the General Medical Council. Yes, psychiatric drugs do alter brain chemistry (that's why they work...), but then so do many other drugs including pain killers like paracetamol. Could you provide a reference for the stuff about babies/foetuses? I haven't heard of it, and it sounds unusual.
It was an article I read about US psychiatrists claiming they would be able to detect which children were genetically at risk of "schizophrenia" and drug them from infancy or even in the womb. Sorry I can't remember where I saw it.
@Isisbridge Presumably they aim to treat them in order to prevent the development of schizophrenia, rather than drug them. Drugging implies sedating. However it seems an odd thing to do as not all of those with a genetic risk of schizophrenia will go on to develop the symptoms. It would be good to have the reference, so as to see exactly what they are proposing to do. Otherwise it's difficult to comment.
By drugging I meant the deliberate infliction of brain-disabling antipsychotic medications on babies and foetuses. Very scary to think that psychiatry might be allowed to damage the brains of children before they are even born, in pursuit of their erroneous claim that schizophrenia is genetic disease, when it is actually a disturbance of the mind, arising from the child's psychological development and subsequent life experiences.
@Isisbridge I'm still not sure that this is correct. The reference to the original research would be very useful, otherwise we are both just speculating about things.
Schizophrenia is a complex disorder. No-one is saying it is only genes or only life events. There are a number of genes which predispose to developing psychiatric illnesses, but only those with certain combinations of genes AND adverse life events (stress, trauma, use of cannabis/amphetamines) go on to develop the disorder.
There doesn't necessarily have to be adverse life events in the sense of major trauma. It is more a question of whether the individual has been able to develop a secure sense of self. Most of us can experience doubts about our own identity (regardless of our genes) but those who become overtly schizophrenic have usually grown up in confusing home backgrounds, receiving mixed messages and constantly being invalidated.
@Isisbridge No, that's why I said stress, trauma and drugs. Often there is no major trauma. However, as I said before, schizophrenia is a complex disorder. It is likely to be an interplay of environment and genetics. Equally there are folk who have no stresses and still develop the disorder.
All schizophrenics have had stresses but they may not be the type of stresses that are generally recognised by OTHER people to be stresses. A child could be reared in a family that seems on the surface to be a perfect family, with well-intentioned parents and no obvious stresses or abuse, but communication patterns within that family might be very confusing to the child, who might grow up with a very shaky sense of his own identity due to constant invalidation of his true personality.
@Isisbridge You seem to be saying that schizophrenia is a type of identity crisis? Whereas I would understand paranoid schizophrenia (as in the ICD-10) to be an illness with aberrant dopamine signalling in the brain which causes hallucinations, delusions, passivity phenomena (feeling controlled by others), thought interference, thought disorder. It can also have negative symptoms - apathy and social withdrawal, or catatonic symptoms. Are we both talking about the same condition?
That's exactly what schizophrenia is: a failure to establish a secure sense of personal identity, often engendered by confusing relationships in the home background. It has nothing to do with brain dysfunction or faulty dopamine, which is the myth being propagated by psychiatry. If you try to understand the thoughts and experiences of a schizophrenic, instead of dismissing them as "symptoms" of an "illness", you will find they make sense in the context of of his/her situation.
@Isisbridge But then why do people with schizophrenia have altered brain structure (e.g. larger ventricles) and function (e.g. altered dopamine transmission) and increased sensitivity to psychosis when exposed to amphetamines (which increase dopamine levels)? Why are there several genes (dysbindin, COMT and DISC-1) which are increased in sufferers? Whilst not the whole story, changes in dopamine (and glutamate) go far in explaining why folk have the disorder, and allow treatments to be found.
@imsaho79 (1) If such were the case, schizophrenia would be diagnosed by brain scans and neurological tests. But the fact is there are no significant differences in the brain structure of schizophrenics until after they are treated with neuroleptic medications, which have been shown to shrink the gray matter. All brains are different and researchers have been unable to demonstrate any differences that are consistently found in unmedicated schizophrenics and not also in some non-schizophrenics
@Isisbridge So the finding of increased ventricular volume in schizophrenics prior to the discovery of antipsychotics is coincidental? A quick search of google scholar reveals numerous studies comparing drug-naive patients with first episode schizophrenia and controls, revealing significant differences in brain neurochemistry and function. Whilst I agree that the picture is complex, the role of neurotransmitters cannot be discounted.
(4) Antipsychotics were discovered about sixty years ago. So are you claiming that increased ventricular volume was discovered even longer ago than that? And if so, why are brain scans not used as an initial diagnostic test? (Answer: because such results cannot be consistently replicated.) I think you should be very sceptical about these kinds of research, as human bias allows researchers to cook the results (and the sampling) until they find what they want to find.
@Isisbridge Scans are not used because they are not specific enough to make a diagnosis from (and because the diagnosis is usually quite clear from the clinical picture) but the findings of altered brain structure and function are consistent and replicable. Ventricular volume changes have been documented for longer than antipsychotics have existed.
@imsaho79 (2) Neurotransmitter levels are in continual flux and influenced by our mental state and what is going on at the time. So it's possible that the types of stresses experienced by schizophrenics might raise dopamine levels during periods of increased anxiety or mania. The system also works the other way round, so that increased dopamine from amphetamine might have the effect of accentuating the mania. But that does not mean that dopamine is the cause of the underlying psychotic state
@Isisbridge I'm not sure what you mean by periods of anxiety or mania. Schizophrenia is characterised by delusional beliefs and altered perceptions. Descriptions of these types of symptoms go back thousands of years, and have remained very stable despite many changes in societal structures and early life experiences. This is because there is a genetic component to them, something which we are just beginning to understand as our research methods improve.
(5) The so-called delusional beliefs always have a basis in reality, if viewed in the context of the person's situation. It's the fact of the other people in his life according him no validation of his own perceptions that allows these beliefs to become bizarre. For example, a person with a controlling over-dominant mother might feel that she is putting her thoughts into his head, and, given no validation, might then progress to believing he is being controlled by invisible mind rays
@Isisbridge This is simple not correct. Delusions can be primary as well as secondary, for example a patient seeing a red car going past the window and immediately taking this to mean that an alien invasion is imminent. Sometimes delusions are un-understandable, even to the person experiencing them. There are increasingly good explanations for how psychosis develops, linking in with dopamine systems in the brain. See S. Kapur's work on salience for more information.
(3) I would be extremely sceptical about psychiatry's claims to have found genes for the various "diseases" they have invented. Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder, engendered by disturbing interpersonal relationships during the child's development. For that reason, it may tend to run in families, sometimes with more than one sibling affected, but it's unlikely to be affected by genes, excepting that some temperaments may be more vulnerable than others.
@Isisbridge I don't think we are going to agree on this. We know that psychological experiences can change the shape and volume of brain structures, why do you not think that this could happen the other way round? Our genes affect the types of proteins that our brains produce and the way our brains develop, surely some could lead to subtle differences in wiring that cause people to develop schizophrenic symptoms?
(6) The schizophrenic "symptoms" (as you like to call them) derive from the confusing experiences in the person's home background, where he has been unable to achieve a secure sense of his own self. Calling his perceptions "illness" and trying to blame them onto a faulty brain are just further ways of invalidating him as a real person. I have experienced these things myself, so please take a look at my brain on my channel page and see if you can spot any structural differences.
@Isisbridge If a perception is faulty (for example a hallucination) and causes distress and altered behaviour which put someone at risk or prevents them from fulfilling their full potential, then yes it is an illness. The majority of those with psychiatric problems are helped rather than hindered by psychiatric treatment, whether that be medication, psychotherapy or other types of support. I'm sorry that you do not agree. Thanks for the stimulating discussion. All the best.
@snowplowman99 Poor diet doesn't really explain the results of twin studies, nor why the rates of major mental illnesses are very similar across the globe, despite radically different diets. It also doesn't explain why we are not seeing reduced rates of mental illness in the western world as diets have improved over the last 200 years. "Mental illness" is unlikely to have one cause, each illness will have specific contributions from different genetic and environmental factors.
@snowplowman99 bullshit,youve never formally studied the subject to any level if you think that.Under and malnutrition have some effect in some illneses but dont cause them.Genetic and environment interactions cause all human behaviour and dysfunctions of behaviour,thats no revelation.
300 years , from 1650 to 1950 asylums were built and the mentally ill contained.. I imagine the familys of the ill didn't care about them and didn't feed them well.. And maybe the asylums didn't feed them well either.. Just contained them. I believe that's were the mistake was made. Then came the lobotomies.. Then thorazine, and lots of money was to be made.. I imagine many prison inmates are on psych drugs paid for by the taxpayer I guess..
@snowplowman99 Asylum building only really took off in the late 1700s, before then it was private "madhouses." I'm not sure why you think people's families wouldn't care about them, or about poor diet. What evidence have you for this?
You are correct that lobotomies were tried before chlorpromazine was discovered in the 1950s, now DBS will probably replace psychosurgery altogether.
As for prisons, I'm not sure why you imagine this, any evidence of what you claim would be more useful.
I studied history of psychiatry for my masters and thought this was fantastic ! I would love to have seen a photo of DSM I vs. DSM IV (thin tiny early version vs. thick new version.
what a fantastic compilation- I am a clinical educator in mental health and would like to use this excerpt with your permission as part of my teaching resources
It might be an exciting time for psychiatrists, but not so exciting for their victims. Countless people having their brain chemistry altered by psychiatric drugs, and now they're even talking about drugging babies and foetuses in the womb. The future looks very scary indeed.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge I'm sorry that you feel that way about psychiatrists. Certainly here in the UK psychiatrists are all bound by the same duty of care to their patients as all other doctors, and are regulated by the General Medical Council. Yes, psychiatric drugs do alter brain chemistry (that's why they work...), but then so do many other drugs including pain killers like paracetamol. Could you provide a reference for the stuff about babies/foetuses? I haven't heard of it, and it sounds unusual.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
It was an article I read about US psychiatrists claiming they would be able to detect which children were genetically at risk of "schizophrenia" and drug them from infancy or even in the womb. Sorry I can't remember where I saw it.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge Presumably they aim to treat them in order to prevent the development of schizophrenia, rather than drug them. Drugging implies sedating. However it seems an odd thing to do as not all of those with a genetic risk of schizophrenia will go on to develop the symptoms. It would be good to have the reference, so as to see exactly what they are proposing to do. Otherwise it's difficult to comment.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
By drugging I meant the deliberate infliction of brain-disabling antipsychotic medications on babies and foetuses. Very scary to think that psychiatry might be allowed to damage the brains of children before they are even born, in pursuit of their erroneous claim that schizophrenia is genetic disease, when it is actually a disturbance of the mind, arising from the child's psychological development and subsequent life experiences.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge I'm still not sure that this is correct. The reference to the original research would be very useful, otherwise we are both just speculating about things.
Schizophrenia is a complex disorder. No-one is saying it is only genes or only life events. There are a number of genes which predispose to developing psychiatric illnesses, but only those with certain combinations of genes AND adverse life events (stress, trauma, use of cannabis/amphetamines) go on to develop the disorder.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
There doesn't necessarily have to be adverse life events in the sense of major trauma. It is more a question of whether the individual has been able to develop a secure sense of self. Most of us can experience doubts about our own identity (regardless of our genes) but those who become overtly schizophrenic have usually grown up in confusing home backgrounds, receiving mixed messages and constantly being invalidated.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge No, that's why I said stress, trauma and drugs. Often there is no major trauma. However, as I said before, schizophrenia is a complex disorder. It is likely to be an interplay of environment and genetics. Equally there are folk who have no stresses and still develop the disorder.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
All schizophrenics have had stresses but they may not be the type of stresses that are generally recognised by OTHER people to be stresses. A child could be reared in a family that seems on the surface to be a perfect family, with well-intentioned parents and no obvious stresses or abuse, but communication patterns within that family might be very confusing to the child, who might grow up with a very shaky sense of his own identity due to constant invalidation of his true personality.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge You seem to be saying that schizophrenia is a type of identity crisis? Whereas I would understand paranoid schizophrenia (as in the ICD-10) to be an illness with aberrant dopamine signalling in the brain which causes hallucinations, delusions, passivity phenomena (feeling controlled by others), thought interference, thought disorder. It can also have negative symptoms - apathy and social withdrawal, or catatonic symptoms. Are we both talking about the same condition?
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
That's exactly what schizophrenia is: a failure to establish a secure sense of personal identity, often engendered by confusing relationships in the home background. It has nothing to do with brain dysfunction or faulty dopamine, which is the myth being propagated by psychiatry. If you try to understand the thoughts and experiences of a schizophrenic, instead of dismissing them as "symptoms" of an "illness", you will find they make sense in the context of of his/her situation.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge But then why do people with schizophrenia have altered brain structure (e.g. larger ventricles) and function (e.g. altered dopamine transmission) and increased sensitivity to psychosis when exposed to amphetamines (which increase dopamine levels)? Why are there several genes (dysbindin, COMT and DISC-1) which are increased in sufferers? Whilst not the whole story, changes in dopamine (and glutamate) go far in explaining why folk have the disorder, and allow treatments to be found.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79 (1) If such were the case, schizophrenia would be diagnosed by brain scans and neurological tests. But the fact is there are no significant differences in the brain structure of schizophrenics until after they are treated with neuroleptic medications, which have been shown to shrink the gray matter. All brains are different and researchers have been unable to demonstrate any differences that are consistently found in unmedicated schizophrenics and not also in some non-schizophrenics
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge So the finding of increased ventricular volume in schizophrenics prior to the discovery of antipsychotics is coincidental? A quick search of google scholar reveals numerous studies comparing drug-naive patients with first episode schizophrenia and controls, revealing significant differences in brain neurochemistry and function. Whilst I agree that the picture is complex, the role of neurotransmitters cannot be discounted.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
(4) Antipsychotics were discovered about sixty years ago. So are you claiming that increased ventricular volume was discovered even longer ago than that? And if so, why are brain scans not used as an initial diagnostic test? (Answer: because such results cannot be consistently replicated.) I think you should be very sceptical about these kinds of research, as human bias allows researchers to cook the results (and the sampling) until they find what they want to find.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge Scans are not used because they are not specific enough to make a diagnosis from (and because the diagnosis is usually quite clear from the clinical picture) but the findings of altered brain structure and function are consistent and replicable. Ventricular volume changes have been documented for longer than antipsychotics have existed.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79 (2) Neurotransmitter levels are in continual flux and influenced by our mental state and what is going on at the time. So it's possible that the types of stresses experienced by schizophrenics might raise dopamine levels during periods of increased anxiety or mania. The system also works the other way round, so that increased dopamine from amphetamine might have the effect of accentuating the mania. But that does not mean that dopamine is the cause of the underlying psychotic state
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge I'm not sure what you mean by periods of anxiety or mania. Schizophrenia is characterised by delusional beliefs and altered perceptions. Descriptions of these types of symptoms go back thousands of years, and have remained very stable despite many changes in societal structures and early life experiences. This is because there is a genetic component to them, something which we are just beginning to understand as our research methods improve.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
(5) The so-called delusional beliefs always have a basis in reality, if viewed in the context of the person's situation. It's the fact of the other people in his life according him no validation of his own perceptions that allows these beliefs to become bizarre. For example, a person with a controlling over-dominant mother might feel that she is putting her thoughts into his head, and, given no validation, might then progress to believing he is being controlled by invisible mind rays
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge This is simple not correct. Delusions can be primary as well as secondary, for example a patient seeing a red car going past the window and immediately taking this to mean that an alien invasion is imminent. Sometimes delusions are un-understandable, even to the person experiencing them. There are increasingly good explanations for how psychosis develops, linking in with dopamine systems in the brain. See S. Kapur's work on salience for more information.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
(3) I would be extremely sceptical about psychiatry's claims to have found genes for the various "diseases" they have invented. Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder, engendered by disturbing interpersonal relationships during the child's development. For that reason, it may tend to run in families, sometimes with more than one sibling affected, but it's unlikely to be affected by genes, excepting that some temperaments may be more vulnerable than others.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge I don't think we are going to agree on this. We know that psychological experiences can change the shape and volume of brain structures, why do you not think that this could happen the other way round? Our genes affect the types of proteins that our brains produce and the way our brains develop, surely some could lead to subtle differences in wiring that cause people to develop schizophrenic symptoms?
imsaho79 1 year ago
@imsaho79
(6) The schizophrenic "symptoms" (as you like to call them) derive from the confusing experiences in the person's home background, where he has been unable to achieve a secure sense of his own self. Calling his perceptions "illness" and trying to blame them onto a faulty brain are just further ways of invalidating him as a real person. I have experienced these things myself, so please take a look at my brain on my channel page and see if you can spot any structural differences.
Isisbridge 1 year ago
@Isisbridge If a perception is faulty (for example a hallucination) and causes distress and altered behaviour which put someone at risk or prevents them from fulfilling their full potential, then yes it is an illness. The majority of those with psychiatric problems are helped rather than hindered by psychiatric treatment, whether that be medication, psychotherapy or other types of support. I'm sorry that you do not agree. Thanks for the stimulating discussion. All the best.
imsaho79 1 year ago
This is a great compilation!! Thanks for putting it together
Psychstudio 1 year ago
insaho79 I think poor nutrition is the main cause for mental illness. . What do you think the cause of mental illness is ?
snowplowman99 1 year ago
@snowplowman99 Poor diet doesn't really explain the results of twin studies, nor why the rates of major mental illnesses are very similar across the globe, despite radically different diets. It also doesn't explain why we are not seeing reduced rates of mental illness in the western world as diets have improved over the last 200 years. "Mental illness" is unlikely to have one cause, each illness will have specific contributions from different genetic and environmental factors.
imsaho79 1 year ago
@snowplowman99 bullshit,youve never formally studied the subject to any level if you think that.Under and malnutrition have some effect in some illneses but dont cause them.Genetic and environment interactions cause all human behaviour and dysfunctions of behaviour,thats no revelation.
billysue2 1 year ago
300 years , from 1650 to 1950 asylums were built and the mentally ill contained.. I imagine the familys of the ill didn't care about them and didn't feed them well.. And maybe the asylums didn't feed them well either.. Just contained them. I believe that's were the mistake was made. Then came the lobotomies.. Then thorazine, and lots of money was to be made.. I imagine many prison inmates are on psych drugs paid for by the taxpayer I guess..
snowplowman99 1 year ago
@snowplowman99 Asylum building only really took off in the late 1700s, before then it was private "madhouses." I'm not sure why you think people's families wouldn't care about them, or about poor diet. What evidence have you for this?
You are correct that lobotomies were tried before chlorpromazine was discovered in the 1950s, now DBS will probably replace psychosurgery altogether.
As for prisons, I'm not sure why you imagine this, any evidence of what you claim would be more useful.
imsaho79 1 year ago
I studied history of psychiatry for my masters and thought this was fantastic ! I would love to have seen a photo of DSM I vs. DSM IV (thin tiny early version vs. thick new version.
vwyeth 1 year ago
very informative, like the cross-cultural references a lot!
vivino100 1 year ago
what a fantastic compilation- I am a clinical educator in mental health and would like to use this excerpt with your permission as part of my teaching resources
best wishes
britgirlinoz 1 year ago
@britgirlinoz : that's fine, just as long as original authorship acknowledged in any derived works.
imsaho79 1 year ago
This was great, thanks. :-)
wfisher1 1 year ago
Scary stuff. Why have you omitted to mention lobotomies?
Isisbridge 1 year ago 2
@Isisbridge very true. There's so many things to try and fit into 8 1/2 mins. Will keep in mind for future updates.
imsaho79 1 year ago