Chemical imbalance.

Hi all,

I was hoping someone maybe able to help answer my question. Schizophrenia is caused by a chemical biological imbalance in the brain. I have searched everywhere on the net and I cannot find what the test is that psychiatrists use to determine if a patient has this imbalance when giving a diagnosis of schizophrenia?

Can someone tell me what test they use and what they test (blood, tissue or other body fluids) to determine this brain chemical imbalance and diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Guest,
I'm not aware that there is any testing to discover if a person has schizophrenia. I thought that the diagnosis was based on symptoms. Neither of my 2 kids with schizophrenia has had any type of blood testing. If there is such a test I'd be interested to know about it myself.

Take Care,
Sweetngentle

Hello sweetngentle,

I have frequently read reports from psychiatrists that schizophrenia is an illness of the brain caused by a chemical imbalances, have you?

I cannot find any information on how they test for these imbalances???

How frustrating!

When I look at a list of symptoms for schizophrenia, basically I only see a list of deviant thoughts, feelings and behaviour that normal society find unacceptable. Where does chemical imbalances of the brain come in to the equation of schizophrenia? Does anyone know?

Kind regards.

Guest,
I've always been told that it is part chemical, part hereditary and part environmental.

Sweetngentle

How do they know if it's chemical or hereditary without some sort of test? Sorry for so many questions, I'm not arguing, I just cant find the clear evidence or phsyical sign psychiatrists use to be able to clearly point to and state "this is schizophrenia"!

Guest,
Your questions aren't a problem for me. I just don't have all the answers I believe that there is a certain criteria that professionals use in diagnosing schizophrenia. From what I rmember the symptoms of hallucinating, hearing voices and/or dellussions have to go on for a certain amount of time. I really don't think that there is a blood test for diagnosing schizophrenia. Maybe someone more knowledgable than I will post on this subject.

Sweetngentle

Why the hell and how the hell do psychiatrists say schizophrenia and other mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain when they have no test and no way of proving this?

I think schizophrenia is just unexceptable thoughts, feelings and behavior.

what else would it be, if it was just whatever you called i then im sure everybody would have it, its a disorder in the brain, and i think its impossible to know everything about it and what causes what, plus even if they did know, i doubt any of us could understand, another thing, why would you want a big explanation, unless you were a doctor or something and understood everything they were saying.

It has been shown there are structural differences in the brains of schizophrenics for a very long time, even from the early 1930s.

Brain imaging scans show, that the majority of schizophrenics have structural differences in the brains in comparison to normal controls, there is a clearly bigger ventricle.

The chemical imbalance hypothesis has alot of support. They say its due to high concentrations of dopamine in the brain. This is well supported because, drugs that increase levels of dopamine in the brain (cocaine, amphetamines) also mimick schizophrenic behaviours in those that take them, it is true to say that amphetamine psychosis is not uncommon amongst speed addicts.

Also the drugs that block dopamine receptors, anti-psychotics, control schizophrenic symptoms.

Wether schizophrenia is caused by this chemical imbalance, orth schizophrenia causes the chemical imbalance is yet to be shown.

Perosnally i think it's genetic, that the brain has to be a certain structure to allow psychotic experiances to take place more often. Or that this kind of brain is developed from social isolation. Rats breed in social isolation were shown to have a different brain structure to other control rats.

This could mean that the disease is infact the way the brain has been molded by society and how the patient has been treated in society. It's also clear that sensory deprivation tends to cause psychotic symptoms.

Perhaps the brain adapts to social isolation, and changes so the person who once thrived with a social life isn't left unchallenged and unmotivated, so the brain reruns subconscious...

I won't go on...I think you all can see how complex this debate it.

Id be interested to know if any sufferers on this board didn't encounter any social withdrawl, or isolation before their illness, or when it first started.

Guest wrote,
“It has been shown there are structural differences in the brains of schizophrenics for a very long time, even from the early 1930s.

Brain imaging scans show, that the majority of schizophrenics have structural differences in the brains in comparison to normal controls, there is a clearly bigger ventricle.

The chemical imbalance hypothesis has alot of support. They say its due to high concentrations of dopamine in the brain. This is well supported because, drugs that increase levels of dopamine in the brain (cocaine, amphetamines) also mimick schizophrenic behaviours in those that take them, it is true to say that amphetamine psychosis is not uncommon amongst speed addicts.

Also the drugs that block dopamine receptors, anti-psychotics, control schizophrenic symptoms.

“Wether schizophrenia is caused by this chemical imbalance, orth schizophrenia causes the chemical imbalance is yet to be shown.

Perosnally i think it's genetic, that the brain has to be a certain structure to allow psychotic experiances to take place more often. Or that this kind of brain is developed from social isolation. Rats breed in social isolation were shown to have a different brain structure to other control rats.

This could mean that the disease is infact the way the brain has been molded by society and how the patient has been treated in society. It's also clear that sensory deprivation tends to cause psychotic symptoms.

Perhaps the brain adapts to social isolation, and changes so the person who once thrived with a social life isn't left unchallenged and unmotivated, so the brain reruns subconscious...

I won't go on...I think you all can see how complex this debate it.

Id be interested to know if any sufferers on this board didn't encounter any social withdrawl, or isolation before their illness, or when it first started.”

Dear Guest
I don’t believe this is a complex debate at all.

Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (1999) is explicit about the absence of any findings of specific pathophysiology:

p. 44: "The diagnosis of mental disorders is often believed to be more difficult than diagnosis of somatic, or general medical, disorders, since there is no definitive lesion, laboratory test, or abnormality in brain tissue that can identify the illness."


p. 48: "It is not always easy to establish a threshold for a mental disorder, particularly in light of how common symptoms of mental distress are and the lack of objective, physical symptoms."

p. 49: "The precise causes (etiology) of mental disorders are not known."

p. 51: "All too frequently a biological change in the brain (a lesion) is purported to be the 'cause' of a mental disorder ... [but] The fact is that any simple association -- or correlation -- cannot and does not, by itself, mean causation."

p. 102: "Few lesions or physiologic abnormalities define the mental disorders, and for the most part their causes remain unknown."

In the third edition of Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry (1999), we find similar statements:

p. 43: "Although reliable criteria have been constructed for many psychiatric disorders, validation of the diagnostic categories as specific entities has not been established."

p. 51: Most of these [genetic studies] examine candidate genes in the serotonergic pathways, and have not found convincing evidence of an association."

In Andreasen and Black's (2001) Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry, we find, in the chapter on schizophrenia:

p. 23. "In the areas of pathophysiology and etiology, psychiatry has more uncharted territory than the rest of medicine...Much of the current investigative research in psychiatry is directed toward the goal of identifying the pathophysiology and etiology of major mental illnesses, but this goal has been achieved for only a few disorders (Alzheimer's disease, multi-infarct dementia, Huntington's disease, and substance-induced syndromes such as amphetamine-related psychosis or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome)."

p. 231: "In the absence of visible lesions and known pathogens, investigators have turned to the exploration of models that could explain the diversity of symptoms through a single cognitive mechanism."

p. 450: "Many candidate regions [of the brain] have been explored [for schizophrenia] but none have been confirmed."

Thank you though for your comments Guest.

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