by Guest » Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:02 am
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.
Attention Moderators.
For some reason, I am having great difficulty navigating Psych Forums, the pages don’t load properly then they freeze (I’m sure you are all laughing). I don’t know what the problem is. I realise I have posted this information on another thread, it is not my intention to spam. However, I wish to respond to comments on this thread using this information.
Please don’t be harsh!
PS Is Psych Forums operating OK? Am I the only one with this loading freezing problem?