![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(1) "In the vast majority of cases, the voices are male voices and are unpleasant. They are often accusatory, reviling the victims for past misdeeds, real or imagined. Often they curse them, and I have had many people refuse to tell me what the voices say to them because they were embarrassed by it. One patient, who ultimately committed suicide, described her voices as 'a constant state of mind rape.'" [p.33]
-
(2) "Dr. Silvano Arieti attempted to distinguish the hallucinations of the profoundly religious from those of schizophrenia by proposing the following criteria: (a) religious hallucinations are usually visual, while those in schizophrenia are predominantly auditory; (b) religious hallucinations usually involve benelovent guides or advisers who issue orders to the person; and (c) religious hallucinations are usually ple. ." [p.35]
(3) "Hallucinations of taste usually consist of familiar food tasting differently. I have had patients with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, who decided that they were being poisoned when their food began tasting 'funny.' Certainly if one's food suddenly starts changing in taste it is logical to suspect that someone is adding something to it."
(4) ""To the person who experiences hallucinatory pains, the pains feel identical with actual pains...The person who feels it undergoes real suffering.""
(5) ""A young man frequently confused in a conversation, being unable to distinguish between himself and an interlocutor. He tended to lose the sense of whose thoughts originated in whom, and felt 'as if' his interlocutor somehow 'invaded him,' an experience that shattered his identity and was intensely anxiety provoking."" [p.36]
(6) "In extreme cases, a few patients with schizophrenia are unable to recognize photographs of themselves. When one such man was shown a picture of himself and asked who it was, he answered, 'It is a man.'" // Possessed.
(7) "Changes in emotions - or affect, as it is often called by professionals - are one of the most common and characteristic changes in schizophrenia. In the early stages of the illness, depression, guilt, fear, and rapidly fluctuating emotions may all be found. In the latter stages, flattening of emotions are more characteristic, often resulting in individuals who appear to be unable to feel emotions at all. This in turn makes it more difficult for us to relate to them, so we tend to shun them even more. Depression is a very common symptom early in the course of the disease but is often overlooked. In one study it was reported that '81 percent of the patients...presented a well defined episode of depressive mood.' In half of the patients, symptoms of depression preceded the onset of delusions or hallucinations. Most such depression is biologically based, caused by neurological changes in the brain as part of the disease process, although some of it may also be a reaction of the person to the realization that he/she is becoming sick. One of the tragic and not uncommon sequelae of such depression is suicide, which is discussed in chapter 10."
(8) "Exaggerated feelings usually are not found in patients beyond the early stages of the disease. If they are, they should raise questions as to whether schizophrenia is the correct diagnosis. It is the retention of such feelings and emotions that is one of the sharpest dividing lines between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (see chapter 2). If the person retains exaggerated feelings to a prominent degree beyond the early stages of the disease, it is much more likely that the correct diagnosis will turn out to be bipolar disorder."
(9) "These inappropriate emotions produce one of the most dramatic aspects of the disease - the victim suddenly breaking out in cackling laughter for no apparent reason. It is a common sight to those who have worked or lived with people with this disease." (p.40)
(10) "Indeed, almost everything a person with schizophrenia says and does may be, to them, rational. It is 'crazy' only to the outsider who sits on the sidelines and observes from afar. To someone who will take the time to listen, a person with schizophrenia is not 'crazy' at all if by 'crazy' one means irrational. The 'craziness' has its roots in the disordered brain function that produces erroneous sensory data and disordered thinking." (p.47)
(11) "Such awareness of illness in the early stages is often lost as the disease becomes fully manifest. This is not surprising since it is the brain that is malfunctioning, and it is also the brain that we use to think about ourselves. In fact, I am always surprised at the many patients with schizophrenia who have awareness of their illness. Even in the stage of chronic illness an occasional person with schizophrenia will exhibit surprising insight." (p.48)
(12) "The consequences of decreased awareness of illness for individuals with schizophrenia are legion. On the positive side, it has been shown that those with decreased awareness of their illness are less depressed and probably have a lower incidence of suicide, as one would expect. On the negative side, lack of awareness of illness is the largest single cause of the need for involuntary hospitalization and medication, major problems that are discussed in chapter 10."
(13) "The Inner World of Mental Illness ed. B. Kaplan"
(14) "Similarly, Kurt Schneider, a German psychiatrist, proposed a list of symptoms that he called 'first rank' symptoms, meaning that when one or more of them are present they point strongly toward schizophrenia as the diagnosis. These symptoms are used informally in European countries for the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but less so in the United States. Studies have shown that at least three-quarters of patients with schizophrenia have one or more of these symptoms. However, they cannot be considered as definitive for schizophrenia because they are also found in at least one-quarter of patients with bipolar disorder. Until 1980, the term 'schizophrenia' was used much more loosely and broadly in the United States than in most European countries. In fact, the only other country in the world where schizophrenia was diagnosed as loosely was the former Soviet Union, where it was abused as a label to discredit and stigmatize opponents of the government.
SCHNEIDER'S FIRST RANK SYMPTOMS FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA:
1. Auditory hallucinations in which the voices speak one's thoughts aloud
2. Auditory hallucinations with two voices arguing
3. Auditory hallucinations with the voices commenting on one's actions
4. Hallucinations of touch when the bodily sensation is imposed by some external agency
5. Withdrawal of thoughts from one's mind
6. Insertions of thoughts into one's mind by others
7. Believing one's thoughts are being broadcast to others, as by radio or television
8. Insertion by others of feelings into one's mind
9. Insertion by others of irresistible impulses into one's mind
10. Feeling that all one's actions are under the control of others, like an automaton
11. Delusions of perception, as when one is certain that a normal remark has a secret meaning for oneself"
-
(15) "D. Does not meet criteria for schizoaffective disorder, and symptoms of psychosis are not caused by substance abuse."
-
(16) "Then there is the issue of cultural expectations: in some cultures, you would be regarded as abnormal if you did not hear the voice of your mother giving advice. In a cross-national survey, the percentage of people who reported having visual or auditory hallucinations was 32 percent in Nepal, 14 percent in Brazil, and 12 percent in India, but less than 1 percent in China, Spain and Pakistan." (p.63)
-
(17) "Most biological abnormalities found in schizophrenia (e.g. ventricular enlargement on MRI scans, neurological abnormalities) are also found in bipolar disorder, although they are usually not as marked."
-
(18) "Although the public stereotype of bipolar disorder is a person who swings from one extreme to the other and back again, this is found only rarely. Some affected persons have a series of manic episodes, dome have a series of depressive episodes, while others have two in every conceivable combination. Many months or even years may separate episodes; between episodes the person is characteristically normal. There are, of course, all gradations of mood swings in either direction within the general population; some people have great energy and cheerfulness as part of their personality, others are chronically self-deprecating and depressed."
(19) "Most important, bipolar disorder occurs in discrete episodes with a return to normal functioning between episodes being the rule; schizophrenia rarely occurs in such discrete episodes and residual disability is the rule. Because of their recovery, it is common to find people with bipolar disorder holding important jobs in government, industry, and the entertainment field, and some traits of the hypomanic (e.g., high energy, inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep) lead to greater productivity and success in such fields."
-
(20) "Furthermore, it is not rare to find patients whose symptoms change over time, appearing initially as a textbook case of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and a year or two later clearly exhibiting symptoms of the other disease. It has been facetiously suggested that either we need to insist that patients read the psychiatric textbooks and choose the disease they wish to have or we must become more flexible in our psychiatric thinking. I personally have seen patients with virtually every possible combination of symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder." (p.66)
-
(21) "Scizophrenia produces more marked and more generalized neuropsychological dysfunction, especially on tests of memory and frontal lobe function."
-
(22) "A 'split personality,' as in Sybil or The Three Faces if Eve, is officially called a disassociative disorder. It is much less common than schizophrenia, occurs almost exclusively in women, and is thought to be a reaction to sexual or physical abuse in childhood."
(23) "The question naturally arises whether drug abus can cause schizophrenia. It is a question asked frequently by families and relatives of patients with this disease. There is now abundant evidence that chronic and repeated usage of many of the mind-altering drugs can damage the brain, impairing intellectual functions and memory, and can exacerbate the symptoms of a person who already has schizophrenia." (p.71)
(24) "Among those who had used street drugs, 27 percent had used drugs prior to any symptom of schizophrenia, *35 percent had started using street drugs in the same month which their symptoms began, and 38 percent had not used street drugs until at least one month after the onset of their illness.*" (p.73) // Is most of the drug use among this demographic, due solely to compulsions?
(25) "Prescription drugs that cause symptomsf psychosis as a side effect almost always do so when they are first started. The psychotic symptoms will go away, sometimes immediately and in other cases more slowly, as soon as the drug is stopped. Many of these drugs cause such symptoms more commonly in elderly individuals and/or at higher doses. Medications that sometimes cause delusions or hallucinations and may therefore produce a clinical picture that could be confused with schizophrenia are listed on page 75." // Kevin (father) took one of these, Wellbutrin, when I was a teen. This probably didn't help him much. He was averse to seeing a doctor himself.
(26) "Viral Encephalitis: It has been known for many years that viral encephalitis can produce schizophrenia-like symptoms following the encephalitis. What is becoming increasingly clear is that encephalitis occasionally mimics schizophrenia in the early stages of illness, before other signs and symptoms of encephalitis become apparent; how often this occurs is unknown. A review of twenty-two such cases identified a variety of viruses as capable of doing this, including herpes simplex, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, measles, coxsackie, and equine encephalitis. If suspected, such cases can be diagnosed by bar puncture and EEG."
(27) "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: The relationship between epilepsy and schizophrenia has been a controversial issue for many years. There have been reports that epilepsy and schizophrenia share some predisposing genes, and also that the incidence of schizophrenia is elevated among individuals with epilepsy and vice versa. There is agreement, however, that one type of epilepsy - that of the temporal lobe - frequently produces symptoms like schizophrenia. One study found that 17 percent of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy had some symptoms of schizophrenia." // What is the sample size of this study, and were the results replicated in further studies? / Did Nadine fake her seizures? Was the intent, there, if so, to remind the primary Fords more of Henry Ford, so that they would become more fond?
(28) "AIDS: This is the newest addition to the list of diseases that may present with symptoms resembling schizophrenia. It has been clearly established that AIDS may occasionally manifest itself with symptoms of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the effect of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on the brain. A test for HIV should be included in all routine first admission diagnostic workups for serious mental illness."// How occasionally?
-
(29) "Major changes in personality, including the onset of psychosis, were clearly documented in studies of penetrating head injuries during the Franco-Prussian and the Russo-Finnish wars. Still unresolved, however, is how often head trauma causes psychosis, how severe the trauma must be, what parts of the brain are affected, and how long the period can be between the trauma and the onset of psychosis." // Why was this studied, regarding these two conflicts, in particular?
(30) "Most individuals with schizophrenia show a mild loss of IQ as measured by their impaired functioning on tests of cognitive skills; their innate IQ is not necessarily impaired, but their ability to demonstrate their IQ is impaired (see chapter 12)." (p.79)
(31) "The best-known example of co-occurring mental retardation and psychosis was Rosemary Kennedy, sister to John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy. She was mildly retarded in childhood, eventually reaching a fifth-grade level of achievement. At age twenty-one, however, she had the onset of a schizophrenia-like psychosis that alarmed her family. Since antipsychotic medications were not yet available in 1941, she was given a surgical lobotomy. The results of the lobotomy were a disaster, causing severe retardation and brain damage, and she was confined to a private nursing convent until her death."
(32) "It occurs in approximately 4 children per 10,000 and this is one-twentieth as common as schizophrenia. At one time it was said that autism was more common in higher socioeconomic groups, but that has been disproved. It occurs four times more often in male than in females. Recent studies suggest that autism may be increasing in incidence in the United States." // Has this really been disproved? / Has there been a rise in working class Americans becoming narcissists, and having autistic children, too, like the upper classes, since then?
(33) "Epilepsy commonly accompanies autism; approximately one-half of children with autism may have some degree of mental retardation; and a higher than expected percentage of children with autism also have *blindness or deafness.*" // Dacoda at ABIA? /Kyle Mullen's brother, Connor?
(34) "A variety of medications have been used to treat autism but so far with only moderate success. Specialized training appears to produce some improvement in behavior. As the children get older, a small percentage improve and function well. An example of the latter is Temple Grandin, who earned a doctorate and is an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University; she documented her illness in her book Thinking in Pictures. *The majority, however, take on the negative characteristics of adult schizophrenia with an emphasis on 'negative' symptoms (e.g., withdrawal, flattened emotions, poverty of thoughts) rather than 'positive' symptoms (e.g., delusions, hallucinations).*" (p.81)
(35) "Differentiation of infantile autism from childhood schizophrenia is in most cases not difficult. Autism almost always begins before two and a half, while schizophrenia is rare before five and uncommon before age ten. The child with autism will have prominent withdrawal, language retardation, and repetitive routines, while the child with schizophrenia will have delusions, hallucinations, and thinking disorders. Half the children with autism will be retarded, but far fewer of the children with schizophrenia will be. Finally, children with schizophrenia may have a family history of schizophrenia, but children with autism almost never have such a family history."
(36) "*There is no relationship between antisocial personality disorder, sexually violent predators, and schizophrenia.* And a study reported that the incidence of antisocial personality disorder among the relatives of individuals with schizophrenia was no higher than among the general population."
(37) Further reading: "The Biology of Autistic Syndromes - M. Coleman and C. Gillberg
The Schizophrenias: A Biological Approach to the Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders - M. Coleman and C. Gillberg."
-
(38) "What these studies show is that there is subset of children, approximately one-quarter or one-third of those who later develop schizophrenia, who are different as children. These differences include:
1. Delayed developmental milestones in infancy (e.g., slower to walk and talk)
2. More language and speech problems
3. Poorer coordination (e.g., not as good at sports, lower grades in physical education)
4. Poorer academic achievement
5. Poorer social functioning and fewer friends." // My comments:
2. I was placed, very briefly, in a speech class that I didn't need to be in, back in elementary school, and mom was suspicious of this, and suspected they hated foreigners, like herself, and their children.
3. I developed an odd, unexplained aversion to gym class, in ninth grade, and this meant I had to take summer school for gym, that summer.
4. I stopped showing up, and doing homework, regularly, when I started being bullied, and became mentally ill, back in seventh grade. In Texas, later, I did well, again, when I attended college.
5. Nadine became my only friend in late middle school, and I have lacked any motivation (avolition) to make close friends, since then. Since 2019, I have become more distrustful, and skeptical of other people, also.
-
(39) "*The majority of individuals who develop schizophrenia are not different in childhood, and in fact one study in Finland even found that a disproportionate number of children who developed schizophrenia had done especially well in school. Conversely, most children who have delayed milestones; language and speech problems; and poor coordination, grades, and social skills // will not develop schizophrenia.//*
[p.87]
-
(40) "Moodiness, withdrawal, apathy, *loss of interest in personal appearance*, perplexity, the belief that people are watching one, preoccupation with one's body, and vagueness in thoughts may all be harbingers of schizophrenia, but they may also be just normal manifestations of early adulthood and its accompanying problems." // Narcs are obsessed with personal appearance.
[p.89]
-
(41) "THE MOST COMMON EARLY SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AS OBSERVED BY THE FAMILY:
+ depression
+ changes in social behavior
+ changes in sleep or eating patterns
+ suspiciousness or feelings that people are talking about him/her
+ changes in pattern of self-care
+ changes in school performance
+ marked weakness, loss of energy
+ headaches or strange sensations in head
+ changes in emotional relationships with family or close friends
+ confused, strange, or bizarre thinking"
-
(42) "A fictional description of the onset of schizophrenia in a twelve-year-old boy was written by Conrad Aiken in 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow' (see chapter 13). Another brief fictional account is Vladimir Nabokov's short story, 'Signs and Symbols,' a literary gem. Louise Wilson, in This Stranger, My Son, provides a good account of what it is like to live with a child with this illness."
-
(43) "Many studies of it have been done by Europeans, with less interest having been shown by American researchers. That fact is especially pertinent since the mean age of onset of schizophrenia in general is almost invariably reported as being older in European studies compared to American studies. It seems possible, therefore, that late-onset schizophrenia is of more interest to European researchers because it occurs more commonly there for reasons that are unknown."
[p.92]
-
(44) "One study found that followed up individuals with late-onset schizophrenia found that in one-third of cases the schizophrenia progressed to an Alzheimer-type dementia."
-
(45) "It has now been clearly established that women with schizophrenia have a more favorable outcome than men. Patients with the best outcome also have no history of relatives with schizophrenia. *The more close relatives who have schizophrenia, the poorer the outcome becomes.* If there is a history of depression or bipolar disorder in the family, the person is more likely to have a good outcome."
-
(46) "Awareness of one's illness (insight) is a very good sign, whereas lack of awareness (asnosognosia) is a bad sign." // Me vs. mom and Kevin (father).
-
(47) "The reasons for such gender differences, still unknown, provide one of the many questions about schizophrenia needing to be researched. It should be noted that both infantile autism and childhood schizophrenia also have a strong predominance for males, and that male fetuses generally are known to be more susceptible to environmentally caused problems such as infections. The fact that males get schizophrenia both at a younger age and more severely, then, may simply be another reflection of Mother Nature's dictum that in many ways men are the weaker sex. Another speculation about why schizophrenia might be more severe in males is the possibility that female zex hormones (estrogens) may exert an antipsychotic effect and be protective. This possibility has led to some promising trials of estrogen as an add-on medication to treat women with schizophrenia (see chapter 7). It is also possible, although unlikely, that schizophrenia resembles diabetes in having two major subgroups: an early-onset, more severe variety that affects mostly men, and a later-onset, less severe variety more apt to afflict women."
[p.96]
-
(48) "Twenty-five Percent Recover Completely: This assumes that all patients with symptoms of schizophrenia are part of the analysis, including those who have been sick for less than six months with schizophreniform disorders. If only patients with narrowly defined schizophrenia are included (i.e., 'continuous signs of the illness for at least six months'), then the percentage of completely recovered will be under 25 percent. [...] Those who recover also do so within the first two years of illness and usually have no more than two discrete episodes of illness."
[p.98]
-
(49) "It has been clearly established in recent years that the thirty-year course of schizophrenia is more favorable to the average patient than the ten-year course. This directly contradicts a widespread stereotype about the disease that dates to Kraepelin's pessimistic belief that most patients slowly deteriorate. A major reason for this better long-term prognosis is that aging ameliorates the symptoms of schizophrenia in most people. *Symptoms of this disease tend to be most severe when the person is in his/her twenties and thirties, then become somewhat less severe in the forties, and significantly less severe in the fifties and sixties. We do not understand why this is so and there are, of course, many exceptions, but schizophrenia represents one of the few conditions in life for which aging is an advantage.*" // Perps develop their own issues, and/or die off, causing a decrease in the symptoms of their victims?
-
(50) "Compared with the experiences during the acute psychosis, his positive symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, have become colorless, repetitive, and formalized. They still have power over him but nothing is added and nothing new or unexpected happens."
[p.102]
-
(51) "As seen in the chart, only 10 percent of patients with schizophrenia will require hospitalization (or a similar total-care facility such as a nursing home) thirty years later. The vast majority are able to live in rhe community, with about 15 percent of them requiring an extensive support network."
-
(52) "Accidents: *Although individuals with schizophrenia fo not drive as much as other people, studies have shown that they have double the rate of motor vehicle accidents per mile driven. A significant but unknown number of individuals with schizophrenia are also killed as pedestrians by motor vehicles; for example, one patient under my care accidentally stepped off a curb into the path of an oncoming bus.* Confusion, delusions, and distraction by auditory hallucinations all contribute to such deaths. In 1995z for example, Margaret King, who had schizophrenia and believed that she was Jesus Christ, was mauled to death by lions after she climbed into their enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Deaths from accidental choking are also significantly increased in schizophrenia. An analysis of excess deaths in schizophrenia estimated that 12 percent of the excess was due to accidents." // Being distracted by symptoms is unlikely to account for most of these deaths, as symptoms hardly ever distract me so much as to cause me to walk into traffic, for example. Gangstalkers as a factor are not included, here, and that is a mistake.
[p.111]
-
When I was transcribing this one, I had to deal with an unpleasant bout of DSH, and some ugly tardives.
-
(53) "Partially offsetting this increased mortality rate is the likelihood that individuals with schizophrenia have a lower than expected incidence of prostate cancer, type I (juvenile onset) diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis (to be discussed in chapter 5)."
-
(54) "It has long been known that individuals with schizophrenia smoke heavily (see chapter 10). A study in England of 102 individuals with schizophrenia also reported that they ate a diet higher in fat and lower in fiber than the general populations, and that they exercised very little." // What is the first claim based on? / Exercise more.
-
(55) "Scattered reports from around the United States suggest that homeless mentally ill individuals may have a very high mortality rate. [...] It is likely that when we finally do a careful study of mortality rates among homeless individuals with schizophrenia in the United States, the results will show a shockingly high mortality rate."
-
(56) "The fact that there is really no animal model for schizophrenia is another reason that research on this disease has progressed so slowly." // I think animals may get schizophrenia, as well as dementia, so this claim may be incorrect.
[p.117]
-
(57) "In 1933 study, 25 out of 60 individuals with schizophrenia had enlarged ventricles. Beginning in 1976 imaging techniques such as computerized axial tomography (CT) anf magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have confirmed the enlarged ventricles, averaging approximately 26 percent larger than unenlarged ventricles, and the reduced grey matter volume in well over 100 studies." // Were the other individuals in the 1933 study misdiagnosed?
-
(58) "Four types of cognitive function are especially impaired in this disease: *attention*, certain types of memory, executive function (planning, problem solving, abstracting, ect.), and awareness of illness. The deficits in attention are demonstrable on tests that measure vigilance and concentration. Individuals with schizophrenia are often distracted, and in fact 'distracted' was another commonly used term for insanity in the early nineteenth century." // Perps with ADHD?
-
(59) "Executive function deficits are apparent in tasks such as abstracting proverbs (see chapter 1). Another common way to measure executive function is by a test called the Wisconsin Card Sort, in which the person must match cards by shape or color at the same time that rules for matching cards are constantly changing; individuals with schizophrenia find it difficult to change how they are matching the cards to accommodate the changing rules." // Is this really true? Try this, at some point.
-
(60) "Bring born to an elderly father, especially if he was fifty-five or older at the time of birth, is a modest risk factor for developing schizophrenia." // What is the origin of this belief? Are narcissistic fathers more likely to have children, when they are older, and to use them as scapegoats, as well, to avoid being held accountable for their own actions?
[p.122]
-
(61) "Finally, there is one other clearly established but curious fact about schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia almost never get rheumatoid arthritis, and individuals with rheumatoid arthritis almost never get schizophrenia."
[p.124]
-
(62) "Despite the overwhelming evidence that schizophrenia is a disease of the brain, a few small groups deny that it is. For individuals who have schizophrenia, such denial is somewhat understandable; schizophrenia is an unpleasant disease and it would be nice if it did not exist. *Mental health professionals who deny that schizophrenia is a brain disease probably also believe that the earth is flat.*"
-
(63) "Thomas Szasz was probably the best-known denier of schizophrenia as a brain disease, as reasoned in books such as The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (1976). He claimed that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses were merely metaphors for human problems of living. Szasz acknowledged that brian diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, are real and agreed that if schizophrenia could be shown to have a neurological basis, it too would be a brain disease. Even though many of us presented him with such evidence, he refused to publicly change his position until his death in 2012. *A major reason why Szasz had difficulty in understanding schizophrenia is because he apparently never treated any patient with this disease.* He trained in psychiatry in Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and later proudly claimed thar he had never prescribed medication for any patient he had ever treated."
-
(64) "Laing's ideas about schizophrenia take on a poignant air when it is realized that his eldest daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized for many years. Laing became increasingly disillusioned and became an alcoholic as he grew older. In 1982 he commented to an interviewer: 'I was looked to one who had the answers but I never had them.'"
-
(65) "Scientologists as a group deny the reality of schizophrenia as a brain disease. They direct their animosity to psychiatry through their Citizens' Commission on Human Rights, which is part of Scientology. Their beliefs about schizophrenia are based on the writings of their founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to one account, 'Hubbard taught that the psychotic person is a "potential trouble source" who is connected to forces opposed to Scientology. People who behave as psychotics are 'unethical' and 'immoral.' Hubbard also taught that the 'forces' behind psychiatry were extraterrestrial."
-
(66) "What is abundantly clear, as mentioned above, is that schizophrenia is a brain disease involving a widespread network of multiple brain areas. There is no schizophrenia brain area; rather, there is a schizophrenia-affected brain network. The disease process almost certainly involves both neurons and glia in the multiple areas affected and also involves the white-matter connections between the areas."
[p.127]
-
(67) "What is increasingly clear is that, at least for one-quarter of cases of schizophrenia, the brain changes leading to the disease begin early in life, even though the actual symptoms of the disease do not begin until the person's late teenage years or twenties. [...] Do all individuals with schizophrenia have brain changes that date to early in life, or is that true merely for a subgroup? We do not yet know the answer to this. What we do know is that the early brain changes occur in approximately one-quarter of individuals with schizophrenia. [...] It remains to be ascertained whether this group of individuals with early changes is a clinical subgroup; that is, do they have a different cause for their disease? Or do all individuals with schizophrenia have a disease process that dates to early in life but cannot be measured yet? This is one of the most important research questions currently facing schizophrenia researchers."
[p.129]
-
(68) "Incredibly, one hundred years after Browne, Maudsley, and their colleagues were discussing insanity as a brain disease, their psychiatric offspring were investigating insanity as a product of bad mothering or mislabeling. In no other area of medicine - perhaps in all of science - did research go backward for as far or for as long as it did in psychiatry. Beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century, research on schizophrenia finally got back on track. The present challenge is to synthesize the rapidly accumulating data into a coherent theory and then prove them to be correct."
-
(69) "For example, Toxoplasma gondii, an infectious parasite carried by cats and which will be discussed below, has been documented as having caused human toxoplasmosis in family clusters because of the family's exposure to a toxoplasma-infected common water source, infected food (*goat's milk*), and exposure to infected family cats." // Bad inside joke of some sort?
-
(70) "There are additional reasons for doubting that schizophrenia is primarily a genetic disease. One of the strongest is what is often referred to as the 'schizophrenia paradox - the continuing existence of schizophrenia despite a low fertility rate and a high mortality rate.' Indeed, between 1830 and 1950 the vast majority of individuals with severe schizophrenia were confined to mental hospitals, unable to procreate. Yet during those same years the prevalence of schizophrenia appeared to increase. [...] The fact that schizophrenia is not primarily a genetic disease should be regarded as good news, since we couldn't do much about it if it was. Non-genetic causative factors are more susceptible to alteration."
[p.132-133]
-
(71) "It can also be argued that if the disease process of schizophrenia really begins during fetal life in most cases, why don't we see more minor physical anomalies, seizures, and mental retardation?"
[p.137]
-
(72) "One finding that points in this direction is the occurrence of compulsive water drinking (polydypsia) among some individuals with schizophrenia. Water intake is related to hormones in the posterior pituitary gland. The anterior pituitary has also been provisionally linked to schizophrenia in some patients who show altered response to growth hormone when given apomorphine, a dopamine-stimulating drug. There have also been claims that reproductive hormones (FSH and LH), which come from the anterior pituitary, are abnormal in individuals with schizophrenia. The interruption of menstrual periods in some female patients with schizophrenia is well known."
-
(73) "Childhood trauma and stress theories of schizophrenia have a long and disreputable scientific history. Throughout the 19th century, stressors such as 'disappointment in a love affair' were regularly invoked to explain the cause of insanity." // Spiteful occultist exes? Rejected suitors? Jealous mistress, or romantic rival?
-
(74) "Traumatic events of childhood can unquestionably leave lasting psychic scars. Sexual abuse of children in particular has been plausibly linked to depression, dissociative disorder, PTSD, and substance abuse. However, there are major problems with the childhood trauma studies and no credible evidence to support the linkage of such trauma to the causes of schizophrenia. *Scientifically, most of the childhood trauma studies are very weak.* One review examined 46 such studies for scientific merit and found that only six had used an appropriate control group. Childhood trauma theorists often summarize many such studies together and claim merit by numbers, but piling 100 scientifically questionable studies on top of each other does not improve their scientific credibility. Another problem is the variety of childhood trauma used by these researchers, often in the same study. These include everything from sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse to parental death, parental poverty, witnessing parental violence, neglect, and bullying. Another major problem with these studies is that most of them collected data on abuse retrospectively. As one critique of childhood trauma studies correctly notes, 'an extensive literature has cast doubt on the validity of retrospective reports about child rearing, family conflicts, and psychological states in childhood.' *Indeed, it appears that many of the childhood trauma researchers have learned nothing from the scandals associated with the false memory syndrome.*" // I do think that there may be some link, between being abused, as a child, and paranoid schizophrenia./ Psychiatry, and psychology, have a notably poor track record, when it comes to child sexual abuse, so I will take what they proclaim, with a grain of salt./ Why didn't these studies use appropriate control groups? Did they want to sabotage the studies, for some reason? /For what reason was false memory syndrome concocted?
-
(75) "Freudian Theory: For the first half of the twentieth century, Freud's psychoanalytic theories were prominent in the United States. *Freud taught that bad mothering causes schizophrenia. Freud himself knew almost nothing about the disease and avoided seeing patients who had it.* In a 1907 letter, he acknowledged: 'I seldom see dements [dementia praecox, or schizophrenia] and hardly ever see other severe types of psychosis.' *Four years later, he wrote: 'I do not like these patients [with schizophrenia]...I feel them to be so far distant from me and everything human.'* Any mental health professional who still professes Freudian beliefs about schizophrenia should be regarded as incompetent." // I think Freud was a person, whom had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I believe that most narcissists have a strong aversion to people with paranoid schizophrenia, as we are more likely than the average person, to see them for what they are.
[p.143]
-
(76) "*Bad Families: In addition to Freudian theories about bad mothers, in the 1950s a series of theories about bad families was put forward to explain the cause of schizophrenia. Individuals associated with these theories included Theodore Lidz, Gregory Bateson, and Don Jackson.* These family interaction theories were tested in controlled studies and found to be wrong, *and have been discarded.* An offshoot of the bad families theories was what was called 'expressed emotion.' *It postulated that families who were overly critical, hostile, and overinvolved, and who overidentified with the family member with schizophrenia, caused the person to relapse. Dozens of papers and even a few books were published on expressed emotion in the 1980s and 1990s, but the theory faded away when careful studies showed that it had no scientific basis.*" // Do these family members jump into the SZ, meddle with their lives, and try to control them?
-
(77) "People with schizophrenia do best in situations where people are calm and communicate clearly and directly."
-
(78) "Any parent who has raised a child knows that parents are not powerful enough to cause a disease like schizophrenia simply by favoring one child over another or giving the child inconsistent messages."
-
(79) "One such writer was Christopher Lasch, who in his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism, claimed that psychoses are 'in some sense the characteristic expression of a given culture.'"
-
(80) "Another way to find a good doctor is through other families who have a family member with schizophrenia. They can often provide a quick rundown of the local resources and save weeks of hunting and false starts. *Sharing this information is one of the most valuable assets of local chapters of NAMI and is an important reason to join. (Local and state chapters of NAMI can be contacted through NAMI, as listed in Appendix B.)* Distinctly unhelpful in searching for a good doctor are referral lists maintained by local medical societies or the local chapters of the American Psychiatric Association. Anyone can call these organizations and obtain three names. The names, however, are taken from a rotating list of those doctors who are looking for additional patients. Since any doctor who wishes to pay the annual dues can belong to these organizations, there is no screening or ascertainment of quality if any kind. Even those doctors who are under investigation for malpractice will continue to be listed by such organizations until they are specifically removed from membership, which is an all-too-rare occurence. Thus, referral lists from medical and psychiatric societies are really no better than picking a name at random from the physicians' list in the Yellow Pages."
-
(81) "In trying to find a good doctor it is perfectly legitimate to ask questions such as 'What do you think causes schizophrenia?' 'What has been your experience with clozapine?' 'What do you think about risperidone (or any other drug)?' 'How important is psychotherapy in treating schizophrenia?' Such open-ended questions will quickly elicit the relative biological orientation of the doctor as well as some sense of how well the person is keeping up with new treatments."
-
(82) "How important is it for the physician to be 'board eligible' or 'board certified' in his/her specialty? 'Board eligible' means that the physician has completed an approved residency program in that specialty. 'Board certified' means that the physician has taken and passed an examination in the specialty. Such board examinations are completely optional and are not required for licensure or for membership in any professional organization. They simply mean that the doctor had the theoretical knowledge required to be competent in that specialty at the time he/she took the examination. They do not indicate whether or not the doctor has kept up-to-date since the examination, and for that reason there is relatively little relationship between board certification and competency. All medical specialists should be required to become recertified by examination every five years. *Until that time comes, families should give relatively little weight to selecting a 'board certified' psychiatrist over a 'board eligible' one unless all other things are equal.*"
-
(83) "What about international medical graduates? *Psychiatry has attracted more international medical graduates than any other medical specialty in the United States, and in many states these psychiatrists constitute a majority of all psychiatrists in mental health centers and state hospitals. A 1996 survey reported that international medical graduates were almost twice as likely as American medical graduates to work in public psychiatric settings (42 percent vs. 22 percent) and that they saw almost twice as many patients with psychosis (20 percent vs. 11 percent). International medical graduates are therefore the backbone of American public psychiatry, and without them the disaster of deinstitutionalization would have been even worse than it has been.*" [p.150-151] // Is this part of a foreign plot? This seems highly unusual.
-
(84) "To those looking for a good doctor to treat schizophrenia, one final word of caution. Doctors are human beings and, as such, run a wide range of personality types. Throughout the medical profession can be found some physicians who are dishonest, mentally ill, addicted to alcohol or drugs, or sociopathic, or who have some combination of the above. *I have a sense that psychiatry attracts more than its share of such physicians, often because the physician has become interested in his/her own mental aberrations.*" // NPD?
-
(85) "5. Neurological signs or symptoms suggesting central nervous system disease other than schizophrenia (e.g., nystagmus of the eyes in which the gaze moves rapidly from side to side)." // I do not have this one, but a tardive person, or two, in the past, has had this issue, and this, sometimes, spread to me, also.
-
(86) "Lumbar punctures in patients with schizophrenia are relatively free of side effects, since persons with schizophrenia are especially immune to getting post-lumbar puncture headaches that occur in approximately one-third of people who do not have schizophrenia." [p. 156]
-
(87) "A 2002 study comparing nonprofit and for-profit psychiatric inpatient units found that the nonprofit units were superior in almost all aspects of psychiatric care. [...] In contrast to most other diseases, paying more money does not necessarily buy you better care for schizophrenia." // ***
-
(88) "A measure of hospital quality that previously was considered to be useful was accreditation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). At the invitation of a hospital, JCAHO sends a survey team to evaluate it, as well as provide consultation and education. The survey focuses on patient care and services but also includes such related issues as the therapeutic environment, safety of the patient, quality of staffing, and administration of the hospital. The survey team then recommends that the hospital receive full three-year accreditation, full accreditation with a contingency (which may necessitate a follow-up inspection to ensure that the contingency has been corrected), or no accreditation. [...] In more recent years JCAHO accreditation has itself been discredited because of what one federal report labeled the 'cozy relationship' between the hospitals and the privately run JCAHO. Hospitals may pay thousands of dollars for the survey and they expect to be accredited; JCAHO consequently accredits many hospitals despite evidence of poor patient care. JCAHO accreditation can therefore no longer be relied upon as a measure of quality."
-
(89) "All laws governing commitment of psychiatric patients are state laws, not federal laws. Therefore commitment laws vary from state to state, especially those governing long-term commitment. *Between 1970 and 1980 there was a broad shift in the United States to change state laws to make it more difficult to involuntarily hospitals individuals with psychiatric illnesses. The effect of this shift was to make it practically impossible in many states to hospitalize an individual with schizophrenia unless that person was shown to be an immediate danger to self or others.* Because of the problems produced by these stringent laws, there is growing sentiment to modify the laws so that such persons can be involuntarily hospitalized and treated." [p. 161]
-
(90) "In states that utilize only dangerousness to self or others and define dangerousness stringently, it is generally more difficult to get a commitment than in states that define dangerousness vaguely (for example, Texas law previously said a mentally ill person could be commited 'for his own welfare and protection or the protection of others)."
-
(91) "In 1983 the American Psychiatric Association proposed a model commitment statute that would allow psychiatrically ill persons to be placed in treatment if their behavior indicated 'significant deterioration' of their psychiatric state and they were clearly in need of treatment. I believe it is a good model for state laws. It permits the treatment of a relapsing patient before the person has had to demonstrate dangerousness."
-
(92) "Resistance to insurance parity for psychiatric conditions has come primarily from insurance companies, who have to pay the bills. This resistance is based on the fact that psychiatrists have a reputation for gaming the insurance system and inflating costs. A 1985 study reported that 'psychiatrists form a disproportionately large segment of the total' physicians who were suspended from the Medicaid and Medicare programs because of fraud and abuse. And psychiatrists played major roles in the private psychiatric hospital insurance scams of the early 1990s (see Joe Sharkey's description of this in Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy)." // !!
-
(93) "In 2008, after years of efforts by advocates, legislation mandating insurance parity was finally passed by Congress. Under these laws, coverage for psychiatric disorders under Medicare and private insurance plans must provide the same level of benefits as that available for general medical and surgical services, including deductibles and co-payments. Since most individuals with schizophrenia do not have private insurance, the insurance parity laws by themselves will not have much effect on these individuals."
-
(94) "*The efficacy of antipsychotics has been well established. They are especially effective against the so-called positive symptoms of schizophrenia, but minimally effective against the negative and cognitive symptoms.* On average, for patients experiencing their first episode of psychosis, 70 percent of patients on antipsychotics improve significantly, 20 percent improve minimally, and 10 percent do not improve at all." // The efficacy of antispsychotics is very much debatable. / Simple schizophrenics are said only to have negative symptoms.
-
(95) "Of course antipsychotics only work if people with schizophrenia take them. Studies in the United States indicate 'approximately 40% of the respondents with schizophrenia report that they have not received any mental health treatments in the preceding 6-12 months.'"
-
(96) "Because treating schizophrenia is big business, major pharmaceutical companies have given money to many leading schizophrenia researchers to try to influence them to support their drug. The researchers, in turn, write papers and give talks to clinicians, recommending the use of that particular drug. For this reason, you cannot believe much of what is written by mental health professionals about these drugs. In addition, the pharmaceutical industry pays for the vast majority of studies done on these drugs. In the past they only published studies with positive results, although more recently some companies have also published negative studies. There should be a requirement that all studies be made publicly available."
-
(97) "It is now widely accepted that the primary consideration in selecting antipsychotics should be side effects. Weight gain, often accompanied by increased blood sugar and increased blood lipids, is a major side effect and is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Increased blood sugar may occur even in individuals who have had no previous problems with blood sugar, and may happen quickly, although it is uncommon in patients who have not gained significant weight. If blood sugar increases to a very high level, ketoacidosis occurs, which can be fatal. *There is apparently a genetic predisposition to this problem, and it occurs more commonly in African-Americans.* Both of these side effects occur much more commonly in individuals taking second-generation antipsychotics, especially clozapine (Clozaril) and olanzapine (Zyprexa). Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), thioridazine (Mellaril), quetiapine (Seroquel), risperidone (Risperdal), and paliperidone (Invega) may also cause weight gain. Haloperidol (Haldol), fluphenazine (Prolixin), loxapine (Loxitane), perphenazine (Trilafon), thiothixene (Navane), trifluoperazine (Stelazine), zisprasidone (Geodon), and aripiprazole (Abilify) are least likely to cause these problems, but any antipsychotic, first-or second-generation, may do so." // Is this true? / How is schizophrenia connected to diabetes? / Is diabetes, also, an occult-caused condition? Are both diabetics, and schizophrenics, occult victims?
-
(98) "Occasionally, these are accompanied by jerky, purposeless movements of the arms or legs or, rarely, the whole body. It usually begins while the patient is taking the drug but may begin shortly after the drug has been stopped. Ocassionally it persists indefinitely."
-
(99) "The incidence of tardive dyskinesia is difficult to ascertain because it may occur as part of the disease process as well as being a side effect of medication. A study of the records of more than six hundred patients admitted to an asylum in England between 1845 and 1890, before the discovery of antipsychotics, found an 'extraordinary prevalence of abnormal movements and postures...Movement disorder, often equivalent to tardive dyskinesia, was noted in nearly one-third of schizophrenics.' * A study of spontaneous dyskinesia in individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with antipsychotic medication reported it to be present in 12 percent of individuals below the age of thirty and in 25 percent of individuals ages thirty to fifty. Most estimates of the incidence of tardive dyskinesia have assumed that all such cases are drug-related, when in fact a substantial percentage are not.* In a study of this problem aptly titled 'Not All That Moves Is Tardive Dyskinesia,' Khot and Wyatt concluded that the true incidence of drug-related tardive dyskinesia was less than 20 percent. This also falls within the 10 to 20 percent range estimated by the American Psychiatric Association's 1980 task force on the subject."
-
(100) "*Women appear to be more susceptible to tardive dyskinesia than men*."
-
(101) "Patients, families, and treating mental health professionals should be on the lookout for the early signs of tardive dyskinesia, especially the person's tongue pushing against the cheek." // Is this, often, the first expression that occultist squatters are encouraged to do, once they are in their host's body? Do the occultists, then, walk around doing the gesture themselves, in their own bodies, as well, to both mock their victim(s), and to attempt to DARVO? The people, whom I recall doing this gesture at school did not have schizophrenia. Instead, they seem to have caused schizophrenia symptoms, in me, later, and, possibly, in another victim, or group of victims, during the time period, which I was made to recall, during the early years of my schizophrenia. Unable to discern a pattern, initially, I came to wonder, after being forced to do this tardive for over a year, if they had been doing marijuana, then, and if this is what the gesture had been connected to, when they did the gesture, back we were in middle school, and in high school. / Did they use marijuana to enable astral projection into the body, or bodies, of their victim(s)?
-
(102) "If there is no additional treatment, tardive dyskinesia will not necessarily get worse. In one ten-year follow-up of forty-four patients, 30 percent got worse, 50 percent remained the same, and 20 percent actually improved despite continuing use of the antipsychotic."
-
(103) "Note that increased prolactin is a two-edged sword. At the same time that it may cause unwanted side effects, it also markedly decreases the chances of women becoming pregnant, by interfering with the menstrual cycle. Thus in the 1990s, when many women with schizophrenia were being switched from first-generation antipsychotics, which caused increased prolactin, to olanzapine or clozapine, which did not, many unexpected and unwanted pregnancies resulted."
-
(104) "Individuals of some races need a higher dose of medication than do individuals of other races to achieve the same effect because of racial group differences in the distribution on enzymes that metabolize antipsychotic drugs. *Studies suggest that whites and African-Americans require approximately the same dose, while Hispanic patients require a lower dose, and Asian-Americans need the lowest dose of these four groups.* // Smell fishy. Notably, before the change in immigration law, most Americans were either white, or black.
-
(105) "Despite this enviable record, it is infrequently used in the United States. *Presently, only 4 percent of individuals with schizophrenia in the United States receive clozapine, compared with 20 percent in Germany, 35 percent in Australia, and 25 to 60 percent in various parts of China.* Why is clozapine so underutilized in the United States? The most important reason is clozapine's reputation for causing a decrease in white blood cells (agranulocytosis), as described below. Another reason is that it is generic, so no pharmaceutical company promotes it. Instead, companies spend millions of dollars to convince mental health professionals to prescribe the latest antipsychotics, which are less effective and much more expensive." [p. 187] // Why is it so popular in China, Germany, and Australia, given the negative side effects, and why is Fuller so keen on it?
-
(106) "The cost of medication in the United States is a scandal. For example, before it became generic, olanzapine (Zyprexa) cost one-fourth as much in Spain and one-half as much in Finland and Canada as it did in the United States. The reason for these gross discrepancies is simple: other countries either cap the profit margin of the pharmaceutical industries (England allows for a 20 percent profit) or they negotiate the price by buying in bulk for their national health service. In the United States, there is no limit to how much pharmaceutical companies can mark up drugs. Consequently, according to a 1999 report, 'Fortune magazine ranked the pharmaceutical business as the most profitable of all industries...measured on returns in equity, sales and assets.' American pharmaceutical companies rationalize their profits by claiming that the profits are needed to develop new drugs. However, many antipsychotics were developed primarily in Europe, and a large proportion of expenditures by American pharmaceutical companies are spent on advertising, not on drug development."
-
(107) "Over the years, Scientologist criticisms have been complemented by a few fellow travelers, such as Peter Breggin, who published books such as Toxic Psychiatry and Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain. All such criticisms were largely ignored until recently, when Robert Whitaker, a respected science writer, elaborated on many previous criticisms in Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. He correctly attacked the pharmaceutical industry for greed and American psychiatrists for allowing themselves to be seduced by drug representatives. *However, regarding schizophrenia, Whitaker maintained that antipsychotic drugs largely cause the disease and that patients have a better outcome if they are treated only briefly or not at all.*"
-
(108) "Whitaker raises the issue of supersensitivity psychosis, the possibility that antipsychotics sensitize the brain's neurotransmitter receptors so that psychotic symptoms get worse when an antipsychotic drug is withdrawn, especially abruptly. This has been shown in rats, but there is no evidence that it appears in humans." // ?
-
(109) "Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), most commonly used to treat severe depression, has a modest but definite role to play in the treatment of schizophrenia despite the adverse publicity it has received. It is a favorite whipping boy for Scientologists and anti-psychiatry advocates and was even banned from use in Berkeley, California, in 1982 by a local referendum. In European countries it has been used more widely for the treatment of schizophrenia than in the United States." // Fuller likes ECT. :( / I oppose ECT, as I do not believe there is much benefit in it. It just seems to cause brain damage.
-
(110) "Despite Scientologist claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that ECT causes any damage to the brain. Some patients respond to as few as twelve ECT treatments, whereas others need twenty or more." // Fuller lies, here. / What does ECT do to astral projecting occultists, though? Does it, temporarily, eject them from their victim's body?
-
(111) "As long as the product is not advertised to treat a specific disease, there is essentially no regulation in the manufacture or testing of the compounds, a fact many consumers do not realize. It is therefore difficult to ascertain what is actually in the herbal remedy, and instances of adulteration have been documented. [...] Individuals with schizophrenia should be cautious in taking herbal treatments and should report what they are taking to their treating physician."
-
(112) "In contrast to supportive psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and insight-oriented psychotherapy have no place in the treatment of schizophrenia. Studies done in the 1960s and 1970s, when psychoanalysis was still commonly practiced in the United States, reported that even two years of psychoanalysis with skilled therapists had no effect on the symptoms of schizophrenia. *More alarming was the finding that in many cases the psychoanalysis even made the patient's symptoms worse.*" Is this true? If so, why?
-
-
(2) "Dr. Silvano Arieti attempted to distinguish the hallucinations of the profoundly religious from those of schizophrenia by proposing the following criteria: (a) religious hallucinations are usually visual, while those in schizophrenia are predominantly auditory; (b) religious hallucinations usually involve benelovent guides or advisers who issue orders to the person; and (c) religious hallucinations are usually ple. ." [p.35]
(3) "Hallucinations of taste usually consist of familiar food tasting differently. I have had patients with paranoid schizophrenia, for example, who decided that they were being poisoned when their food began tasting 'funny.' Certainly if one's food suddenly starts changing in taste it is logical to suspect that someone is adding something to it."
(4) ""To the person who experiences hallucinatory pains, the pains feel identical with actual pains...The person who feels it undergoes real suffering.""
(5) ""A young man frequently confused in a conversation, being unable to distinguish between himself and an interlocutor. He tended to lose the sense of whose thoughts originated in whom, and felt 'as if' his interlocutor somehow 'invaded him,' an experience that shattered his identity and was intensely anxiety provoking."" [p.36]
(6) "In extreme cases, a few patients with schizophrenia are unable to recognize photographs of themselves. When one such man was shown a picture of himself and asked who it was, he answered, 'It is a man.'" // Possessed.
(7) "Changes in emotions - or affect, as it is often called by professionals - are one of the most common and characteristic changes in schizophrenia. In the early stages of the illness, depression, guilt, fear, and rapidly fluctuating emotions may all be found. In the latter stages, flattening of emotions are more characteristic, often resulting in individuals who appear to be unable to feel emotions at all. This in turn makes it more difficult for us to relate to them, so we tend to shun them even more. Depression is a very common symptom early in the course of the disease but is often overlooked. In one study it was reported that '81 percent of the patients...presented a well defined episode of depressive mood.' In half of the patients, symptoms of depression preceded the onset of delusions or hallucinations. Most such depression is biologically based, caused by neurological changes in the brain as part of the disease process, although some of it may also be a reaction of the person to the realization that he/she is becoming sick. One of the tragic and not uncommon sequelae of such depression is suicide, which is discussed in chapter 10."
(8) "Exaggerated feelings usually are not found in patients beyond the early stages of the disease. If they are, they should raise questions as to whether schizophrenia is the correct diagnosis. It is the retention of such feelings and emotions that is one of the sharpest dividing lines between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (see chapter 2). If the person retains exaggerated feelings to a prominent degree beyond the early stages of the disease, it is much more likely that the correct diagnosis will turn out to be bipolar disorder."
(9) "These inappropriate emotions produce one of the most dramatic aspects of the disease - the victim suddenly breaking out in cackling laughter for no apparent reason. It is a common sight to those who have worked or lived with people with this disease." (p.40)
(10) "Indeed, almost everything a person with schizophrenia says and does may be, to them, rational. It is 'crazy' only to the outsider who sits on the sidelines and observes from afar. To someone who will take the time to listen, a person with schizophrenia is not 'crazy' at all if by 'crazy' one means irrational. The 'craziness' has its roots in the disordered brain function that produces erroneous sensory data and disordered thinking." (p.47)
(11) "Such awareness of illness in the early stages is often lost as the disease becomes fully manifest. This is not surprising since it is the brain that is malfunctioning, and it is also the brain that we use to think about ourselves. In fact, I am always surprised at the many patients with schizophrenia who have awareness of their illness. Even in the stage of chronic illness an occasional person with schizophrenia will exhibit surprising insight." (p.48)
(12) "The consequences of decreased awareness of illness for individuals with schizophrenia are legion. On the positive side, it has been shown that those with decreased awareness of their illness are less depressed and probably have a lower incidence of suicide, as one would expect. On the negative side, lack of awareness of illness is the largest single cause of the need for involuntary hospitalization and medication, major problems that are discussed in chapter 10."
(13) "The Inner World of Mental Illness ed. B. Kaplan"
(14) "Similarly, Kurt Schneider, a German psychiatrist, proposed a list of symptoms that he called 'first rank' symptoms, meaning that when one or more of them are present they point strongly toward schizophrenia as the diagnosis. These symptoms are used informally in European countries for the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but less so in the United States. Studies have shown that at least three-quarters of patients with schizophrenia have one or more of these symptoms. However, they cannot be considered as definitive for schizophrenia because they are also found in at least one-quarter of patients with bipolar disorder. Until 1980, the term 'schizophrenia' was used much more loosely and broadly in the United States than in most European countries. In fact, the only other country in the world where schizophrenia was diagnosed as loosely was the former Soviet Union, where it was abused as a label to discredit and stigmatize opponents of the government.
SCHNEIDER'S FIRST RANK SYMPTOMS FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA:
1. Auditory hallucinations in which the voices speak one's thoughts aloud
2. Auditory hallucinations with two voices arguing
3. Auditory hallucinations with the voices commenting on one's actions
4. Hallucinations of touch when the bodily sensation is imposed by some external agency
5. Withdrawal of thoughts from one's mind
6. Insertions of thoughts into one's mind by others
7. Believing one's thoughts are being broadcast to others, as by radio or television
8. Insertion by others of feelings into one's mind
9. Insertion by others of irresistible impulses into one's mind
10. Feeling that all one's actions are under the control of others, like an automaton
11. Delusions of perception, as when one is certain that a normal remark has a secret meaning for oneself"
-
(15) "D. Does not meet criteria for schizoaffective disorder, and symptoms of psychosis are not caused by substance abuse."
-
(16) "Then there is the issue of cultural expectations: in some cultures, you would be regarded as abnormal if you did not hear the voice of your mother giving advice. In a cross-national survey, the percentage of people who reported having visual or auditory hallucinations was 32 percent in Nepal, 14 percent in Brazil, and 12 percent in India, but less than 1 percent in China, Spain and Pakistan." (p.63)
-
(17) "Most biological abnormalities found in schizophrenia (e.g. ventricular enlargement on MRI scans, neurological abnormalities) are also found in bipolar disorder, although they are usually not as marked."
-
(18) "Although the public stereotype of bipolar disorder is a person who swings from one extreme to the other and back again, this is found only rarely. Some affected persons have a series of manic episodes, dome have a series of depressive episodes, while others have two in every conceivable combination. Many months or even years may separate episodes; between episodes the person is characteristically normal. There are, of course, all gradations of mood swings in either direction within the general population; some people have great energy and cheerfulness as part of their personality, others are chronically self-deprecating and depressed."
(19) "Most important, bipolar disorder occurs in discrete episodes with a return to normal functioning between episodes being the rule; schizophrenia rarely occurs in such discrete episodes and residual disability is the rule. Because of their recovery, it is common to find people with bipolar disorder holding important jobs in government, industry, and the entertainment field, and some traits of the hypomanic (e.g., high energy, inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep) lead to greater productivity and success in such fields."
-
(20) "Furthermore, it is not rare to find patients whose symptoms change over time, appearing initially as a textbook case of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and a year or two later clearly exhibiting symptoms of the other disease. It has been facetiously suggested that either we need to insist that patients read the psychiatric textbooks and choose the disease they wish to have or we must become more flexible in our psychiatric thinking. I personally have seen patients with virtually every possible combination of symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder." (p.66)
-
(21) "Scizophrenia produces more marked and more generalized neuropsychological dysfunction, especially on tests of memory and frontal lobe function."
-
(22) "A 'split personality,' as in Sybil or The Three Faces if Eve, is officially called a disassociative disorder. It is much less common than schizophrenia, occurs almost exclusively in women, and is thought to be a reaction to sexual or physical abuse in childhood."
(23) "The question naturally arises whether drug abus can cause schizophrenia. It is a question asked frequently by families and relatives of patients with this disease. There is now abundant evidence that chronic and repeated usage of many of the mind-altering drugs can damage the brain, impairing intellectual functions and memory, and can exacerbate the symptoms of a person who already has schizophrenia." (p.71)
(24) "Among those who had used street drugs, 27 percent had used drugs prior to any symptom of schizophrenia, *35 percent had started using street drugs in the same month which their symptoms began, and 38 percent had not used street drugs until at least one month after the onset of their illness.*" (p.73) // Is most of the drug use among this demographic, due solely to compulsions?
(25) "Prescription drugs that cause symptomsf psychosis as a side effect almost always do so when they are first started. The psychotic symptoms will go away, sometimes immediately and in other cases more slowly, as soon as the drug is stopped. Many of these drugs cause such symptoms more commonly in elderly individuals and/or at higher doses. Medications that sometimes cause delusions or hallucinations and may therefore produce a clinical picture that could be confused with schizophrenia are listed on page 75." // Kevin (father) took one of these, Wellbutrin, when I was a teen. This probably didn't help him much. He was averse to seeing a doctor himself.
(26) "Viral Encephalitis: It has been known for many years that viral encephalitis can produce schizophrenia-like symptoms following the encephalitis. What is becoming increasingly clear is that encephalitis occasionally mimics schizophrenia in the early stages of illness, before other signs and symptoms of encephalitis become apparent; how often this occurs is unknown. A review of twenty-two such cases identified a variety of viruses as capable of doing this, including herpes simplex, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, measles, coxsackie, and equine encephalitis. If suspected, such cases can be diagnosed by bar puncture and EEG."
(27) "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: The relationship between epilepsy and schizophrenia has been a controversial issue for many years. There have been reports that epilepsy and schizophrenia share some predisposing genes, and also that the incidence of schizophrenia is elevated among individuals with epilepsy and vice versa. There is agreement, however, that one type of epilepsy - that of the temporal lobe - frequently produces symptoms like schizophrenia. One study found that 17 percent of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy had some symptoms of schizophrenia." // What is the sample size of this study, and were the results replicated in further studies? / Did Nadine fake her seizures? Was the intent, there, if so, to remind the primary Fords more of Henry Ford, so that they would become more fond?
(28) "AIDS: This is the newest addition to the list of diseases that may present with symptoms resembling schizophrenia. It has been clearly established that AIDS may occasionally manifest itself with symptoms of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the effect of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on the brain. A test for HIV should be included in all routine first admission diagnostic workups for serious mental illness."// How occasionally?
-
(29) "Major changes in personality, including the onset of psychosis, were clearly documented in studies of penetrating head injuries during the Franco-Prussian and the Russo-Finnish wars. Still unresolved, however, is how often head trauma causes psychosis, how severe the trauma must be, what parts of the brain are affected, and how long the period can be between the trauma and the onset of psychosis." // Why was this studied, regarding these two conflicts, in particular?
(30) "Most individuals with schizophrenia show a mild loss of IQ as measured by their impaired functioning on tests of cognitive skills; their innate IQ is not necessarily impaired, but their ability to demonstrate their IQ is impaired (see chapter 12)." (p.79)
(31) "The best-known example of co-occurring mental retardation and psychosis was Rosemary Kennedy, sister to John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy. She was mildly retarded in childhood, eventually reaching a fifth-grade level of achievement. At age twenty-one, however, she had the onset of a schizophrenia-like psychosis that alarmed her family. Since antipsychotic medications were not yet available in 1941, she was given a surgical lobotomy. The results of the lobotomy were a disaster, causing severe retardation and brain damage, and she was confined to a private nursing convent until her death."
(32) "It occurs in approximately 4 children per 10,000 and this is one-twentieth as common as schizophrenia. At one time it was said that autism was more common in higher socioeconomic groups, but that has been disproved. It occurs four times more often in male than in females. Recent studies suggest that autism may be increasing in incidence in the United States." // Has this really been disproved? / Has there been a rise in working class Americans becoming narcissists, and having autistic children, too, like the upper classes, since then?
(33) "Epilepsy commonly accompanies autism; approximately one-half of children with autism may have some degree of mental retardation; and a higher than expected percentage of children with autism also have *blindness or deafness.*" // Dacoda at ABIA? /Kyle Mullen's brother, Connor?
(34) "A variety of medications have been used to treat autism but so far with only moderate success. Specialized training appears to produce some improvement in behavior. As the children get older, a small percentage improve and function well. An example of the latter is Temple Grandin, who earned a doctorate and is an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University; she documented her illness in her book Thinking in Pictures. *The majority, however, take on the negative characteristics of adult schizophrenia with an emphasis on 'negative' symptoms (e.g., withdrawal, flattened emotions, poverty of thoughts) rather than 'positive' symptoms (e.g., delusions, hallucinations).*" (p.81)
(35) "Differentiation of infantile autism from childhood schizophrenia is in most cases not difficult. Autism almost always begins before two and a half, while schizophrenia is rare before five and uncommon before age ten. The child with autism will have prominent withdrawal, language retardation, and repetitive routines, while the child with schizophrenia will have delusions, hallucinations, and thinking disorders. Half the children with autism will be retarded, but far fewer of the children with schizophrenia will be. Finally, children with schizophrenia may have a family history of schizophrenia, but children with autism almost never have such a family history."
(36) "*There is no relationship between antisocial personality disorder, sexually violent predators, and schizophrenia.* And a study reported that the incidence of antisocial personality disorder among the relatives of individuals with schizophrenia was no higher than among the general population."
(37) Further reading: "The Biology of Autistic Syndromes - M. Coleman and C. Gillberg
The Schizophrenias: A Biological Approach to the Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders - M. Coleman and C. Gillberg."
-
(38) "What these studies show is that there is subset of children, approximately one-quarter or one-third of those who later develop schizophrenia, who are different as children. These differences include:
1. Delayed developmental milestones in infancy (e.g., slower to walk and talk)
2. More language and speech problems
3. Poorer coordination (e.g., not as good at sports, lower grades in physical education)
4. Poorer academic achievement
5. Poorer social functioning and fewer friends." // My comments:
2. I was placed, very briefly, in a speech class that I didn't need to be in, back in elementary school, and mom was suspicious of this, and suspected they hated foreigners, like herself, and their children.
3. I developed an odd, unexplained aversion to gym class, in ninth grade, and this meant I had to take summer school for gym, that summer.
4. I stopped showing up, and doing homework, regularly, when I started being bullied, and became mentally ill, back in seventh grade. In Texas, later, I did well, again, when I attended college.
5. Nadine became my only friend in late middle school, and I have lacked any motivation (avolition) to make close friends, since then. Since 2019, I have become more distrustful, and skeptical of other people, also.
-
(39) "*The majority of individuals who develop schizophrenia are not different in childhood, and in fact one study in Finland even found that a disproportionate number of children who developed schizophrenia had done especially well in school. Conversely, most children who have delayed milestones; language and speech problems; and poor coordination, grades, and social skills // will not develop schizophrenia.//*
[p.87]
-
(40) "Moodiness, withdrawal, apathy, *loss of interest in personal appearance*, perplexity, the belief that people are watching one, preoccupation with one's body, and vagueness in thoughts may all be harbingers of schizophrenia, but they may also be just normal manifestations of early adulthood and its accompanying problems." // Narcs are obsessed with personal appearance.
[p.89]
-
(41) "THE MOST COMMON EARLY SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AS OBSERVED BY THE FAMILY:
+ depression
+ changes in social behavior
+ changes in sleep or eating patterns
+ suspiciousness or feelings that people are talking about him/her
+ changes in pattern of self-care
+ changes in school performance
+ marked weakness, loss of energy
+ headaches or strange sensations in head
+ changes in emotional relationships with family or close friends
+ confused, strange, or bizarre thinking"
-
(42) "A fictional description of the onset of schizophrenia in a twelve-year-old boy was written by Conrad Aiken in 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow' (see chapter 13). Another brief fictional account is Vladimir Nabokov's short story, 'Signs and Symbols,' a literary gem. Louise Wilson, in This Stranger, My Son, provides a good account of what it is like to live with a child with this illness."
-
(43) "Many studies of it have been done by Europeans, with less interest having been shown by American researchers. That fact is especially pertinent since the mean age of onset of schizophrenia in general is almost invariably reported as being older in European studies compared to American studies. It seems possible, therefore, that late-onset schizophrenia is of more interest to European researchers because it occurs more commonly there for reasons that are unknown."
[p.92]
-
(44) "One study found that followed up individuals with late-onset schizophrenia found that in one-third of cases the schizophrenia progressed to an Alzheimer-type dementia."
-
(45) "It has now been clearly established that women with schizophrenia have a more favorable outcome than men. Patients with the best outcome also have no history of relatives with schizophrenia. *The more close relatives who have schizophrenia, the poorer the outcome becomes.* If there is a history of depression or bipolar disorder in the family, the person is more likely to have a good outcome."
-
(46) "Awareness of one's illness (insight) is a very good sign, whereas lack of awareness (asnosognosia) is a bad sign." // Me vs. mom and Kevin (father).
-
(47) "The reasons for such gender differences, still unknown, provide one of the many questions about schizophrenia needing to be researched. It should be noted that both infantile autism and childhood schizophrenia also have a strong predominance for males, and that male fetuses generally are known to be more susceptible to environmentally caused problems such as infections. The fact that males get schizophrenia both at a younger age and more severely, then, may simply be another reflection of Mother Nature's dictum that in many ways men are the weaker sex. Another speculation about why schizophrenia might be more severe in males is the possibility that female zex hormones (estrogens) may exert an antipsychotic effect and be protective. This possibility has led to some promising trials of estrogen as an add-on medication to treat women with schizophrenia (see chapter 7). It is also possible, although unlikely, that schizophrenia resembles diabetes in having two major subgroups: an early-onset, more severe variety that affects mostly men, and a later-onset, less severe variety more apt to afflict women."
[p.96]
-
(48) "Twenty-five Percent Recover Completely: This assumes that all patients with symptoms of schizophrenia are part of the analysis, including those who have been sick for less than six months with schizophreniform disorders. If only patients with narrowly defined schizophrenia are included (i.e., 'continuous signs of the illness for at least six months'), then the percentage of completely recovered will be under 25 percent. [...] Those who recover also do so within the first two years of illness and usually have no more than two discrete episodes of illness."
[p.98]
-
(49) "It has been clearly established in recent years that the thirty-year course of schizophrenia is more favorable to the average patient than the ten-year course. This directly contradicts a widespread stereotype about the disease that dates to Kraepelin's pessimistic belief that most patients slowly deteriorate. A major reason for this better long-term prognosis is that aging ameliorates the symptoms of schizophrenia in most people. *Symptoms of this disease tend to be most severe when the person is in his/her twenties and thirties, then become somewhat less severe in the forties, and significantly less severe in the fifties and sixties. We do not understand why this is so and there are, of course, many exceptions, but schizophrenia represents one of the few conditions in life for which aging is an advantage.*" // Perps develop their own issues, and/or die off, causing a decrease in the symptoms of their victims?
-
(50) "Compared with the experiences during the acute psychosis, his positive symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, have become colorless, repetitive, and formalized. They still have power over him but nothing is added and nothing new or unexpected happens."
[p.102]
-
(51) "As seen in the chart, only 10 percent of patients with schizophrenia will require hospitalization (or a similar total-care facility such as a nursing home) thirty years later. The vast majority are able to live in rhe community, with about 15 percent of them requiring an extensive support network."
-
(52) "Accidents: *Although individuals with schizophrenia fo not drive as much as other people, studies have shown that they have double the rate of motor vehicle accidents per mile driven. A significant but unknown number of individuals with schizophrenia are also killed as pedestrians by motor vehicles; for example, one patient under my care accidentally stepped off a curb into the path of an oncoming bus.* Confusion, delusions, and distraction by auditory hallucinations all contribute to such deaths. In 1995z for example, Margaret King, who had schizophrenia and believed that she was Jesus Christ, was mauled to death by lions after she climbed into their enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Deaths from accidental choking are also significantly increased in schizophrenia. An analysis of excess deaths in schizophrenia estimated that 12 percent of the excess was due to accidents." // Being distracted by symptoms is unlikely to account for most of these deaths, as symptoms hardly ever distract me so much as to cause me to walk into traffic, for example. Gangstalkers as a factor are not included, here, and that is a mistake.
[p.111]
-
When I was transcribing this one, I had to deal with an unpleasant bout of DSH, and some ugly tardives.
-
(53) "Partially offsetting this increased mortality rate is the likelihood that individuals with schizophrenia have a lower than expected incidence of prostate cancer, type I (juvenile onset) diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis (to be discussed in chapter 5)."
-
(54) "It has long been known that individuals with schizophrenia smoke heavily (see chapter 10). A study in England of 102 individuals with schizophrenia also reported that they ate a diet higher in fat and lower in fiber than the general populations, and that they exercised very little." // What is the first claim based on? / Exercise more.
-
(55) "Scattered reports from around the United States suggest that homeless mentally ill individuals may have a very high mortality rate. [...] It is likely that when we finally do a careful study of mortality rates among homeless individuals with schizophrenia in the United States, the results will show a shockingly high mortality rate."
-
(56) "The fact that there is really no animal model for schizophrenia is another reason that research on this disease has progressed so slowly." // I think animals may get schizophrenia, as well as dementia, so this claim may be incorrect.
[p.117]
-
(57) "In 1933 study, 25 out of 60 individuals with schizophrenia had enlarged ventricles. Beginning in 1976 imaging techniques such as computerized axial tomography (CT) anf magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have confirmed the enlarged ventricles, averaging approximately 26 percent larger than unenlarged ventricles, and the reduced grey matter volume in well over 100 studies." // Were the other individuals in the 1933 study misdiagnosed?
-
(58) "Four types of cognitive function are especially impaired in this disease: *attention*, certain types of memory, executive function (planning, problem solving, abstracting, ect.), and awareness of illness. The deficits in attention are demonstrable on tests that measure vigilance and concentration. Individuals with schizophrenia are often distracted, and in fact 'distracted' was another commonly used term for insanity in the early nineteenth century." // Perps with ADHD?
-
(59) "Executive function deficits are apparent in tasks such as abstracting proverbs (see chapter 1). Another common way to measure executive function is by a test called the Wisconsin Card Sort, in which the person must match cards by shape or color at the same time that rules for matching cards are constantly changing; individuals with schizophrenia find it difficult to change how they are matching the cards to accommodate the changing rules." // Is this really true? Try this, at some point.
-
(60) "Bring born to an elderly father, especially if he was fifty-five or older at the time of birth, is a modest risk factor for developing schizophrenia." // What is the origin of this belief? Are narcissistic fathers more likely to have children, when they are older, and to use them as scapegoats, as well, to avoid being held accountable for their own actions?
[p.122]
-
(61) "Finally, there is one other clearly established but curious fact about schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia almost never get rheumatoid arthritis, and individuals with rheumatoid arthritis almost never get schizophrenia."
[p.124]
-
(62) "Despite the overwhelming evidence that schizophrenia is a disease of the brain, a few small groups deny that it is. For individuals who have schizophrenia, such denial is somewhat understandable; schizophrenia is an unpleasant disease and it would be nice if it did not exist. *Mental health professionals who deny that schizophrenia is a brain disease probably also believe that the earth is flat.*"
-
(63) "Thomas Szasz was probably the best-known denier of schizophrenia as a brain disease, as reasoned in books such as The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (1976). He claimed that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses were merely metaphors for human problems of living. Szasz acknowledged that brian diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, are real and agreed that if schizophrenia could be shown to have a neurological basis, it too would be a brain disease. Even though many of us presented him with such evidence, he refused to publicly change his position until his death in 2012. *A major reason why Szasz had difficulty in understanding schizophrenia is because he apparently never treated any patient with this disease.* He trained in psychiatry in Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and later proudly claimed thar he had never prescribed medication for any patient he had ever treated."
-
(64) "Laing's ideas about schizophrenia take on a poignant air when it is realized that his eldest daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized for many years. Laing became increasingly disillusioned and became an alcoholic as he grew older. In 1982 he commented to an interviewer: 'I was looked to one who had the answers but I never had them.'"
-
(65) "Scientologists as a group deny the reality of schizophrenia as a brain disease. They direct their animosity to psychiatry through their Citizens' Commission on Human Rights, which is part of Scientology. Their beliefs about schizophrenia are based on the writings of their founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to one account, 'Hubbard taught that the psychotic person is a "potential trouble source" who is connected to forces opposed to Scientology. People who behave as psychotics are 'unethical' and 'immoral.' Hubbard also taught that the 'forces' behind psychiatry were extraterrestrial."
-
(66) "What is abundantly clear, as mentioned above, is that schizophrenia is a brain disease involving a widespread network of multiple brain areas. There is no schizophrenia brain area; rather, there is a schizophrenia-affected brain network. The disease process almost certainly involves both neurons and glia in the multiple areas affected and also involves the white-matter connections between the areas."
[p.127]
-
(67) "What is increasingly clear is that, at least for one-quarter of cases of schizophrenia, the brain changes leading to the disease begin early in life, even though the actual symptoms of the disease do not begin until the person's late teenage years or twenties. [...] Do all individuals with schizophrenia have brain changes that date to early in life, or is that true merely for a subgroup? We do not yet know the answer to this. What we do know is that the early brain changes occur in approximately one-quarter of individuals with schizophrenia. [...] It remains to be ascertained whether this group of individuals with early changes is a clinical subgroup; that is, do they have a different cause for their disease? Or do all individuals with schizophrenia have a disease process that dates to early in life but cannot be measured yet? This is one of the most important research questions currently facing schizophrenia researchers."
[p.129]
-
(68) "Incredibly, one hundred years after Browne, Maudsley, and their colleagues were discussing insanity as a brain disease, their psychiatric offspring were investigating insanity as a product of bad mothering or mislabeling. In no other area of medicine - perhaps in all of science - did research go backward for as far or for as long as it did in psychiatry. Beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century, research on schizophrenia finally got back on track. The present challenge is to synthesize the rapidly accumulating data into a coherent theory and then prove them to be correct."
-
(69) "For example, Toxoplasma gondii, an infectious parasite carried by cats and which will be discussed below, has been documented as having caused human toxoplasmosis in family clusters because of the family's exposure to a toxoplasma-infected common water source, infected food (*goat's milk*), and exposure to infected family cats." // Bad inside joke of some sort?
-
(70) "There are additional reasons for doubting that schizophrenia is primarily a genetic disease. One of the strongest is what is often referred to as the 'schizophrenia paradox - the continuing existence of schizophrenia despite a low fertility rate and a high mortality rate.' Indeed, between 1830 and 1950 the vast majority of individuals with severe schizophrenia were confined to mental hospitals, unable to procreate. Yet during those same years the prevalence of schizophrenia appeared to increase. [...] The fact that schizophrenia is not primarily a genetic disease should be regarded as good news, since we couldn't do much about it if it was. Non-genetic causative factors are more susceptible to alteration."
[p.132-133]
-
(71) "It can also be argued that if the disease process of schizophrenia really begins during fetal life in most cases, why don't we see more minor physical anomalies, seizures, and mental retardation?"
[p.137]
-
(72) "One finding that points in this direction is the occurrence of compulsive water drinking (polydypsia) among some individuals with schizophrenia. Water intake is related to hormones in the posterior pituitary gland. The anterior pituitary has also been provisionally linked to schizophrenia in some patients who show altered response to growth hormone when given apomorphine, a dopamine-stimulating drug. There have also been claims that reproductive hormones (FSH and LH), which come from the anterior pituitary, are abnormal in individuals with schizophrenia. The interruption of menstrual periods in some female patients with schizophrenia is well known."
-
(73) "Childhood trauma and stress theories of schizophrenia have a long and disreputable scientific history. Throughout the 19th century, stressors such as 'disappointment in a love affair' were regularly invoked to explain the cause of insanity." // Spiteful occultist exes? Rejected suitors? Jealous mistress, or romantic rival?
-
(74) "Traumatic events of childhood can unquestionably leave lasting psychic scars. Sexual abuse of children in particular has been plausibly linked to depression, dissociative disorder, PTSD, and substance abuse. However, there are major problems with the childhood trauma studies and no credible evidence to support the linkage of such trauma to the causes of schizophrenia. *Scientifically, most of the childhood trauma studies are very weak.* One review examined 46 such studies for scientific merit and found that only six had used an appropriate control group. Childhood trauma theorists often summarize many such studies together and claim merit by numbers, but piling 100 scientifically questionable studies on top of each other does not improve their scientific credibility. Another problem is the variety of childhood trauma used by these researchers, often in the same study. These include everything from sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse to parental death, parental poverty, witnessing parental violence, neglect, and bullying. Another major problem with these studies is that most of them collected data on abuse retrospectively. As one critique of childhood trauma studies correctly notes, 'an extensive literature has cast doubt on the validity of retrospective reports about child rearing, family conflicts, and psychological states in childhood.' *Indeed, it appears that many of the childhood trauma researchers have learned nothing from the scandals associated with the false memory syndrome.*" // I do think that there may be some link, between being abused, as a child, and paranoid schizophrenia./ Psychiatry, and psychology, have a notably poor track record, when it comes to child sexual abuse, so I will take what they proclaim, with a grain of salt./ Why didn't these studies use appropriate control groups? Did they want to sabotage the studies, for some reason? /For what reason was false memory syndrome concocted?
-
(75) "Freudian Theory: For the first half of the twentieth century, Freud's psychoanalytic theories were prominent in the United States. *Freud taught that bad mothering causes schizophrenia. Freud himself knew almost nothing about the disease and avoided seeing patients who had it.* In a 1907 letter, he acknowledged: 'I seldom see dements [dementia praecox, or schizophrenia] and hardly ever see other severe types of psychosis.' *Four years later, he wrote: 'I do not like these patients [with schizophrenia]...I feel them to be so far distant from me and everything human.'* Any mental health professional who still professes Freudian beliefs about schizophrenia should be regarded as incompetent." // I think Freud was a person, whom had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I believe that most narcissists have a strong aversion to people with paranoid schizophrenia, as we are more likely than the average person, to see them for what they are.
[p.143]
-
(76) "*Bad Families: In addition to Freudian theories about bad mothers, in the 1950s a series of theories about bad families was put forward to explain the cause of schizophrenia. Individuals associated with these theories included Theodore Lidz, Gregory Bateson, and Don Jackson.* These family interaction theories were tested in controlled studies and found to be wrong, *and have been discarded.* An offshoot of the bad families theories was what was called 'expressed emotion.' *It postulated that families who were overly critical, hostile, and overinvolved, and who overidentified with the family member with schizophrenia, caused the person to relapse. Dozens of papers and even a few books were published on expressed emotion in the 1980s and 1990s, but the theory faded away when careful studies showed that it had no scientific basis.*" // Do these family members jump into the SZ, meddle with their lives, and try to control them?
-
(77) "People with schizophrenia do best in situations where people are calm and communicate clearly and directly."
-
(78) "Any parent who has raised a child knows that parents are not powerful enough to cause a disease like schizophrenia simply by favoring one child over another or giving the child inconsistent messages."
-
(79) "One such writer was Christopher Lasch, who in his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism, claimed that psychoses are 'in some sense the characteristic expression of a given culture.'"
-
(80) "Another way to find a good doctor is through other families who have a family member with schizophrenia. They can often provide a quick rundown of the local resources and save weeks of hunting and false starts. *Sharing this information is one of the most valuable assets of local chapters of NAMI and is an important reason to join. (Local and state chapters of NAMI can be contacted through NAMI, as listed in Appendix B.)* Distinctly unhelpful in searching for a good doctor are referral lists maintained by local medical societies or the local chapters of the American Psychiatric Association. Anyone can call these organizations and obtain three names. The names, however, are taken from a rotating list of those doctors who are looking for additional patients. Since any doctor who wishes to pay the annual dues can belong to these organizations, there is no screening or ascertainment of quality if any kind. Even those doctors who are under investigation for malpractice will continue to be listed by such organizations until they are specifically removed from membership, which is an all-too-rare occurence. Thus, referral lists from medical and psychiatric societies are really no better than picking a name at random from the physicians' list in the Yellow Pages."
-
(81) "In trying to find a good doctor it is perfectly legitimate to ask questions such as 'What do you think causes schizophrenia?' 'What has been your experience with clozapine?' 'What do you think about risperidone (or any other drug)?' 'How important is psychotherapy in treating schizophrenia?' Such open-ended questions will quickly elicit the relative biological orientation of the doctor as well as some sense of how well the person is keeping up with new treatments."
-
(82) "How important is it for the physician to be 'board eligible' or 'board certified' in his/her specialty? 'Board eligible' means that the physician has completed an approved residency program in that specialty. 'Board certified' means that the physician has taken and passed an examination in the specialty. Such board examinations are completely optional and are not required for licensure or for membership in any professional organization. They simply mean that the doctor had the theoretical knowledge required to be competent in that specialty at the time he/she took the examination. They do not indicate whether or not the doctor has kept up-to-date since the examination, and for that reason there is relatively little relationship between board certification and competency. All medical specialists should be required to become recertified by examination every five years. *Until that time comes, families should give relatively little weight to selecting a 'board certified' psychiatrist over a 'board eligible' one unless all other things are equal.*"
-
(83) "What about international medical graduates? *Psychiatry has attracted more international medical graduates than any other medical specialty in the United States, and in many states these psychiatrists constitute a majority of all psychiatrists in mental health centers and state hospitals. A 1996 survey reported that international medical graduates were almost twice as likely as American medical graduates to work in public psychiatric settings (42 percent vs. 22 percent) and that they saw almost twice as many patients with psychosis (20 percent vs. 11 percent). International medical graduates are therefore the backbone of American public psychiatry, and without them the disaster of deinstitutionalization would have been even worse than it has been.*" [p.150-151] // Is this part of a foreign plot? This seems highly unusual.
-
(84) "To those looking for a good doctor to treat schizophrenia, one final word of caution. Doctors are human beings and, as such, run a wide range of personality types. Throughout the medical profession can be found some physicians who are dishonest, mentally ill, addicted to alcohol or drugs, or sociopathic, or who have some combination of the above. *I have a sense that psychiatry attracts more than its share of such physicians, often because the physician has become interested in his/her own mental aberrations.*" // NPD?
-
(85) "5. Neurological signs or symptoms suggesting central nervous system disease other than schizophrenia (e.g., nystagmus of the eyes in which the gaze moves rapidly from side to side)." // I do not have this one, but a tardive person, or two, in the past, has had this issue, and this, sometimes, spread to me, also.
-
(86) "Lumbar punctures in patients with schizophrenia are relatively free of side effects, since persons with schizophrenia are especially immune to getting post-lumbar puncture headaches that occur in approximately one-third of people who do not have schizophrenia." [p. 156]
-
(87) "A 2002 study comparing nonprofit and for-profit psychiatric inpatient units found that the nonprofit units were superior in almost all aspects of psychiatric care. [...] In contrast to most other diseases, paying more money does not necessarily buy you better care for schizophrenia." // ***
-
(88) "A measure of hospital quality that previously was considered to be useful was accreditation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). At the invitation of a hospital, JCAHO sends a survey team to evaluate it, as well as provide consultation and education. The survey focuses on patient care and services but also includes such related issues as the therapeutic environment, safety of the patient, quality of staffing, and administration of the hospital. The survey team then recommends that the hospital receive full three-year accreditation, full accreditation with a contingency (which may necessitate a follow-up inspection to ensure that the contingency has been corrected), or no accreditation. [...] In more recent years JCAHO accreditation has itself been discredited because of what one federal report labeled the 'cozy relationship' between the hospitals and the privately run JCAHO. Hospitals may pay thousands of dollars for the survey and they expect to be accredited; JCAHO consequently accredits many hospitals despite evidence of poor patient care. JCAHO accreditation can therefore no longer be relied upon as a measure of quality."
-
(89) "All laws governing commitment of psychiatric patients are state laws, not federal laws. Therefore commitment laws vary from state to state, especially those governing long-term commitment. *Between 1970 and 1980 there was a broad shift in the United States to change state laws to make it more difficult to involuntarily hospitals individuals with psychiatric illnesses. The effect of this shift was to make it practically impossible in many states to hospitalize an individual with schizophrenia unless that person was shown to be an immediate danger to self or others.* Because of the problems produced by these stringent laws, there is growing sentiment to modify the laws so that such persons can be involuntarily hospitalized and treated." [p. 161]
-
(90) "In states that utilize only dangerousness to self or others and define dangerousness stringently, it is generally more difficult to get a commitment than in states that define dangerousness vaguely (for example, Texas law previously said a mentally ill person could be commited 'for his own welfare and protection or the protection of others)."
-
(91) "In 1983 the American Psychiatric Association proposed a model commitment statute that would allow psychiatrically ill persons to be placed in treatment if their behavior indicated 'significant deterioration' of their psychiatric state and they were clearly in need of treatment. I believe it is a good model for state laws. It permits the treatment of a relapsing patient before the person has had to demonstrate dangerousness."
-
(92) "Resistance to insurance parity for psychiatric conditions has come primarily from insurance companies, who have to pay the bills. This resistance is based on the fact that psychiatrists have a reputation for gaming the insurance system and inflating costs. A 1985 study reported that 'psychiatrists form a disproportionately large segment of the total' physicians who were suspended from the Medicaid and Medicare programs because of fraud and abuse. And psychiatrists played major roles in the private psychiatric hospital insurance scams of the early 1990s (see Joe Sharkey's description of this in Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy)." // !!
-
(93) "In 2008, after years of efforts by advocates, legislation mandating insurance parity was finally passed by Congress. Under these laws, coverage for psychiatric disorders under Medicare and private insurance plans must provide the same level of benefits as that available for general medical and surgical services, including deductibles and co-payments. Since most individuals with schizophrenia do not have private insurance, the insurance parity laws by themselves will not have much effect on these individuals."
-
(94) "*The efficacy of antipsychotics has been well established. They are especially effective against the so-called positive symptoms of schizophrenia, but minimally effective against the negative and cognitive symptoms.* On average, for patients experiencing their first episode of psychosis, 70 percent of patients on antipsychotics improve significantly, 20 percent improve minimally, and 10 percent do not improve at all." // The efficacy of antispsychotics is very much debatable. / Simple schizophrenics are said only to have negative symptoms.
-
(95) "Of course antipsychotics only work if people with schizophrenia take them. Studies in the United States indicate 'approximately 40% of the respondents with schizophrenia report that they have not received any mental health treatments in the preceding 6-12 months.'"
-
(96) "Because treating schizophrenia is big business, major pharmaceutical companies have given money to many leading schizophrenia researchers to try to influence them to support their drug. The researchers, in turn, write papers and give talks to clinicians, recommending the use of that particular drug. For this reason, you cannot believe much of what is written by mental health professionals about these drugs. In addition, the pharmaceutical industry pays for the vast majority of studies done on these drugs. In the past they only published studies with positive results, although more recently some companies have also published negative studies. There should be a requirement that all studies be made publicly available."
-
(97) "It is now widely accepted that the primary consideration in selecting antipsychotics should be side effects. Weight gain, often accompanied by increased blood sugar and increased blood lipids, is a major side effect and is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Increased blood sugar may occur even in individuals who have had no previous problems with blood sugar, and may happen quickly, although it is uncommon in patients who have not gained significant weight. If blood sugar increases to a very high level, ketoacidosis occurs, which can be fatal. *There is apparently a genetic predisposition to this problem, and it occurs more commonly in African-Americans.* Both of these side effects occur much more commonly in individuals taking second-generation antipsychotics, especially clozapine (Clozaril) and olanzapine (Zyprexa). Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), thioridazine (Mellaril), quetiapine (Seroquel), risperidone (Risperdal), and paliperidone (Invega) may also cause weight gain. Haloperidol (Haldol), fluphenazine (Prolixin), loxapine (Loxitane), perphenazine (Trilafon), thiothixene (Navane), trifluoperazine (Stelazine), zisprasidone (Geodon), and aripiprazole (Abilify) are least likely to cause these problems, but any antipsychotic, first-or second-generation, may do so." // Is this true? / How is schizophrenia connected to diabetes? / Is diabetes, also, an occult-caused condition? Are both diabetics, and schizophrenics, occult victims?
-
(98) "Occasionally, these are accompanied by jerky, purposeless movements of the arms or legs or, rarely, the whole body. It usually begins while the patient is taking the drug but may begin shortly after the drug has been stopped. Ocassionally it persists indefinitely."
-
(99) "The incidence of tardive dyskinesia is difficult to ascertain because it may occur as part of the disease process as well as being a side effect of medication. A study of the records of more than six hundred patients admitted to an asylum in England between 1845 and 1890, before the discovery of antipsychotics, found an 'extraordinary prevalence of abnormal movements and postures...Movement disorder, often equivalent to tardive dyskinesia, was noted in nearly one-third of schizophrenics.' * A study of spontaneous dyskinesia in individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with antipsychotic medication reported it to be present in 12 percent of individuals below the age of thirty and in 25 percent of individuals ages thirty to fifty. Most estimates of the incidence of tardive dyskinesia have assumed that all such cases are drug-related, when in fact a substantial percentage are not.* In a study of this problem aptly titled 'Not All That Moves Is Tardive Dyskinesia,' Khot and Wyatt concluded that the true incidence of drug-related tardive dyskinesia was less than 20 percent. This also falls within the 10 to 20 percent range estimated by the American Psychiatric Association's 1980 task force on the subject."
-
(100) "*Women appear to be more susceptible to tardive dyskinesia than men*."
-
(101) "Patients, families, and treating mental health professionals should be on the lookout for the early signs of tardive dyskinesia, especially the person's tongue pushing against the cheek." // Is this, often, the first expression that occultist squatters are encouraged to do, once they are in their host's body? Do the occultists, then, walk around doing the gesture themselves, in their own bodies, as well, to both mock their victim(s), and to attempt to DARVO? The people, whom I recall doing this gesture at school did not have schizophrenia. Instead, they seem to have caused schizophrenia symptoms, in me, later, and, possibly, in another victim, or group of victims, during the time period, which I was made to recall, during the early years of my schizophrenia. Unable to discern a pattern, initially, I came to wonder, after being forced to do this tardive for over a year, if they had been doing marijuana, then, and if this is what the gesture had been connected to, when they did the gesture, back we were in middle school, and in high school. / Did they use marijuana to enable astral projection into the body, or bodies, of their victim(s)?
-
(102) "If there is no additional treatment, tardive dyskinesia will not necessarily get worse. In one ten-year follow-up of forty-four patients, 30 percent got worse, 50 percent remained the same, and 20 percent actually improved despite continuing use of the antipsychotic."
-
(103) "Note that increased prolactin is a two-edged sword. At the same time that it may cause unwanted side effects, it also markedly decreases the chances of women becoming pregnant, by interfering with the menstrual cycle. Thus in the 1990s, when many women with schizophrenia were being switched from first-generation antipsychotics, which caused increased prolactin, to olanzapine or clozapine, which did not, many unexpected and unwanted pregnancies resulted."
-
(104) "Individuals of some races need a higher dose of medication than do individuals of other races to achieve the same effect because of racial group differences in the distribution on enzymes that metabolize antipsychotic drugs. *Studies suggest that whites and African-Americans require approximately the same dose, while Hispanic patients require a lower dose, and Asian-Americans need the lowest dose of these four groups.* // Smell fishy. Notably, before the change in immigration law, most Americans were either white, or black.
-
(105) "Despite this enviable record, it is infrequently used in the United States. *Presently, only 4 percent of individuals with schizophrenia in the United States receive clozapine, compared with 20 percent in Germany, 35 percent in Australia, and 25 to 60 percent in various parts of China.* Why is clozapine so underutilized in the United States? The most important reason is clozapine's reputation for causing a decrease in white blood cells (agranulocytosis), as described below. Another reason is that it is generic, so no pharmaceutical company promotes it. Instead, companies spend millions of dollars to convince mental health professionals to prescribe the latest antipsychotics, which are less effective and much more expensive." [p. 187] // Why is it so popular in China, Germany, and Australia, given the negative side effects, and why is Fuller so keen on it?
-
(106) "The cost of medication in the United States is a scandal. For example, before it became generic, olanzapine (Zyprexa) cost one-fourth as much in Spain and one-half as much in Finland and Canada as it did in the United States. The reason for these gross discrepancies is simple: other countries either cap the profit margin of the pharmaceutical industries (England allows for a 20 percent profit) or they negotiate the price by buying in bulk for their national health service. In the United States, there is no limit to how much pharmaceutical companies can mark up drugs. Consequently, according to a 1999 report, 'Fortune magazine ranked the pharmaceutical business as the most profitable of all industries...measured on returns in equity, sales and assets.' American pharmaceutical companies rationalize their profits by claiming that the profits are needed to develop new drugs. However, many antipsychotics were developed primarily in Europe, and a large proportion of expenditures by American pharmaceutical companies are spent on advertising, not on drug development."
-
(107) "Over the years, Scientologist criticisms have been complemented by a few fellow travelers, such as Peter Breggin, who published books such as Toxic Psychiatry and Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain. All such criticisms were largely ignored until recently, when Robert Whitaker, a respected science writer, elaborated on many previous criticisms in Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. He correctly attacked the pharmaceutical industry for greed and American psychiatrists for allowing themselves to be seduced by drug representatives. *However, regarding schizophrenia, Whitaker maintained that antipsychotic drugs largely cause the disease and that patients have a better outcome if they are treated only briefly or not at all.*"
-
(108) "Whitaker raises the issue of supersensitivity psychosis, the possibility that antipsychotics sensitize the brain's neurotransmitter receptors so that psychotic symptoms get worse when an antipsychotic drug is withdrawn, especially abruptly. This has been shown in rats, but there is no evidence that it appears in humans." // ?
-
(109) "Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), most commonly used to treat severe depression, has a modest but definite role to play in the treatment of schizophrenia despite the adverse publicity it has received. It is a favorite whipping boy for Scientologists and anti-psychiatry advocates and was even banned from use in Berkeley, California, in 1982 by a local referendum. In European countries it has been used more widely for the treatment of schizophrenia than in the United States." // Fuller likes ECT. :( / I oppose ECT, as I do not believe there is much benefit in it. It just seems to cause brain damage.
-
(110) "Despite Scientologist claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that ECT causes any damage to the brain. Some patients respond to as few as twelve ECT treatments, whereas others need twenty or more." // Fuller lies, here. / What does ECT do to astral projecting occultists, though? Does it, temporarily, eject them from their victim's body?
-
(111) "As long as the product is not advertised to treat a specific disease, there is essentially no regulation in the manufacture or testing of the compounds, a fact many consumers do not realize. It is therefore difficult to ascertain what is actually in the herbal remedy, and instances of adulteration have been documented. [...] Individuals with schizophrenia should be cautious in taking herbal treatments and should report what they are taking to their treating physician."
-
(112) "In contrast to supportive psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and insight-oriented psychotherapy have no place in the treatment of schizophrenia. Studies done in the 1960s and 1970s, when psychoanalysis was still commonly practiced in the United States, reported that even two years of psychoanalysis with skilled therapists had no effect on the symptoms of schizophrenia. *More alarming was the finding that in many cases the psychoanalysis even made the patient's symptoms worse.*" Is this true? If so, why?
-
