Why what we think we know about schizophrenia is wrong

Biological stress is related to things like being malnourished and/or having hormonal imbalances (thyroid, cortisol, progesterone, etc), not getting enough sunlight (no red light -> winter sickness / UV light-> Vitamin D), etc. Biological stress is worsened when a person is medicated with patent medicines that are approved for treating behavioral symptoms by implementing wrong-theory about the cause of the behavioral symptom (i.e., inadequate serotonin -> depression [0], excess dopamine -> psychosis, etc).

Some scientists rediscovered a few years ago that the behavioral symptom of "psychosis" is strongly associated with an inability to make adequate amounts of the stress hormone cortisol [1].

Emotional stress has to do with people feeling trapped. From the article: "Importantly, what we call psychosis can also be a response to extreme stress or trauma."

Emotional stress leads to the release of cortisol too. If a person's long-term emotional stress exceeds their ability to compensate, their "mental health" will suffer.

One part of this article is about forcibly medicating people whom the professionals think don't realize they need the pills they're prescribed. IMHO, it is an act of violence to force a person to take pills that make them suicidal [2]. The legal systems generally recognize that people have a choice in medical treatments, but struggles with patients who don't even realize they have a problem [3], and/or don't like the treatments the professionals think they need. In the US the courts have decided that people can't be "helped" against their will without a court order. This is why Jared Loughner, the man who shot up Congresswoman Gifford's event, couldn't be helped, even though the people around him noticed that his behavior had changed [4].

The professionals tried to label my girlfriend as "schizophrenic". Really she was just stressed ("lonely"), and was suffering from the adverse effects of various medical interventions. Methadone causes sugar cravings; she'd taken to treating this medication-induced metabolic problem with alcohol a few days before we'd met (alcohol has 7 calories/gram, while sugar only has 4 calories/gram).

In my initial assessment she also reported being injected with a prescription endocrine disruptor maybe 10 years before [5]. This prescription drug has warnings about endocrine disruption [6], but doctors don't appreciate their patients' iatrogenic deterioration when it's associated with this defective drug.

My girlfriend became psychotic when she ran out of alcohol , but rather than treating her for the cause [7] they treat her for the symptom with "anti-psychotics". I consider her involuntary treatment program to be "medical assault". I found a lawyer a while back who was familiar with how the state's involuntary treatment system works, but lawyers are expensive, so I tried to go at it myself. Maybe the legal guild didn't take kindly to a legal-nobody pointing out that their system is ugly.

I guess I'm going to hire the lawyer.

tl/dr: The conventional practices of the mental health industry are wrong. Institutional inertia prevents the profession from fixing itself. Little bits of progress have been made in recognizing the system's contribution to the patient's problems. As I said before, the system needs a re-write: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19545964

[0] What has serotonin to do with depression? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/

[1] https://psychcentral.com/news/2016/06/04/low-morning-cortiso...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathisia#Drug-induced

[3] Anosognosia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia

[4] Jared Loughner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner#Behavior_ch... "In the months leading up to the shooting, Loughner's parents became increasingly alarmed at their son's behavior, at one point resorting to disabling his car every night in order to keep him at home."

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depo-Provera

[6] "Effects on the Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis: Some patients receiving medroxyprogesterone acetate may exhibit suppressed adrenal function. Medroxyprogesterone acetate may have cortisol-like glucocorticoid activity and provide negative feedback to the hypothalamus or pituitary. This may result in decreased plasma cortisol levels, decreased cortisol secretion, and low plasma ACTH levels.The use of DEPO-PROVERA Sterile Aqueous Suspension may, due to its cortisol-like glucocorticoid activity, also produce Cushingoid symptoms such as weight gain, edema/fluid retention, and facial swelling." - https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/01...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis#Su... - "Alcohol is a common cause of psychotic disorders or episodes, which may occur through acute intoxication, chronic alcoholism, withdrawal, exacerbation of existing disorders, or acute idiosyncratic reactions. Research has shown that alcohol abuse causes an 8-fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in men and a 3 fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in women. While the vast majority of cases are acute and resolve fairly quickly upon treatment and/or abstinence, they can occasionally become chronic and persistent. Alcoholic psychosis is sometimes misdiagnosed as another mental illness such as schizophrenia." (emphasis added)

(edit: added reference [7])

Genome-wide association studies have recently shown that schizophrenia was in fact several distinct diseases [0]. Their symptoms turn out to be mediated by the same drugs, to the extent that they makes the people who suffer from those ailments manageable.

If your house suddenly becomes cold in the winter, putting on a jacket will help you feel better. You wouldn't infer from that that your furnace is down because of a clothing imbalance.

[0] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2...

If there is a comprehensive theory it is that mental disorders and developmental disabilities come in layers.

You might have a genetic predisposition to certain problems, have that exacerbated by traumas, but learn how to compensate for them in some ways. You might do badly at certain things or certain situations but if you have support from other people, understand the difficulty, etc. you can do O.K.

The big trouble I think is that mental illness and developmental disabilities interact with the expectations that people have about others.

For instance much of the satisfaction parents get out of parenting is using their children as "self objects"; they want to dress them up, show them off, bask in their accomplishments, etc. An autistic child can't do that for them and they find that hard to accept.

The marketing of SSRI's is also distorted. They are prescribed a lot by primary care docs who need to be on top of a wide range of medical problems and can't be experts on mental health too. That is a good thing because they help people and it can be hard to get real help from a specialist.

Depression has many symptoms and for many people SSRIs help some symptoms but not others. For me, for instance, SSRIs help me control my emotions in situations where I might get overwhelmed and yell at people. I believe that they increase my self-control as opposed to suppress my emotions.

I have other symptoms that SSRIs don't help with, but I do feel like they've helped me a lot at being a parent.