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Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

psychiatrymargins.com

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Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#361

Post by Mars008 »

winrid wrote: post #15
suzzer99 wrote: post #9

I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad w…

If you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia it's starting to seem like drugs that seem harmless like marijuana (specifically THC?) can definitely bring it out. At least, that's what seemed to happen to my mother and another friend.

> harmless like marijuana

You a joking. Nobody talks about it to not to harm 'suffering minorities' business. However there are researches that show harm from marijuana is significant and likely permanent. It's no better than tobacco. But you'll never see it on CNN for political reasons...

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#362

Post by shippage »

LoganDark wrote: post #220
amarait wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We dont even know what constitutes a mental voice. Hell, a huge percentage of people cant hear their own voices in their heads

I wonder if there are any schizophrenics with dissociative identity disorder. We're not schizophrenic but we have voices (we don't hear them as from outside though)

I have met a few people online who told me they were diagnosed with both.

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) and DID can apparently co-occur.

From [0] (2016): > One study showed that in a sample of patients diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) 74.3% also met diagnostic criteria of a SSD, 49.5% met diagnostic criteria for schizoaffective disorder, and 18.7% met diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia.

The study cited in [0] is dated from 1996, however(!), so it was done not long after the change from changing the name MPD to DID. Not sure how much weight to put on a study that old.

From [1] (2022): > Numerous studies have shown that up to 50% of patients with schizophrenia meet the diagnostic criteria for dissociative personality disorder.

The two linked studies cited in [1] are dated in 1998 and 2004. So also, still old, but not quite as much.

It seems well-known that the two conditions co-occur. I don't have access to the linked studies, however, and am not willing to pay the subscription or single-paper fees.

I do have DID but SSDs have been thoroughly ruled out for me (I was checked for both, as well as other potential conditions). My assessment seemed quite thorough.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5216848/ [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8885543/

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#363

Post by aleph_minus_one »

vbezhenar wrote: post #202
bettercallsalad wrote: post #75

As someone who is currently dating someone with history of psychosis, I have vested interest. 90% of the time she is truly the most amazing, compassionate, full of life and thoughtful person one can ever meet. Then there are times when it’s truly awful. She can barely sleep at all, leaves house without telling anyone seemingly thinking the presence of third person around. And she strongly feels others around are judg…

She will break down, then she'll get strong meds and she'll change unrecognizably. Think twice before making a long relationship with this person. You'll get a lot of stress and eventually she'll change drastically. Schizophrenia has a strong genetic component, so think twice about making a children as well.

> She will break down, then she'll get strong meds and she'll change unrecognizably. Think twice before making a long relationship with this person.

Isn't this risk mitigated if the respective person is (also) an anti-psychiatry activist? ;-)

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#364

Post by aleph_minus_one »

_ink_ wrote: post #274
varjag wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence people are measurably more intelligent now than two-three decades ago.

I think there is evidence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

And there is evidence that this trend has been reversing in the last decade(s) (Reverse Flynn Effect):

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#365

Post by gwbas1c »

el_benhameen wrote: post #48
tony69 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe this (some rec drugs bring out latent schizophrenia) is taught in med school as a “known fact” (source: psychiatrist friend) so it’s well beyond “starting to seem”

This was treated as pretty much a fact when I took a class on psychological disorders in the US circa 2007, too.

This was discovered pretty much early on when LSD was first discovered. One of the early (cough) "uses" for LSD was for medical professionals to simulate what some patients experience.

(At least that's what I remember from "LSD, My Problem Child" by Albert Hoffman. Granted, it's been ~30 years since I read it.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#366

Post by aleph_minus_one »

renewiltord wrote: post #292
subpixel wrote: post #43

Schizophrenia can coexist with extreme levels of intelligence and lucidity. A schizophrenic member of my family argued in divorce court that her husband, a leading physician at one of the most famous medical institutions in the world, was secretly involved in outrageous nefarious activities. The stories were all fiction but she was so convincing that the judge awarded her a ruling in the divorce that ruined her husba…

An alternative explanation is that the judge was stupid.

"Stupid judge" is rather a pleonasm. :-)

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#367

Post by jackcosgrove »

bottom999mottob wrote: post #117
K0balt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I wouldn’t have intuited autism as being on the opposing end of psychosis, really, at least not based on my experience of both in my family.

I think your LLM temperature analogy is interesting in this deprecated dichotomy between autism and schizophrenia. One Youtuber Jreg used a breadth-first search (schizophrenia) vs depth-first search (autism) analogy when comparing the the two, but I think your temperature analogy is more apt. Higher temperature results in more disorganized thoughts like schizophrenia. And if you buy into the idea that the root of mos…

Psychosis is a symptom of schizophrenia, which is a thought disorder according to psychiatry.

Psychosis can also be caused by a lack of sleep (like not sleeping for days) and in this case sleep can end the psychosis.

Which is to say that schizophrenia and psychosis have an intersecting relationship.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#368

Post by tempestn »

sheiyei wrote: post #330
staunton wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genetics isn't all that matters. Things like malnutrition (and a lot more things) very much also do.

I think the point is that the evolution of human intelligence reached a point that enabled us, over evolutionarily short timescales, to develop an environment (social structures etc.) that broke evolution as it was – the meaning of "fittest" is now rather arbitrary in human context.

I'm not sure it is arbitrary, just different from what it was a hundred or a thousand years ago. There's no real survival differentiation in modern society, and while classically beneficial traits like physical fitness and intelligence do help with finding partners, most people are able to do so regardless. The other big difference now though is that people can have sex without choosing to have children. So istm the most successful traits from an evolutionary perspective at this point are those that encourage a desire to have more children. (If there's a genetic predisposition toward religious adherence, that's a likely example.)

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#369

Post by heavyset_go »

roughly wrote: post #359
skissane wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not just drugs-children are more likely to experience hallucinations even without drugs. I still have vivid memories of experiencing what (in hindsight) I realise were hypnopompic hallucinations, around the age of 6 or 7. I wasn’t taking any regular medications, that I can remember. But, I grew out of it, as kids usually do.

A fun aside here: experiments in which people who’ve taken hallucinogens are placed in brain scanners reveal activation patterns which look an awful lot like what we see when we put small children in brain scanners, and this somewhat accords with the neurogenesis vs pathway pruning see-saw model of brain development. I’ll say personally my experiences with psychedelics brought back memories of childhood - how I engag…

I always said psychedelics reduce you to a child, with reduce having no negative connotation, just a word that describes the experience. It's like sending your perception back in time in some ways, while retaining some matured aspects.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#370

Post by accidentallfact »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #329
accidentallfact wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

My brother has schizophrenia. He has never met or interacted with any jewish people, and lives in a part of the world where they have no influence. He still fell entirely for online antisemitism and will text me insane messages about the typical theories.

You misunderstood. I meant that they thought that they were superintelligent people who should teach others and lead the world, but they had schizophrenia.
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