If anybody came to me today asking my advice about how best to treat schizophrenia, who am I to tell them what to do? Anything I say would imply that I have all the answers, and I don’t. From time to time I look at other people’s blogs on schizophrenia, blogs written by people who do not embrace the same “try anything remotedly feasible” approach that I do. I like to look at what the competition is doing.

The competition is rarely upbeat. The competition seems sad, very sad, about their relatives. They are sad about themselves. They have tried everything, done everything, and nothing has worked it seems. Their relatives are still hospitalized/group homed/dead/take your pick.

No two family situations are alike, but I do sense a pattern. The downbeat bloggers (DBs) tend to medicalize their relative’s mental health condition. This means they fully respect the label and, while not happy with the efficacy of the drugs, they go along with the idea that the drugs are essential to their family member’s “functioning,” as they term it. Once they have bought into the medical model, their interests begin to extend outward to urge the community to accomodate their relative and others. It all sounds reasonable, doesn’t it, to want to try to improve society when you have the requisite insight and experience.

It seems to me, however, that the DBs don’t want to change themselves, they want to change their relative, and failing that, to change others.

If these bloggers were more cheerful about their own family member, I could be persuaded that they were on to something that might work for others.

In order to arrive at this blast of insight, I took the advice of former patients, who are almost unanimous in their condemnation of the medical model. I strongly suspect that the reason the downbeat bloggers don’t ask former patients for their advice is because they do not believe mental illness is curable. There are no former patients in their mindset. There are only the misdiagnosed former patients. DBs are doomed from the beginning if this is how they feel.

Obviously, there is a place for professional help. However, the goal is to distance yourself and your relative as soon as possible from becoming overly dependent on professionals’ advice and their hold on your life. The idea is to empower yourself by believing in the innate human ability to rise above adversity. People actually can cheer themselves up by empowering themselves. Nobody is born mentally ill. People become “mentally ill.” If a relative is troubled, this is an opportunity to examine your own life, to see how your thoughts become actions that have an impact on others. I often think that the person with the mental illness is the person who has managed to escape from somebody else’s power over their life. They have checkmated the person. They have put them in their place. It’s really odd and unproductive (albeit creative), but it works.

There’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, famous for medicalizing human nature as mental illness treatable by drugs. Then there’s NAMI, famous since 1979 for finding customers for pharma. Now there is The National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, two more of pharma’s good buddies. Where there is fear, there is pharma.

From the New York Times

For the first time in 27 years, the definition of Alzheimer’s disease is being recast in new medical guidelines that reflect fast-mounting evidence that it begins ravaging the brain years before the symptoms of dementia

The guidelines, to be issued Tuesday by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, divide the disease into three stages: a phase when dementia has developed, a middle phase in which mild problems emerge but daily functions can still be performed, and the most recently discovered phase, in which no symptoms are evident but changes are brewing in the brain

The drive to diagnose Alzheimer’s before it has progressed into profound dementia is also reflected in a bill introduced in Congress this month, which would create specific Medicare cost codes for Alzheimer’s diagnosis, including steps involving discussions between the patient’s doctor and caregivers, a recognition that keeping family members well-informed can result in better planning and care.

“Early diagnosis is really the key to this,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and a sponsor of the bill. “Oftentimes family members notice the symptoms in their loved ones, but it’s only years later that they get diagnosed or understand what resources are available.”

The drive to diagnose Alzheimer’s before it has progressed into profound dementia is also reflected in a bill introduced in Congress this month, which would create specific Medicare cost codes for Alzheimer’s diagnosis, including steps involving discussions between the patient’s doctor and caregivers, a recognition that keeping family members well-informed can result in better planning and care.


“Early diagnosis is really the key to this,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and a sponsor of the bill. “Oftentimes family members notice the symptoms in their loved ones, but it’s only years later that they get diagnosed or understand what resources are available.”

I remember my father turning to me with tears in his eyes, asking me if there was any medical breakthrough that I might know about that would help my mother with her dementia. I was not able to offer any help. I was going through my own struggles with Chris’s recent diagnosis, and didn’t have a clue about how to help him, either. By the time I read about what Dr. Abram Hoffer had to say about dementia and schizophrenia, my mother’s dementia was well progressed. I took Dr. Hoffer’s advice for Chris and me. We both got results. All this to say, that when pharma trumpets a new discovery, chances are there is another option that doesn’t involve expensive medications that produce undesirable side effects. I have no idea if my intake of megadose B-3 and other vitamins will prevent dementia in the end, but neither do I have any idea whether pumping myself full of pharma’s latest bright idea will prevent it either. The first option is cheap and non-invasive. The second option raises concerns.

Rather than sit in fear of early dementia, why not check out what Dr. Abram Hoffer has to say about megadoses of niacin (vitamin B-3) as a way of preventing dementia/alzheimers? Here is a link to a previous post that goes into a bit more detail as to what is involved in the niacin treatment. Anyone seriously wanting to pursue what Dr. Hoffer has to say about dementia can do further research through Hoffer’s books and references on the web.

A few weeks ago, Chris and I went to our local English language theater production of Equus. Playwright Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play is about a psychiatrist in a provincial British psychiatric asylum, trying to decipher the mystery of why a seventeen year old boy blinded six horses in a stable.

The script is simply brilliant, the stage set is minimal. The play is largely a dialogue between the psychiatrist and his patient.

Equus is somewhat dated. The psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, seems to have all the time in the world to entertain impromptu visits from the boy’s parents and the stable owner. Today’s hospital psychiatrists are always in a rush and aren’t too keen on drop-in visits. Neuroleptic medications are never mentioned in Equus, neither are they used. The boy’s parents willingly share with the psychiatrist their interpretation of events that might have traumatized their son, in the hopes that this will help him heal his troubled state of mind. Today, parents are encouraged not to go down the line of thinking that quite possibly the family environment has an impact.

I wonder if anyone else who has seen the play has a complaint about its portrayal of schizophrenia. Martin Dysart knows his client is troubled, but it doesn’t occur to him that his client is “schizophrenic.” He casually and disparagingly mentions a fifteen year old schizophrenic patient of his but there is no connection in his mind of schizophrenia with his present patient. Schizophrenia, even to Dr. Dysart, seems to be a special case. My word, the boy was mute when he arrived at the hospital, retreated into singing jingles from television and radio commercials when he got anxious, and had whopping fantasies about horses and Jesus in shackles.

Martin Dysart did just what R.D. Laing and Loren Mosher recommended by done for schizophrenia. He looked for trauma in his patient’s background, he talked to him, he didn’t use neuroleptic medications. The final scene is one of catharsis for the patient.

I don’t really care about labels, but I do care about the ingrained attitude in the public’s mind that people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are not “curable.” The boy, Alan Strang, seems “schizophrenic” to me, so I question what Dr. Dysart  thought he had for a patient. How naive could the doctor have been? Perhaps the playwright Peter Shaffer labored under the delusion that schizophrenia was incurable, so whatever Strang had, and had “cured” by the psychiatrist, couldn’t be schizophrenia.

Chris’s reaction to the play was interesting. He remarked that whatever fantasies he is deeply ashamed of, are really quite mild compared to what he observed in the play. This thought was liberating to him.

Interesting article from Today’s Zaman.*

A prominent herbalist in Turkey, Şeref Menteşe, has lambasted drug companies, saying the side effects of commonly prescribed drugs have resulted in too many illnesses in the country, costing billions of dollars for the treatment of toxins released from the drugs.

The son of an immigrant worker in Germany, Menteşe pursued a degree in medicine but dropped out during his senior year after realizing how drug companies interact with future doctors and surgeons during their schooling. “One day, we were told experts from drug companies would brief us on how to write prescriptions for drugs. That was the day I realized there was a huge conflict of interest between doctors and big pharmaceutical companies. I said to myself this is not the way to go about healing patients under the influence and directives of drug lords,” he recalls.

Read the rest of the article here.
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About Today’s Zaman
I welcome all our readers across the world who are keenly interested in developments in Turkey and its immediate geographic vicinity. The editorial staff and I are well aware of the fact that this paper, in both its print and Web editions, is being closely followed by a great number of people all over the world on a daily basis. The reason is simple yet also complex: Turkey stands at the world’s geographic and political crossroads. In recent years it has become one of the most closely followed and frequently discussed countries.

I’ve haven’t blogged for a while and my posts will be infrequent over the next little while. It’s good news. A literary agent contacted me out of the blue to send him my manuscript, thus bypassing my having to send him a proper query letter and chapter summaries. The manuscript is with an editor right now and I’m scrambling to keep up with all of the suggested changes. I’ve had to stall the agent while I work nights and week-ends to whip the memoir into better shape.

Of course, there is every possibility that the agent may not like what I send him, so I should stop daydreaming about seeing myself at the altar with him. We haven’t even been out on a date.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1190271/Ex-girlfriend-reveals-lovers-affairs-literary-lothario-Martin-Amis.html#ixzz1GlMDZKGA

Chris phoned me last night from the church. Could I come and pick him up? He wasn’t feeling well. I immediately got excited. When I got there and he climbed into the car, I put my hand on his forehead and it felt feverish. This was a good sign. What part of you is sick? I asked him, but not expecting him to really be able to put his finger on it. You see, Chris, to my knowledge, has never been sick. He doesn’t have the vocabulary because he has no reference point.

While his middle brother had perpetual ear aches and his youngest brother had an asthma like condition,  Chris has never been sick. Not a toothache, not an ear ache, no vomiting, nothing. He is supernaturally well. Dr. Abram Hoffer observed this abnormal good health in his patients who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. They were never sick.

When Chris truly lives less in his mind and more in his body, he will get sick like the rest of us, or at least, that’s my hope.

By the time we got home, Chris no longer seemed feverish. What he claimed he had was nausea. He went to bed immediately, and was up bright and early this morning as if nothing had happened.

Thanks to Stephany for alerting me to this European Commission press release about EC approval of the latest injectable schizophrenia drug.

There is no new information in this release, the EC has bought the same tired justifications from doctors with ties to pharma about the need for adherence to schizophrenia medication. I’m bored already.

Also not new in this article is the figure of one in a hundred. Schizophrenia, apparently, is still occuring in the population at the rate of 1%, the same as always. Schizophrenia’s identical twin, bipolar, is now as overexposed as Paris Hilton at a party, but good old schizophrenia doesn’t budge in the rankings. This makes me wonder what’s the matter with schizophrenia. If we believe that these so-called mental illnesses are being overprescribed, why isn’t the rate of schizophrenia in the population reflecting this? What is going on?

Today’s post is taken from the New York Times.

Handedness clearly runs in families. The 2007 paper by the group at Oxford identified a gene, LRRTM1, that they discovered in the course of studying children with dyslexia, and which turned out to be associated with the development of left-handedness.

Dr. Francks, who is now at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, recalls that the discovery made headlines and attracted a great deal of attention, the more so because this gene was also found disproportionately in people with schizophrenia, even though none of these connections are simple or well understood. “We’re not looking for a gene for handedness or a gene for schizophrenia,” he said. “We’re looking for subtle relationships.” The gene affects the ways that neurons communicate with one another, he said, but its mechanisms still need to be studied

I was the only person growing up in my family who is left handed (and immune compromised.) One of my sister’s is right handed and dyslexic, or, I suppose I should say “has a diagnosis of dyslexia.” Chris is right-handed. Our middle son, Alex, is left-handed. All of my husband’s immediate family is right handed. The New York Times article deserves a read, but it doesn’t add anything new to schizophrenia, that forever illusive “organic brain dysfunction” which tantalizing is linked to just about everything in life that involves being human.

None of it turns out to be simple. The idea of links to schizophrenia has been particularly persistent, but schizophrenia is a complicated and probably heterogeneous disorder, and studies of different populations show different patterns; last year, a study found no increased risk with non-right-handedness for schizophrenia or poorer neurocognition.

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On the Left Hand, There Are No Easy Answers, Perry Klass, MD, March 6, 2011

Chris is up and about early these days. This morning, I heard the shower going full tilt at 6 a.m. and then at 7 a.m. there was a knock at the bedroom door. Would I like some tea, some freshly squeezed orange juice and some type of South American omelette?

I’m not normally an egg person in the morning, but in solidarity with Chris, I decided I would be one. I prefer something bready and sweet washed down by black coffee. A South American omelette sounded intriguing. I’m thinking cheese, chiles, perhaps some potatoes and a bit of jambon.

Chris kept up a steady stream of chatter from the kitchen as I sat at the dining room table. This was not just any chicken, apparently. “The eggs come from an Araucano or ‘South American Rumpless’  hen, and guess what, the shells are green!” Sure enough, on closer inspection, they were. “And, wow, the yolks are bigger, do you want to see?” Chris enthused.

I was beginning to turn green myself at the thought. “No thanks. Just bring me the omelette when it’s ready.”

The omelette arrived, with onions. The concoction was green tinged. The onions were undercooked. Chris set a bottle of green pepper sauce next to my plate. The tiny bottle was nearly empty, staining the glass the same light green color as the eggshells.

I tried a forkfull of the eggs, but lost my appetite for another stab at them.

“No hard feelings, Chris. I just can’t.”

Chris took it in stride. Cooking is a creative outlet for him, and he has produced some really eye-catching and appetizing meals. Today’s breakfast just wasn’t one of them. Emerging from the hospital two years ago, he began to take a sudden interest in cooking. All through his childhood and up to the hospitalization, he didn’t seem to care about color, texture, smells and how they cha cha rhythmically together in food. He’s been waking up in so many ways. He’s becoming more and more alive.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I just received from NAMI. NAMI drives me crazy because it won’t  recommend anything until “there is a growing body of evidence” or “research is now saying that . . . ” In most circles its hesitancy would be called “lack of confidence.” Had I waited for a “growing body of evidence” Chris would not be where he is today. 

NAMI doesn’t reserve the same reverence for do-it-yourself cures as it does for big Pharma. It “mentions” religion and spirituality almost like an afterthought. Just another remedy to add to many that may “help” but never cure.

RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY: ASSETS OR LIABILITIES IN RECOVERY?

For those who live with mental illness, the role of religion or spirituality in recovery may often be ignored.

However, there is a growing body of evidence that recognizing this aspect of a person’s life may be beneficial to recovery.

NAMI is proud to present Nancy Clare Kehoe, Ph.D. who addressed a packed audience last year, as a presenter for this year’s convention.

She will address ways in which religion and spirituality may be a force for good in the recovery process as well as touching on the religious professionals, beliefs and traditions that may be harmful to a person’s recovery.

Dr. Kehoe is a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart and a psychology instructor at the Cambridge Health Alliance, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. This special presentation is scheduled for Friday, July 8.