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Secrets of Schizophrenia and Depression "Unlocked"
Oracle Goddess writes "According to the US National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people. Previously schizophrenia and depression were assumed to be two separate conditions, but the new research shows for the first time that both have a common genetic basis that leads people to develop one or the other of the two illnesses."
i'd like to thank Steve Ballmer for making himself available for this important breakthrough.
No it isn't, you moron. These people are lying. They're all lying.
But we're all better now.
I know, I know, that's dissociative identity disorder, but you still laughed. Maybe.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
It's an Orientation.
Get with the program.
I bet they tested it on superintelligent rats.
BadAnalogyGuy (945258) is a scientologist.
If he contacts you about a free personality test, firmly refuse him.
This could be very bad for the tin foil hat industry.
"Achievement unlocked: Secrets of Schizophrenia and Depression!"
There, fixed it.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Am I pondering what I'm pondering? I think so, self, but next time, I wear the tutu.
More articles like this one, please.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... it is not the 'depression' you may be lead to believe.
Statistical correlation. You know, like the link between tooth-brushing and intravenous drug abuse.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
That would be CLINICAL depression. As in, the type caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; as opposed to the type caused by your wife leaving you.
"Depression" of "manic depression"(aka bipolar disorder)? These are two very different things.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I know this is Slashdot and all, but that is rather the point of TFA. In fact, for a change, it does a reasonably good job.
Recommended.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
When I on lithium (~15 years ago) I found my creative spark had gone. Sure, the window of emotion had narrowed considerably, but the super-fast mental edge was lost. That made me even more depressed when the time came. Spoke with my doc, dropped all the meds (but can get lithium if I become Superman again)
If you can harness it, manic depression is wonderful thing.
Posted non-anonymously because it's not embarrassing or a big stigma.
Trolling is a art,
The summary seems to confuse being depressive with being bipolar (i.e., manic-depressive). Clinical depression is a common problem, and is generally treatable to some extent with drug and cognitive therapy. Last I checked, bipolar was much less common and a lot less treatable.
So, it isn't going to lead to new treatments for two common problems. It may well lead to new treatments for two problems, one of which is distinctly less common. Those who are clinically depressed but not bipolar may well not benefit at all.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
With three comments, this article has already been tagged with "nutjobs".
Grow up. Chances are you know someone who has (or will develop) one of these conditions to some degree, even if you don't know it (which is likely if you are that much of a jackass, they probably wouldn't tell you).
I don't normally do angry rants, but sometimes I'm surprised by the juvenile and compassionless attitudes of some people on /.
Paul Leader
The title is a bit misleading. There is a big difference between Depression and Bipolar/Manic-Depressive disorders.
Just becasue they are complex doesn't mean the information can't be found.
Just becasue something is unknown doesn't mean it's unknowable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anything that sheds new light onto Schizophrenia and related disorders is very welcome. It's heart breaking to watch someone close to you go through Schizophrenia symptoms. It's not the funny Hollywood version of split personalities. People suffering the disorder believe they are incredibly important (on a world scale), that they're on a special mission, they're related to Jesus, that others are coming to commit harm. Most of all, they can't tell you who sent them on the 'mission' or why. They sometimes turn on friends and accuse them of literally giving the disease. The paranoia accompanying the illness can reach critical levels. Saddest of all, a person with Schizophrenia does not believe they have a problem. They believe everyone else is either wrong, out to get them, or 'just doesn't understand.' Getting a sufferer to realise anything is wrong, let alone getting them to accept medical treatment is a real trial.
Similarity of some symptoms, medication that is effective for both conditions, a history of one or other condition in a person's ancestry...
Awesome. I have saidf for a while that will be the killer app for future devices. uilt in achievments, as well as achievements that can be added.
Achievement unlocked! you ahve walked 1,000,000 steps.
Achievement unlocked! You have run a 10 minute mile! next achievement, 8 minute mile.
You have listened to your 10000 th minute of music.
And so on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In order to treat these conditions, ECT is the tool of choice these days. It has its own detractors (me inclusive) for I do not see how inducing a seizure helps an individual.
Worst of all you could lose all your memory. There was a story of a lady who did not remember anything about her clothes and wondered who had put "foreign" clothes in her closet. In another case, a former doctor could not remember who the hell he was after the procedure. Scary indeed.
Just to put this in perspective, this is not a gene, but just a region of a chromosome. And the association with any particular locus is weak, so it doesn't look like it is strong enough for diagnosis or prenatal testing. Even when the gene is identified, going from a gene to a treatment tends to be very difficult. We've know of genes for Huntington's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease for years, and while this has inspired a lot of promising research, so far this knowledge has not yet resulting any major improvements with respect to treatment or prevention.
Moreover, finding that the same genes are involved does not necessarily mean that the diseases are the same, because genes can be "broken" in multiple ways.
The idea that there is a relationship between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not actually new, as there are some people who exhibit characteristics of both disorders, and some people diagnosed with one respond to drugs that are commonly used to treat the other. So this basically adds a bit more evidence to a long-standing suspicion.
I hope this brings things closer to a more reliable form of treatment. I grew up with three (yes, 3) women with schizophrenia, and the drugs only muted the symptoms. I (amazingly) don't have the disease myself. My mom and grandma, who I lived with the first ten years of my life, had noticeable symptoms...I'd get told to do things that didn't make sense to me. I'm a rather geeky and analytical girl, and it is very frustrating when the adults in your life tell you things that *make no sense*, and there's nobody around *without* the disease to talk to. They tried to "protect" me from the "ghosts" on one hand, so I'm sure they cared for me in their own way, but on the other hand my mom would attack my grandma because my grandma (who was a heavy smoker and had issues with her lungs) was "talking under her breath". (She wasn't.) Pretty terrifying to see when you're five years old. I wasn't allowed to go to friends' birthday parties if they were in a certain town that, some hundred years ago, had been the former county seat, because apparantly folks from that town were still pissed off at our town and would try to hurt me (this is the paranoia part of paranoid schizophrenia showing). I wasn't allowed to wear the color red, eat strawberries, or get ice cream from the ice cream man truck. My mom would randomly become enraged at my friends dads simply since they were male, so I'd be cut off from friends randomly. My aunt had less noticeable symptoms, but the disease made her a target for an abusive husband, and of course I was exposed to that when I went to live with them as an 8th grader (my mom went back into the mental hospital, and my grandma had died when I was 10). I finally ran away at 16 and went into the state ward system, which was much, much better since I could make decisions for myself, instead of having to obey people who made no sense.
Schizophrenia sucks. It sucks for the person having it, since you can't hold down a job, and it sucks for the family that has to put up with it.
poor impulse control, disinhibition, lack of concern for others, overly aggressive emphasis on one's own pleasure
this is the mental condition known as "internet troll"
familiarize yourself with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders entry for this particular disorder, and show some sensitivity to those affected
your anger doesn't help in the care and treatment of the mentally altered. more compassion next time please for these poor suffering souls. thank you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Anybody who has had long association with a manic-depressive already knew this. I'm related to one. The first time, he went completely manic. Didn't sleep for a week, etc. The last time he went around the bend, he DIDN'T go manic-depressive. He went paranoid schizophrenic. I can't believe any competent clinician hadn't already noticed that the same patient can easily exhibit symptoms of both, even at the same time. Given that both are caused by imbalances in brain chemistry, and given that the same patient can be both, how big of a leap is it to notice that they're really just different manifestations of the same problem?
He's much better now, though he still prefers his own flights of fancy to reality. But at least he's capable of distinguishing the two again. After over a decade of on-again off-again lunacy, he's finally decided to take his meds regularly, and he, his therapist, and his mother have found an effective dosage (of Depacote, for the morbidly curious. The stuff works very well, IF, and I repeat IF the dosage is precisely correct. Too little does nothing. Too much ruins the patient's ability to stay awake, let alone function.) It is perhaps telling that regardless of whether he was manic, depressive, paranoid, or schizophrenic, his therapist wanted him to use Depacote. Practitioners already know that the same drug can treat a patient with any of those symptoms.
So, at the risk of repeating myself... duh?
Slashdot won't be helped until the secrets of Aspergers Syndrome are "Unlocked"
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Yep. That's why they re-named 'manic-depression' to 'bipolar disorder' in the first place. Bipolar disorder is more closely linked to schizophrenia than it is to depression.
Also, schizophrenia != multiple personality disorder. A schizophrenic may additionally have multiple personality disorder, but the terms are not synonymous. Schizophrenia is more closely classified as a disorder that causes a "break from reality."
Full disclaimer: my wife is a psychologist and psychotherapist.
My blog
Problem is science doesn't really go that fast, and we're on a 24 hour news cycle.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... how would they determine how they are related in the first place? Especially given the complexity of these issues in their relation to the central nervous system.
Same way they diagnose people. They guess.
Psychiatry is the only industry where someone can present the same affect to 10 shrinks and get 10 different diagnoses. Trust me on this.
...and no, no Dianetics, e-meters, or Xenu for me, thanks for asking.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I was kinda caught off guard when I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Me too.
And it sucks more in the US because you usually can't get treatment because there's no way a person with schotzophrenia (or most other mental illnesses) can hold a job, and without a job you have no insurance, and without insurance you have no medical care.
My late friend Jim (I knew him since we were teenagers) married a woman with bipolar disorder, and that's hell for the loved ones and especially the kids, too. After the divorce, when it was her turn to get the kids, they'd have to drag their son Todd kicking and screaming (Jim finally got permanent custody of Todd and his sister).
Todd's in his thirties now, and amazingly he's the sanest person I know.
There was a bunch of us at another friend's house after Jim died watching the movie "Misery". A while into the movie, Todd exclaimed "Oh shit, that's my MOM!"
The actress even looked like his mom. I'd much rather have my arthritis than be stricken with a bad mental illness.
Free Martian Whores!
"I bet they tested it on superintelligent rats."
If they were that superintelligent, wouldn't they prefer to test it on their less intelligent human scientist subjects?.
Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Violets are blue.
I'm schiophrenic,
And so am I.
Now that we have unlocked this, it is only a matter of time until someone beats the Final Boss !
music lover since 1969
Interesting.
Back before psychopharmaceuticals, schizophrenia and depression were thought to be very similar or even the same thing. It was only once we had Thorazine (first antipsychotic) and then later tricyclics (first antidepressents) that in the clinical settings schizophrenia and depression began to be sorted much more distinctly, essentially based on the kinds of patients that got better with antipsychotics versus those that got better with antidepressants.
It's pretty common for diagnostic definitions to align with successful treatment methadologies, since "what will help" is the fundamental answer that diagnosis hopes to lead to.
Sounds like we're now getting back to the perspective of a half-century ago.
My video compression blog
..that the Secret of NIMH was super-intelligent, magic using rats..
End of line..
You mean, there are people out there with personalities to spare, while us poor slashdotters don't even have a single personality to our name? They really need to spread the wealth around...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We moved away from Nickel-metal Hydride a long time ago. We use lithium now, you kn...
Ohhh. I see what you did there...
What does this have to do with being British?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes and no.
Bi-polar is episodic (as are most forms Schizophrenia) actually bi-polar is often an off shoot of Schitzo-effective disorder; the only major similarities being the "Rages", "Delusions" and "Hallucinations". Most Psyciatrists use the same Lithium / anti-psychotic / SSRI / NSSRI / MAOI blend to try and treat them but "Bi-polar" is often given to the less severe of the bunch. DSM-IV characteristics have diffrent "Features" where bi-polar is prone to "Impulse"
MAD (Major Depression) has all the same features of the Lows of Bi-polar but lacks the episodic nature and often features oversleep, neruoepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin insensitivity or underproduction (which could be hereditary in nature or caused by chemical damage to the limbic system i.e; heavy metal poisoning ), the major issues surrounding good diagnosis lie in the fact that to be 100% accurate we have to by-opsy the tissue, in most cases this requires a labodomy.
And it sucks more in the US because you usually can't get treatment because there's no way a person with schotzophrenia (or most other mental illnesses) can hold a job
Untrue, there are federal programs for people with mental illness to afford housing and necessary drugs. I know because I have relatives who are schizophrenic.
I'm not sure you understand how statistical correlation works.
I think your spelling meds have worn off - aside from the other obvious typos, those would be "biopsy" and "lobotomy", respectively.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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Actually I bet you there is a negative correlation between tooth brushing and intravenous drug abuse.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Achievement unlocked! you have watched your 10,000,000 hour of pr0n.
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I always thought this kind of condition would have something to do with people having shitty jobs, financial troubles, dysfunctional families, partners spying on them to see if they are faithful or similar circumstances.
It's all about genes, what a relief. We just have to takes some more of those funny looking pills, and everything will be alright.
Now excuse me, I'll go kill myself.. should I bring something on the way back?
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Donald Rumsfeld, is that you?
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The rats? No, they prefer to escape their confinement at NIMH and form a society near a farm. Occasionally, they save mice with pneumonia, write books, and sign animated film deals.
That's 1141 years of continuous pr0n. I think (I hope?) it's safe to say that there isn't that much pr0n in existence....yet.
Just wanted to point out that this article is talking about Manic Depression (aka bipolar disorder) NOT clinical depression. Manic is when you have lots of ups and downs. Clinical is when you are only down. In fact the article that you linked to on NIMH doesn't even use the word depression at all probably to avoid this confusion, it says bipolar disorder. You may want to change the wording in this post.
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"According to the US National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people. Previously schizophrenia and depression were assumed to be two separate conditions, but the new research shows for the first time that both have a common genetic basis that leads people to develop one or the other of the two illnesses."
I havn't read the article, so I don't know which one is actually being connected to schizophrenia but I do know that Manic Depression is very different disease from Depression symptomatically.
Manic depressives have mood swings that include a manic phase in which much of their risk assessment skills go away and they engage in reckless and frequently life threatening behavior. These are usually followed by depressive phases that may be similar to that experienced by a Depressive person. Antidepressants have been shown to be counter productive in Manic Depressives because of the unfortunate interaction between the medication and the Manic phase.
Besides, I was under the impression that there has always been a belief that manic depression and schizophrenia were related somehow. At least that's what my mother (who works as a psychiatric nurse) told me.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
There is a big difference between Depression and Bipolar/Manic-Depressive disorders.
In the symptoms, but they can have common genetic factors. DISC1 for example has been implicated in a few cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders even though there is a big difference between those two.
An infected gunshot wound on your arm and being shot in the gut are different injuries with different treatments, but they both were caused by someone shooting you.
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gosh, even the PR from the NIH can't make it sound that exciting: in ONE of the studies, the 2 diseases map IN PART to the same regions of the chromosome...
I don' thing t'hose words mean whad you ting dey mean.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Note that schizophrenia and dissociative personality disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder) are two distinct conditions.
Schizophrenia is characterized by auditory and/or visual hallucinations, plus delusions. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia.
This could be very bad for the tin foil hat industry.
Clearly this calls for a big government bailout!
Poit! Troz!
... but do you think they'd bother to have a look at the diodes down my left side? Of course not!
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And it sucks more in the US because you usually can't get treatment because there's no way a person with schotzophrenia (or most other mental illnesses) can hold a job
Untrue, there are federal programs for people with mental illness to afford housing and necessary drugs. I know because I have relatives who are schizophrenic.
Many people with schizophrenia aren't able to successfully jump through the multitude of hoops required to deal with any government program.
Soon you will say Cancer has been cured as well, are we going to hit the singularity like a brick wall?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
That's an interesting correlation.
I find it easier to measure the "tooth to tattoo" ratio. Having been an EMT in a past life, I've observed that those who have more tattoos than teeth have a much higher likelihood of dying in an emergency room. Granted this is just a loose hypothesis based on my random observations. YMMV
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
How "they" are related? By "they" you mean bipolar and schizophrenia? Apart from looking at the co-morbidity of the two conditions, they also use data from studies looking at rates in identical twins, non-identical twins, siblings who have various degrees of genetic overlap versus the overal prevelance. Plus, in a logical, theoretical sense there is diagnostic overlap -bipolar, in a severe from can include delusions, halluncinations, highly inappropriate behaviour, loss of inhibition, sleeplessness, irritability and paranioa, as can some forms of schizophrenia. Likewise, social withdrawal, lack of affect, hyposomnia ect which can occur in the depressed phase of bipolar can also occur in some sorts of schizophrenia. This is the same as any sort of medical diagnosis - both pneumonia, the flu and asthma involve breathing difficulties, so it's not too far fetched to think that there might be some common underlying mechanisms. So that points where to look.
There's a lot more than this, of course. But epidemiology and reasoning are really the only is the only way you really can go, given that you can't ever get random assignment to conditions and can't "give" someone BP or schizo. So it's got to be correlation.
If you meant something different by "they" then I'm not sure.
Until something changes, I have to treat this as more propaganda.
When the same press release admits to many other factors in these
"diseases" and even its own "medicine" system to be at fault, this just
sounds like more dribble.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Dr. Peter Breggin was published just Tuesday in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/medication-madness-how-ps_b_223922.html about the BS involved, and stated that when we are in crisis we need our entire abilities to help us get out -- and that psychiatric drugs ALL remove some part of these abilities.
Do you want to lose your ability to program or hack because some doctor slaps a diagnosis on you and poisons you with psych drugs until you can't even sit up without drooling? Psychiatry is flat-out pessimistic about any "treatment" they have. All diagnoses are "permanent" and "not curable but treatable", and are caused by a "chemical imbalance in your brain". Then why is it that, with no treatment or declined treatment, over half of all "psychiatric patients" recover completely? Get your act together, psychiatry is BAD SCIENCE or NONE.
I was going to RTFA but my other personality was too depressed.
NO I WASN'T!
Yes he was!
Shut up you two!
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I am not a student of the Psychiatric discipline. I have learned through my experiences and reflection to manage my thoughts. I was 'diagnosed' with Schizophrenia a few years ago, and took Risperdal for about 2 1/2 years. During the first six months of the 2.5 years, my dosage increased from 0.5 mg to 4 mg. I stopped taking the medicine in October, 2008. The voices returned in about 2-4 weeks. "People with schizophrenia have reduced brain receptors for the dopamine messenger. " from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/unlocked-the-secrets-of-schizophrenia-1727987.html I believe that this is inconsistent with 'facts' that my ex-psychiatrist told me ( although I could be remembering wrong, which just creates the need to investigate the facts that scientists have found by means that, well, I do not possess knowledge of). I thought that Schizophrenia is a result of an overproduction of dopamine, oh, oops, now I get it.\ I think the Risperdal is supposed to suppress the production of dopamine, perhaps the surplus of the messenger creates the hallucination. For me, the hallucinations are (attempting mental reconstruction to change the present state of is to past tense) my interpretation of the source of the voices. I used to think that other people's thoughts were being transmitted into my mind. I honestly believed it was, just because the 'hear-think' (that's my term for the voices) always had personal information about me, and well, I was around people that would have facts to produce the analysis (negative at first...). I used to conclude that the voices were not invoked by my volition. Well, yeah, OK, whatever, let's shoot that one down. How do I know that it isn't just my brain using the presence of the those around me, to help me realize new perceptions on past situations in order to affect my future choices in a way that I perceive will increase my self-image. Typing of self-image, maybe my mind/soul/etc is just creating a way to reflect so that my volition doesn't have to be the naysayer. With my mind operating this way, I can now respond to the critique of the voices, as if I am holding a conversation in my mind. Oh yeah, one interesting thing about hear-think is that is seems to be occurring outside of my body, in a variety of locations in space. I hear male and female voices, with classic gender roles intact, with a varying degree of acuity in expression, tone, knowledge, and insight. I think the longest phrase lasted between 1-2 minutes. Another unusual occurrence is how in sync the voices can be with my surroundings, meaning that the voices will match body language of other people, and the hear-think seems to be originating from their bodies. I think that I am just imagining an interpretation. the real struggle for me was learning not to trust the voices by using scientific method, by testing their validity against family and friends. have heart.
Guys, have you wonder if this is just another threat orchestrated by the big pharmaceuticals to keep the population sedated for not so clear clinical reasons? Now, it turns out that the normal states of joy and sadness in any individual are prescribed with bipolarity by psychiatras and psychology experts. Think about it.
Claiming that the secrets are unlocked is WAY premature. What we have is a tantalizing hint and some new information.
They have found through statistical analysis several hundred genes that seem to contribute to the odds of suffering schizophrenia or depression.
As for what those genes do? "some of them somehow influence the immune system. That's it, full stop. They do some unknown thing that causes some unknown thing that makes it more likely that you'll suffer from a condition caused by an unknown mechanism.
So yeah, all we have to do is <handwaving level=extremelyvigorous>some immune system thingy</handwaving> and everybody's cured.
Not saying the research isn't important and useful, just that it doesn't constitute a cure or treatment nor does it even suggest a mechanism for the disease.
Um...
I'm not sure it came out the way you intended it to.