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Schizophrenia Is Not a Single Disease
An anonymous reader writes: New research from Washington University has found that the condition known as schizophrenia is not just a single disease, but instead a collection of eight different disorders. For years, researchers struggled to understand the genetic basis of schizophrenia. This new method was able to isolate and identify the different conditions (each with its own symptoms) currently classified under the same heading (abstract, full text). "In some patients with hallucinations or delusions, for example, the researchers matched distinct genetic features to patients' symptoms, demonstrating that specific genetic variations interacted to create a 95 percent certainty of schizophrenia. In another group, they found that disorganized speech and behavior were specifically associated with a set of DNA variations that carried a 100 percent risk of schizophrenia." According to one of the study's authors, "By identifying groups of genetic variations and matching them to symptoms in individual patients, it soon may be possible to target treatments to specific pathways that cause problems."
that schizophrenia itself has a bit of a split personality.
AKA Dissociative identity disorder. There is a slight comorbidity between the conditions, but depression and anxiety are also comorbid.
If it is embedded in DNA, is it hereditary?
If it is, I hope it does not bring back Eugenics or the forced sterilization practices of the early 19th century. That didn't end well on several fronts.
Next this needs to be done with what we call "autism". There's a reason it's called the "autistic spectrum"; it's a MUCH bigger but nebulous target than schizophrenia. There's so much symptomatic comorbidity that the diagnoses would be funny if the consequences weren't so depressing.
Well - they make you feel a little sluggish, and quite drowsy for about 8 hours (more at higher doses) after they kick in (so don't take them for breakfast if you have plans), but not depressed. It is possible to feel despair because of your chronic condition and the prospect of long term sluggishness I suppose but
Schizophrenics who seek help often do so for anxiety and depression rather than psychosis. There is often a history of these issues predating medication, but not always.
It's not just Hollywood, it's everywhere. The psychotic=violent myth is in every media that has discussed the issue. Newspapers only mention schizophrenia if someone was hurt, furthering the association in people's minds. My current employer refused to let me work without supervision because I had advised them I have had psychotic episodes and am undergoing treatment until I gave them a psych's letter telling them they were being morons (small and new business, so I forgave and educated instead).
Are you joking? "Eugenics" comes from Greek. 'Eu' meaning good, like euphoria, euphemism, or utopia. 'Genic', dealing with birth, breeding, and production, like in genetics, generate, or hydrogen.
Dogs have had many more generations of breeding to tailor their responses to us than we have had to them - something like 10x as many generations, since they breed about 10x quicker than humans. So they can read us much better than we can read them - they've self-selected for that ability, since the ones that can read us best know best how to suck up to us and get us to feed and shelter them and pick up their poop. Todays dogs are specialists - and their specialty is humans.
Given this, dogs are probably better judges of people than we are.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Please stop repeating something like it is new. Since its origins the concept is called "the schizophrenias". We knew that 100 years before now: http://schizophreniabulletin.o...
La culpa no es del chancho...
That's an interesting hypothesis. But I don't buy it, certainly without some scientific testing (versus emotional, speculative anecdotes from people with dogs). Evolution doesn't work like leveling up in a video game. Once a local maximum is reached, further generations have no impact. I would also wager that, while there may have been some selection pressure to "read" a person's immediate emotional state, selection pressure for reading general personalities, etc. was likely much weaker. And, of course, the selection pressure for humans to "read" other humans would have been much, much greater. After all, we have to mate with each other. Dogs don't have to mate with us. They do, however, have to mate with other dogs, and interaction with other dogs probably dominated the selection pressure on dogs' social intuition faculties. So, I would speculate people are likely better judges of people than dogs are.
What probably happened with the schizophrenic people was perhaps they were anxious, because of delusions or whatever, and the dog picked up on that. You probably also did. That you had a single negative interaction with one person your dog didn't like is not an important piece of information, if we're going to go about this scientifically. But, hey, I'm speculating too. Someone would have to research this. How and why, I have no idea. But my speculation can beat up your speculation :P
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
The problem with meds is that they aren't a treatment, they are at best a bandage.
For the majority of medical afflictions being treated today there is no cure, so the best doctors can do is offer palliative care.
There is no cure for cancer, heart disease, athsma, arthritis, or even the common cold. So little is known about the human brain that zero percent of psychological disorders are effectively treated. Whenever I hear a doctor brag about how much they know about the human body or worse a psychologist remark about how much is known about the brain I always remind them how much there is they don't know.
Do you actually know anything about psychiatry, or are you just going by this particular article about a study that you think is iffy? Because it's not news that schizophrenia is at least partially hereditary, they've known that for decades. The same is true of bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. The only debate is to what degree they are caused by hereditary versus environment. You can compare it to how diabetes runs in families, but in general can be triggered or not depending on your lifestyle. But some people will develop the disease even if they treat their body like a temple. This study has made the news because they're claiming to have identified the specific genes involved, not because there wasn't already general agreement that there were genes involved in predisposing someone to get schizophrenia.
Part of the problem is that some schizos ARE dangerous
So are sociopaths and psychopaths. What you are trying to imply is that schizophrenics are more dangerous than other mental disorders.
I never came near implying that. Not once did I mention sociopaths OR psychopaths. To the contrary, I wrote that if this finding lets us tell the dangerous schizos from those who aren't, this will be awesome. My answer presumes that many schizos are not dangerous. I even went further, posing the question of whether a tendency towards violence might still need an environmental trigger.
A real-life example from one of my classmates in high school. Diagnosed as schizophrenic at 8 years of age, his father basically tried to "beat the devil out of him" for the next 8 years. That's akin to pounding on a bomb to see if it's armed. Even if he wasn't dangerous before, this course of conduct almost certainly lead to "arming the bomb." He beat his father to death right in front of me, and I was next on his list. He was found to be not criminally responsible, in part due to my testimony, and having seen and heard what he did that night, I believe the jury got it right.
Does that sound like someone who's unsympathetic to the problem?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.