Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder denoting an often chronic, major mental illness primarily affecting thinking, with attendant difficulties in perception of reality, which in turn can affect behavior and emotion. The term schizophrenia comes from the Greek words σχίζω (schizo, split or divide) and φρενός (phrenos, mind) and can be translated as "shattered mind."

Alternative approaches to schizophrenia

An approach broadly known as the anti-psychiatry movement, notably most active in the 1960s, has opposed the orthodox medical view of schizophrenia as an illness.

Related Topics:
Anti-psychiatry - 1960s

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Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has argued that psychiatric patients are not ill but are just individuals with unconventional thoughts and behavior that make society uncomfortable. He argues that society seeks to unjustly control such individuals by classifying their behavior as an illness and forcibly treating them as a method of social control. An important but subtle point is that Szasz has never denied the existence of the phenomena that mainstream psychiatry classifies as an illness (such as delusions, hallucinations or mood changes) but simply does not believe that they are a form of illness.

Related Topics:
Thomas Szasz - Social control - Delusions - Hallucinations - Mood changes

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Similarly, psychiatrist R. D. Laing has argued that the symptoms of what is normally called mental illness are just comprehensible reactions to impossible demands that society and particularly family life places on some sensitive individuals. Laing was revolutionary in valuing the content of psychotic experience as worthy of interpretation, rather than considering it simply as a secondary but essentially meaningless marker of underlying psychological or neurological distress.

Related Topics:
R. D. Laing - Psychotic

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It is worth noting that neither Szasz nor Laing ever considered themselves to be "anti-psychiatry" in the sense of being against psychiatric treatment, but simply believed that it should be conducted between consenting adults, rather than imposed upon anyone against their will.

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In the 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, psychologist Julian Jaynes proposed that until the beginning of historic times, schizophrenia or a similar condition was the normal state of human consciousness. This would take the form of a "bicameral mind" where a normal state of low affect, suitable for routine activities, would be interrupted in moments of crisis by "mysterious voices" giving instructions, which early people characterized as interventions from the gods. This theory was briefly controversial. Continuing research has failed to either further confirm or refute the thesis.

Related Topics:
1976 - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes - Bicameral mind

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Psychiatrist Tim Crow has argued that schizophrenia may be the evolutionary price we pay for a left brain hemisphere specialization for language{{Fn|25}}. Since psychosis is associated with greater levels of right brain hemisphere activation and a reduction in the usual left brain hemisphere dominance, our language abilities may have evolved at the cost of causing schizophrenia when this system breaks down.

Related Topics:
Tim Crow - Language

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Researchers into shamanism have speculated that in some cultures schizophrenia or related conditions may predispose an individual to becoming a shaman{{Fn|24}}. Certainly the experience of having access to multiple realities is not uncommon in schizophrenia, and is a core experience in many shamanic traditions. Equally, the shaman may have the skill to bring on and direct some of the altered states of consciousness psychiatrists label as illness. (See anti-psychiatry.) Speculations regarding primary and important religious figures as having schizophrenia abound. Some commentators have endorsed the idea that major religious figures experienced psychosis, heard voices and displayed delusions of grandeur.

Related Topics:
Shamanism - Altered states of consciousness - Anti-psychiatry

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Alternative medicine tends to hold the view that schizophrenia is primarily caused by imbalances in the body's reserves and absorption of dietary minerals, vitamins, fats, and/or the presence of excessive levels of toxic heavy metals. The body's adverse reactions to gluten are also strongly implicated in some alternative theories (see gluten-free, casein-free diet).

Related Topics:
Alternative medicine - Dietary minerals - Vitamins - Heavy metals - Gluten - Gluten-free, casein-free diet

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