Research from the universities of Cardiff, Cambridge and Bristol finds no evidence of a link between genetic associations with schizophrenia and adolescent psychotic experiences. To the contrary, “individuals who had a higher number of risk alleles for genome-wide hits for schizophrenia showed a decreased risk of psychotic experiences.” Results appear in Schizophrenia Bulletin.
Zammit, S., Hamshere, M., Dwyer., S., Georgiva, L.; A Population-Based Study of Genetic Variation and Psychotic Experiences in Adolescents. Schizophrenia Bulletin. Online October 30, 2013 doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbt146
I must confess as a layman, this strikes me as one of those psychological pseudo-scientific studies that does not meet the requirements for a scientific study because too many outside variables are uncontrolled, or at least unmentioned as considered. And I say that, despite it being a study that implies schizophrenia not being related to psychosis or genetics, which I believe it likely the truth. I believe the debilitating and terminal “schizophrenia” is, and has likely always been, a drug induced / iatrogenic “illness.” And the medical evidence, I believe, supports my concerns at least being included as a controlled variable.
As a person with zero family or personal history of psychosis or mental illness, who did suffer from psychosis due to psychiatric meds being wrongly mandated to cover up malpractice, I wonder how many of the people in this study were being drugged up, there is no mention of this. And I wonder, personally, when the psychiatric industry will realize that they spent 60 years writing a “bible” of stigmatizations describing the serious mental illnesses their drugs cause, and medicalizing childhood behavior to railroad millions of healthy children onto their drugs for profit. I know in my case a “safe smoking cessation med,” that was actually a dangerous antidepressant, caused adverse effects that were misdiagnosed (according to the DSM) as bipolar, and the antipsychotics caused psychosis. But no psychiatrist I met would confess this could happen.
I believe most distress is caused by abuse of people by other people, not “chemical imbalances in the brain.” And I believe the psychiatric drugs are what cause the “chemical imbalances in the brain” and the serious DSM “disorders.” My concern, which does have substantial medical evidence to support it, was not even considered or used as a possible consideration or controlled variable, in this supposedly “scientific” study.
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Can’t argue with you – the study is almost meaningless without drug use profiles (licit and illicit) included in the data. However, I do find it amusingly ironic that their “predictor” genes predict the opposite of what they’re supposed to predict. Love to see them explain this one!
—- Steve
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