Acta Neuropsychiatrica finds, in a review of the evidence regarding oxytocin’s (OT) role in psychosis, that it shows “efficacy in reducing core symptoms in patients with schizophrenia,” but that “the neurobiological underpinnings of schizophrenia as well as the dynamics of the human OT system are complex and inadequately characterised.”
MadDonald, K., Feifel, D., “Oxytocin in Schizophrenia: a Review of Evidence for its Therapeutic Effects,” Acta Neuropsychiatrica, June, 2012, 24(3):130-146
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Note from Kermit Cole, “In the News” editor:
As with many things that are posted here in “Mad in America,” my interest in looking at this research on oxytocin & psychosis can be characterized as not so much “here is the answer” but rather “if this one thing is true, what does it mean?” I believe that is the spirit that motivated, for instance, Bob Whitaker’s initial interest that resulted in two books and this website. That is the spirit that may best drive and shape participation in this website.
If it is true that oxytocin, a hormone associated with love & attachment, has some effect on phenomena associated with schizophrenia & psychosis, what does it mean? In the confluence of human experience, behavior, emotion, cognition, physiology & attachment, what does it say that this hormone seem to have this effect?
It may or may not turn out that this substance offers a better alternative than others as a treatment. But the research may open a window onto a nexus of psychosis & attachment; perhaps the one within which dialogical and family-based approaches to working with psychosis find their effect.
I say to these ‘researchers’, pack up your ridiculous fourteen thousand times removed pseudoscientific endeavor to understand MY experience, and invite me as a human being to dinner. But these are the same people who pass by on their way to their ivory towers, homeless, labeled, psychiatrized people, beggars, without eye contact…. and they will NEVER be the ones to ‘explain’ or ‘help’ my experience. Because they see me as a circus animal, a petri dish, disembodied human being, and the search for the ‘evidence’ to prove their prejudices right continues, and the endless tap of either taxypayer or drug company dollars flows, for they are the ones who clink champagne glasses around the dinner party table and tell those in their class, that ‘they work in finding a cure’ for my experiences, and much respect and ego gratification is had, and never in their lives will they help a single person labeled ‘schizophrenic’, because they are tilting at windmills in the vile biological determinist humanity destroying world of ‘psychiatric research’.
I am glad I don’t have such a ‘researcher’ in my family. I wouldn’t have an ounce of respect for their life choices.
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right on!
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Can these people understand that a “nasal spray” is wrong? Can people understand the serious problem that it is to substitute synthetics for the real thing?
Oxytocin – “the love hormone”.
Treatment:
’cause I think you’re wrong
these devils of yours they need love
http://youtu.be/Nloj6Ic93qQ
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Their research only shows a correlation between medication and low oxytocin. Where do they get off titling it “lowered oxytocin in schizophrenia”????? It should be titled “”Lowered Oxytocin In Anti-psychotic use”
Yet again, harm caused by drugs interpreted as organic disease by those who are blinded by their paradigm.
the only organic mental illnesses are those caused by drugs of one kind of another, or other poisoning.
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In case anyone is interested, here are some ways to increase oxytocin levels in the brain: https://www.optimallivingdynamics.com/blog/25-effective-ways-to-increase-oxytocin-levels-in-the-brain
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