The decades-long attempt to locate the gene or genes for schizophrenia has failed, according to a new article in Psychiatric Research by prominent schizophrenia researcher E. Fuller Torrey.

In the article, Torrey reviews the history of the Human Genome Project, their hopes for identifying the genetic basis for schizophrenia, and how those hopes have been dashed by the complete failure to find anything of the sort.

Torrey writes, “Over twenty years later not a single gene has been identified to cause schizophrenia, despite the expenditure of almost $8 billion in genetic research by NIMH. Nor have any new treatments become available from this research.”

This paper is surprising since Torrey has long argued that schizophrenia is a brain disease to be treated biomedically.

Who Is E. Fuller Torrey?

Torrey is a psychiatrist and a researcher on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In research circles, he’s known as the founder and executive director of the controversial Stanley Medical Research Institute, which has spent more than $550 million on biological research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder over the past few decades.

Torrey is one of the primary researchers studying the possibility of immunological causes of schizophrenia. In particular, his research focuses on the parasite toxoplasma gondii, commonly carried by cats and which easily passes to humans. Some studies have found that exposure to that parasite, and exposure to cats in childhood more generally, is associated with a heightened risk of schizophrenia. However, other studies have not found a statistically significant correlation, so it is still considered theoretical. Even if a connection exists, it likely explains only a fraction of schizophrenia cases.

To most, though, Torrey is more well-known as the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), which lobbies politicians to support forced treatment for people with schizophrenia. For this reason, Torrey is a controversial figure: Psychiatric survivor group Mind Freedom International labeled him “one of the most feverishly pro-force psychiatrists in the world.”

Torrey and the TAC have been at the forefront of politicians’ plans for forced treatment, including shepherding Kendra’s law in New York as well as working with Mayor Adams on a plan to sweep up the unhoused population into psychiatric institutions.

However, studies since the 1990s, including a Cochrane review in 2017, have found forced treatment to be ineffective, concluding that it doesn’t reduce rehospitalization or criminality, or improve social functioning, quality of life, or even treatment adherence. Worse, research has found that involuntary treatment increases the risk of suicide. In addition, laws around involuntary treatment have been criticized for racial bias.

The United Nations has called for member states to ban forced treatment, saying that it “may well amount to torture” and that it violates human rights. And the World Health Organization has called for a transformation of mental health services to focus on person-centered and rights-based approaches.

The Human Genome Project

Despite advocating for the idea that psychosis has biological causes, and despite his presence on research teams involved in heritability studies, Torrey has long taken a somewhat skeptical view of genetics research. Yet laypeople, and many mental health professionals, still believe that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder. Indeed, the NIH’s MedlinePlus website lists schizophrenia as a “genetic condition,” even while admitting that its causes are “not well understood” and calling it “an active area of research.”

In the 1990s, the Human Genome Project—a massive effort to understand every human gene—promised to solve this riddle by uncovering the genetic basis of the disorder.

A few rare diseases are directly caused by a single gene variant (like Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia, for example). More commonly, though, people with certain identifiable genetic variants are at much higher risk for certain diseases. For instance, about 60% of women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 variant develop breast cancer, compared to 13% of women without those variants. Variants that increase risk in this way are known as “risk genes.”

These strong correlations with specific heritable genetic variants are helpful for delineating the biological pathway of these diseases. For instance, the BRCA gene is considered a tumor-suppressing gene, so it makes sense that differences in that gene can strongly affect cancer risk.

If specific genetic variants could be identified that increase the risk of schizophrenia in a similar way, researchers could learn more about the possible biological pathways of schizophrenia and potentially develop drugs that target that biology. It might also make it possible to develop preventive measures specifically for those at high risk.

This was the dream of the Human Genome Project and its founders. As Torrey tells it, for many of the major figures involved in the creation and direction of the Human Genome Project, identifying the genetic basis of schizophrenia was to be one of the main drivers of their work. Torrey specifically notes that Charles Delisi, James Watson, and Senator Pete Domenici all had relationships that led to a personal obsession with schizophrenia.

It was Delisi who, in 1985, first floated the idea of the Human Genome Project with his colleagues and spent the next few years shepherding the project forward. His wife, Lynn, was one of the researchers focusing on how schizophrenia seemed to run in families.

Watson, already famous as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, was the first director of the Human Genome Project. For Watson, the focus on schizophrenia came when his son experienced a crisis at age 15, including a suicide attempt and a runaway scare, along with being diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized for six months.

And according to Torrey, Domenici was known for putting the kibosh on expensive projects in his position on the budget and appropriations committees. But his daughter had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he was eager to move forward any research that might help with that specific diagnosis. It was with his help that the project was ultimately funded.

Thus, from the beginning, the Human Genome Project was designed by true believers with the promise of discovering the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia. They spent the 1990s working to sequence the more than 20,000 human genes at an ultimate cost of $2.7 billion. In 2000, with about 90% of the genome mapped, their efforts were heralded as a success in a famous White House press conference (the full sequence was finally finished in 2022).

The Promise—and Failure—of Genetics

After that press conference in 2000, prominent scientists and politicians promised that our understanding of the genetics of mental illness was about to explode, leading to amazing new treatments that would totally change the landscape of psychiatry.

Torrey quotes Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, who stated that by 2020, “gene-based designer drugs” would be available to treat and prevent everything from diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease, “and the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness will be transformed.”

Torrey also quotes Steven Hyman, who was director of the NIMH during the Human Genome Project era: “The search for the genes associated with most mental illnesses will now move forward at a greatly accelerated pace….Highly selective, safe, and effective new therapies will become available for the treatment of the common mental illnesses in the not-too distant future.”

But the promised gains never materialized. The Human Genome Project did help in our understanding of other conditions, especially cancer, as well as the single-gene disorders. But for psychiatric disorders, no genetic test was found; no biological test was found; no psychiatric drug was developed based on a genetic discovery. Not for depression, anxiety, psychosis, bipolar disorder, OCD, ADHD, or any other “mental illness.”

Current research has found that genetic testing could explain less than 1% of whether someone would receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Including the entire genome, another study found an explanatory power of 2.28%. Still another found that genetic causes might explain up to 3.4% of whether someone received the diagnosis.

By comparison, a study that included all known genetic factors as well as “environmental factors”—life experiences, social circumstances, family history, pain—found that genetics predicted 0.5% of the risk for schizophrenia, while environmental factors explained about 17%.

That finding was consistent with previous research finding strong correlations between schizophrenia and various life experiences, but no effect of genetics on risk for schizophrenia.

And other researchers have concluded that genetic results provided no useful data, even when considering genes theoretically associated with psychiatric disorders.

This failure of genetic research has paralleled the failure of the rest of psychiatry. Despite a massive increase in the amount of people receiving a diagnosis and taking psychiatric drugs, outcomes have only worsened over the years.

Researchers write that psychiatric drugs do not improve the course of mental illness or prevent hospitalization or suicide; they write that there is no evidence that psychiatry has improved outcomes over time; and they have found that antidepressant use, antipsychotic use, and even just receiving a psychiatric diagnosis all lead to worse outcomes than for those who don’t get diagnosed or treated—even after controlling for symptom severity.

Breakthroughs Proven Wrong, Again and Again

Torrey begins his discussion by noting that the failure to find any relevant genes for schizophrenia is ironic considering the hyperbolic promises of researchers throughout the years, including constant announcements in the media that researchers have discovered the genetic key to understanding it.

“Schizophrenia alone has probably been the subject of more genetic breakthrough announcements over the last thirty years than any other human disease,” Torrey writes.

But, he adds, the problem is that none of those supposed “breakthroughs” was subsequently replicated. The pattern, according to Torrey, is that one study would find a “breakthrough” genetic correlation, but the next study would prove it wrong. But that study would find a completely different correlation and get heralded as another “breakthrough”—until the next one proved it wrong and found a new “breakthrough,” over and over for decades.

Facetiously, Torrey notes, “This cycle of hypomanic enthusiasm followed by depression after a failure to replicate is similar to the clinical course of bipolar disorder itself.”

Why Does Schizophrenia Run in Families?

One key question for researchers was how to explain the finding that schizophrenia appears to run in families. Early studies of twins and siblings raised separately seemed to support the notion that schizophrenia was heritable. This led many researchers to the genetic hypothesis. But, according to Torrey, more modern research has shown that these studies are methodologically flawed. The fact is, schizophrenia may run in families because child abuse, trauma, and other environmental factors also run in families.

Studies have attempted to disentangle this fact by claiming to include siblings—sometimes twins—“reared apart,” but these studies actually include mostly siblings and twins who were raised together for at least some time, raised by a close family member, or who reconnected before volunteering for the study—meaning that they don’t actually account for family environment at all.

Moreover, according to Torrey, there are biological factors besides genetics that also affect these results—such as the presence of environmental contaminants in the neighborhood (some siblings, even if supposedly raised apart, were raised in homes in the same neighborhood or spent plenty of time in their home of origin). Another factor: fetal environment. Infections—such as Torrey’s favorite parasite, toxoplasma gondii—may be passed down during pregnancy. Thus, even if the siblings were raised separately, they may have shared the same immunological factors before birth.

To bring this point home, Torrey notes that a large twin study in 2018 found that only 15% of the participants shared a diagnosis of schizophrenia with their identical (monozygotic) twin (12 out of 81 pairs in which at least one had the diagnosis), despite sharing 100% of the same genetic material. For fraternal (dizygotic) twins, it was 3%, despite sharing 50% of the same genetic material.

Torrey writes that this concordance rate is similar to that for infectious diseases—with polio having a 36% concordance rate and tuberculosis a 31% concordance rate in twins.

The hope of the Human Genome Project researchers, though, was that genetics studies could get around these methodological problems and directly identify the genes responsible.

The Failure of a Wide Variety of Genetic Studies

In the search for possible genetic roots of a disorder that runs in families, perhaps the most helpful type of study is a linkage analysis. Torrey writes that there have been “at least” 32 linkage analysis studies of schizophrenia and 40 of bipolar disorder. None of them were able to replicate the findings of the others.

Torrey writes, “The coup de grace for schizophrenia linkage analysis studies was administered in 2002 by [Lynn] DeLisi, who had carried out a linkage analysis on 309 families in which at least two siblings had been diagnosed with schizophrenia or a related disorder, including the Galvin family in which 7 of the 12 children had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. DeLisi was unable to replicate the findings of previous linkage studies and her own findings for linkage were weak. She concluded that linkage analysis was not an effective technique for identifying the genetic roots of schizophrenia.”

Another approach was to try to predict candidate genes: guessing which genes might be responsible for a given diagnosis, and then checking to see if they were more common in those with the disorder than without. Since schizophrenia was thought to involve the dopamine system, candidate gene studies often looked at genes that were responsible for regulating or developing that system in the brain.

Over a thousand candidate gene studies were conducted on schizophrenia, according to Torrey, with hundreds more for bipolar disorder. But this approach failed just as completely as the linkage analysis approach.

As Martilias Farrell and colleagues wrote in a 2015 paper: “The current empirical evidence strongly supports the idea that the historical candidate gene literature yielded no robust and replicable insights into the etiology of schizophrenia.”

And in 2017, Emma C. Johnson and colleagues wrote, “Taken as a group, schizophrenia candidate genes are no more associated with schizophrenia than random sets of control genes.”

(Torrey also notes that candidate gene studies of depression completely failed in the same way.)

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were viewed as the next breakthrough. This type of study casts a wide net at more than a million mutations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These SNPs are like markers that flag nearby genes as potentially increasing risk for a disease.

Torrey writes, “It was hoped that [GWAS] would lead to the discovery of a few genes of large effect which are involved in the cause of schizophrenia. Unfortunately that is not what researchers found. Rather than finding a few genes of large effect which could be linked causally to schizophrenia, they found hundreds of genes of very small effect which have not been linked causally to this disorder.”

Even if the hundreds of genes identified are truly related to schizophrenia, even in aggregate they explain such a microscopic amount of the risk that there is no clinical utility in listing them.

Worse, the problem of causality is paramount here. As one example of how these studies can confound correlation and causation, Torrey writes that people with schizophrenia are far more likely to be tobacco smokers, so some genes found in a GWAS to be associated with schizophrenia might actually just be genes linked to smoking.

Differences in ancestry can also produce spurious results. For instance, due to racial biases in diagnostic categories, far more Black people are diagnosed with schizophrenia. Thus, GWAS studies might inadvertently identify genes related to African ancestry as increasing the risk for schizophrenia.

Finally, Torrey adds that the genes identified by GWAS as increasing risk for schizophrenia overlap among all psychiatric diagnoses, including depression, ADHD, and autism. Thus, these genes are not specific, but rather seem associated with emotional distress in general and altered cognition of many kinds.

The closest thing a GWAS has found to a consistent genetic link to schizophrenia is the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), a correlation that was replicated in several studies. This area of chromosome 6 has been studied since the 1970s as a potential factor in schizophrenia. But this is certainly not a specific finding: the MHC has been linked to nearly every autoimmune disorder and a wide variety of infectious diseases. To some extent, this supports Torrey’s belief that schizophrenia can be caused by toxoplasma gondii. But, like the other GWAS findings, this correlation explains very little of the risk and is too broad to be of any clinical utility.

Torrey notes that Lynn Delisi and colleagues studied the entire genome of nine families that had multiple members with the schizophrenia diagnosis.

He writes, “Surely, it was thought, such heavily burdened families would lead to the identification of causal genes of large effect. Alas, each of the 9 families had different genetic findings, none of which were widely shared among the other families or among other individuals with schizophrenia. Nor could any of the genetic findings be definitively linked to the cause of the disease and none of the variants identified overlapped with the SNP loci identified in the GWAS study of schizophrenia.”

To sum up the failure of GWAS, Torrey quotes researchers McClellan and King, who published a thorough overview of the topic in 2010:

“The general failure to confirm common risk variants is not due to a failure to carry out GWAS properly. The problem is underlying biology, not the operationalization of study design. The common disease–common variant model has been the primary focus of human genomics over the last decade. Numerous international collaborative efforts representing hundreds of important human diseases and traits have been carried out with large well-characterized cohorts of cases and controls. If common alleles influenced common diseases, many would have been found by now. The issue is not how to develop still larger studies, or how to parse the data still further, but rather whether the common disease–common variant hypothesis has now been tested and found not to apply to most complex human diseases.”

After the failure of GWAS, researchers turned to the next type of genetic study: identifying copy number variants (CNVs). Some part of the human genome consists of repeated genetic patterns; copy number variation is a term for the difference in the number of times certain parts of the pattern repeat. Essentially, CNVs are either extra copies (duplication) or missing copies (deletion) of genetic code. CNVs are common and usually they don’t cause any problems. However, certain CNVs have been identified as causing genetic disorders. For instance, Huntington’s disease is directly caused by a large number of repeats of the CAG trinucleotide of the HTT gene, and the more times the code repeats, the earlier the onset of Huntington’s.

The CNV that causes DiGeorge syndrome is associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia, and it is estimated that about 1% of people with schizophrenia have that CNV, compared with about 0.025% of the general population. But again, this does little to explain a cause for the other 99% of people with schizophrenia—or why most people with DiGeorge syndrome don’t develop schizophrenia.

A newer type of genetics study focuses solely on “rare coding variants” that are detectable using exome sequencing. The problem, according to Torrey, is that the variants detected using exome sequencing are indeed extremely rare. Thus, even if there is a slight correlation in which people with these variants are more likely to develop schizophrenia, it has very little clinical utility. The vast majority of those with the diagnosis do not have these variants. Of course, this also means that these variants are not a very good indicator for understanding the theoretical underlying biology.

According to Torrey, “it is unclear what role, if any, the rare variants play in causing schizophrenia.”

Indeed, researchers who completed an exome study for schizophrenia wrote that “The main conclusion of this investigation is a negative one. The diagnostic yield for exome sequencing of known neuropsychiatric genes in this sample is about 1%.”

Searching for the Psychiatric Yeti

To sum it all up, Torrey quotes a number of eminent researchers on the failure to identify a genetic basis for schizophrenia:

  • Gershon, 2011: “Where is the missing heritability? […] Among scientists in the field, there is a sense of disappointment in the air.”
  • Crow, 2011: “There comes a point at which the genetic skeptic can be pardoned for the suggestion that if the genes are so small and so multiple, what they are hardly matters, the dividing line between polygenes and no genes is of little practical consequence. Have we reached this point?”
  • Uher and Rutter, 2012: “It can be summarized that molecular genetic studies of psychiatric disorders have done a lot to find very little. In fact, in the era of genome-wide association studies, psychiatric disorders have distinguished themselves from most types of physical illness by the absence of strong genetic associations.”
  • Latham, 2011: “The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist.”

Perhaps the most telling quote comes from Steven Hyman, director of the NIMH during the Human Genome Project era:

“I made one enormous error. I thought that family and genetic studies, advances in neuroscience, and the newly emerging discipline of molecular biology would soon elucidate pathogenesis and result in improved therapeutics. How wrong I turned out to be.”

Ultimately, Torrey writes that the search for schizophrenia genes can be compared to a wild goose chase—although, he adds, “it is even worse than that since a wild goose chase has, at least theoretically, a wild goose that might be caught. If indeed genes causing schizophrenia do not exist, then the thirty year search has been more like a search for a psychiatric yeti.”

Evolution

Torrey’s final argument against schizophrenia as a heritable disease is an evolutionary one. According to a study in 2010, people with psychiatric diagnoses are far less likely to have children than people without a diagnosis. Those with schizophrenia are at the lowest extreme. For every 100 men without a diagnosis who have a child, only 10 men with schizophrenia have a child; for every 100 women without a diagnosis who have a child, only 18 women with schizophrenia have a child.

Moreover, Torrey notes, hundreds of thousands of people with schizophrenia were forced to undergo sterilization as part of the eugenics movement in the first half of the 1900s, including 18,000 people in the United States. In Nazi Germany, in addition to sterilizing about 132,000 people with schizophrenia, about an equal number were murdered.

Yet, during that same time (1850-1950), the number of new incidences of schizophrenia only increased, including by sevenfold in the United States.

Torrey writes, “Schizophrenia as we know it clinically has been well described for over 200 years during which time the reproduction rate of those affected has been exceedingly low. If schizophrenia was truly a genetic disease it should have died out by now. Thus, the fact that it still exists is strong evidence that it is not a genetic disease.”

Conclusion

Despite the investment of billions of dollars into research on the supposed genetics of schizophrenia over the course of decades, nothing useful has been found. Continuing down this road, Torrey argues, is a waste of time and money.

He writes, “NIMH invested extensive resources in this research with little to show for it and at the expense of alternative research projects. Since schizophrenia does not appear to be a genetic disorder, NIMH’s research portfolio should be reviewed.”

Torrey suggests that the NIMH should focus on basic research into the biological causes of schizophrenia, including his pet theory, that schizophrenia is caused by immunological problems (lead candidate: toxoplasma gondii). He also suggests that the NIMH should fund more clinical trials in an effort to develop new drugs to treat the disorder.

However, the NIMH’s tight focus on funding genetic research has also prevented the exploration of the known psychological causes of schizophrenia, such as the impact of trauma, isolation, and poverty. It has also prevented the proliferation of non-biological understandings of psychosis, such as the Hearing Voices movement, and non-medical treatments, like Open Dialogue and Soteria.

***

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174 COMMENTS

    • As a genetic researcher who did one of the first Gwas studies of schizophrenia, bipolar. OCAD and anxiety. I must agree that the results have failed to find genetic causes of most of the heritability. This is generally true for most complex “genetic” diseases with exceptions like Crohn’s disease, diabetes and immuno diseases. Probably the psychiatric diseases gave the poorest GWAS results. But this does not mean the GWAS genetic approach was a total bust. What it and the Genome Project did do for us was reveal the large numbers of non-coding RNA genetic loci that produce RNA molecules that regulate the expression of the known protein coding genes. These were previously unknown or nadly under appreciarted
      There discovery kick started the field of epigenetics or the study of how the genome and the environment interact to regulate gene expression. Epigenetics may yet reveal the molecular mechanisms of Schizophrenia and many other complex human phenotypes and the discovery of these strong epigenetic pathways itself probably justifies the billions spent in genetic. Research. Science is not never being wrong. It is the discovery of new powerful knowledge in the face of catastrophic failures of standard theories. This is its power.

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      • But Sience is also admiting that one is wrong by using science to research something that can’t be studied scientifically. Like God, aliens, ghosts and mental disorders.

        Science, sorry, implies having a theory to design, conduct and interpret experiments. No theory, no science.

        Brain science is not at the stage of Linnaeus. We are more than 150yrs of the elaboration of evolution. More than a century from pea heritability experiments. More than 70yrs of phage studies and the structure of the DNA.

        We can see anatomical detail in MRI imaging that anatomists centuries ago could not see in the disection room. We have computers that can directly help us study the brain “circuitry” directly from signals from a wet in situ live brain with multiple, hundreds? of electrodes. Etcetera.

        And that has broght nothing, emptynes, a huge void filled with rhetoric and interpretation, not arguments, not reasons, because there was nothing real there in the first place.

        A real honest scientist should design experiments to prove schizophrenia is not real, does not exists, as all mental stuff does not. Instead of chasing the new next thing, that could be called “fashionable nonsense”.

        I am not that versed in particle physics, but I am under the impression that those folks prove that certain particles, predictions from their theories do not exist.

        Even dark matter, dark energy, very very far away, in it’s essence, it’s nature, qualities and properties has been narrowed down even if we can’t see it or touch it directly.

        That is science, not dogma, creed, belief nor interpretation. Garbage in, garbage out for psychiatry…

        And no offense intended, another expert compared the thing to searching for Yetis. So the counter argument would have to be more powerfull than generalities about the powers of science, it’s contents and methods, that on top of that can’t be applied to a pseudoscientific field of knowledge and inquiry, like big-foot searches. Respectfully.

        Like saying we haven’t found one, let’s bring more powerfull science to find one… innapropiate… bring a cryptozoologist…

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        • It’s real I think its caused from radio waves (J R T S) I think that’s what it’s called And some people are more subseptable then others And the data in the frequencies is unclear and jumble to the chosen or the susceptible like leftovers from different dimensions or lifetimes or even different universes who knows And maybe thefrequencies have been growing and traveling getting louder further in time in space reaching more and more . some kind of message from the Universe that there is worse out there and maybe we should have just took care of what we had and stayed out of space and stayed out of the oceans and stayed humble and stayed happy but we just go poking our nose where don’t belong I don’t know and I also don’t know what to tell my son who’s 34 years old and suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar who can’t get no help from anybody because he won’t admit that he has disorder so why don’t somebody poke their nose in that direction because it is a tough life for him and for the other people suffering from the disorder or communication because those jrts or whatever they are they’re out there and they’re sending radio frequencies black holes are getting bigger a new planets forming I mean hell I’m not no rocket scientist but

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        • On a lighter observation, being as I am sometimes the only person to call themselves a schizophrenic here, I bought a kitten when I was nineteen years old. The kitten had a swollen belly and other symptoms. I took the kitten to the veterinarian. He diagnosed Toxoplasmosis. The kitten needed seventeen injections over months to save it. I had my first experience of schizophrenic voice hearing not long after those months.

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          • https://youtu.be/k51dPF2VxgY?si=yxcXfFnKoo7laXIt
            This is a link to PBS docu about tsunami preparedness. I am told by my schizophrenic mess of genius prophecy and utter nonsense that a huge global tsunami is coming due to meteor stikes. Every belief we value will be like a stack of crockery in our hands when that time comes. One woosh and we inherit a world that reveals every structure in disarray or broken. Our expectations will be flung back into chaos. Coping with massive global shock, demands resilience. But before the tsunami we can do a huge amount of readiness by having an inkling of what to grab as disaster kit, and where to climb upward, if we are down town. I think the proof will come when my prophecy that the Hoover dam will be exploded by bombs will occur. A lot of years before the pandemic came, I acurately predicted it. So much of my predictions have come true. But because I also have schizophrenia there must always be an element of doubt. But doubt is healthy. However, often after making a comment that is a bit annoyed about an article I rant but afterwards my Source/Spirit guides grow disappointed in my wasting that opportunity on my own petty hurts instead of telling everyone to expect the huge flood. That and the nazi-style regime. Two different types of innundation.

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          • Very interesting. I’m sorry to hear of your exposure to the vector of transmission and all that very possibly developed from that, Diaphonous Weeping. Our own dear daughter spent many hours playing in natural environments and with live “vectors of transmission” which I realized late in our reflections. She was also experiencing sleep apnea, social-emotional issues, bullying,a diet too high in carbs, and a classroom dominated by Common Core which made her miserable and did not suit her creative personality. Later, I discovered a few genetic traits we have, one of which is said to raise our risk for injury from inflammatory insults. Epigenetics. I realized that I was not sufficient to be my daughter’s protector, that I lacked the expertise to face the giants. I wanted to protect my children from such sickening devaluation that befell them. The dangers swamp families like a flood.

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      • I have a hard time believing that psychological weakness is not at least in part because if genes. Maybe the genes specific to schizophrenia has not been found but a genetic pre disposition for mental weakness is like a pre disposition to have brown hair if you have a brown haired set of parents. If two people are predisposed to anxiety and bipolar disorder then they have a baby who grows up and has kids with a person whose parents were predisposed to mental weakness of anxiety and bipolar disorder then grandkids are going to have it worse than the grand parents. It makes sense however I was told that bipolar disorder left untreated could display at its worse like schizophrenia as well as anxiety. Perhaps we should look at the stages of brain growth and work to see when we can prevent a mental weakness from becoming schizophrenia. Perhaps its more a symptom of advanced untreated mental disturbance that had either been left to stance untreated or treated incorrectly and schizophrenia full blown ( not originally another disorder but goes strsight to schizophrenia) is a physiological endocrine system failure. Cause I have heard of whole families being effected by schizophrenia how can that not be genetic like heart disease predisposition? Also if strep in the brain can lead to OCD which was discovered by two doctors in New York then why couldn’t toxoplasma gondii also cause a complication similar to schizophrenia in the brain? I believe that’s plausible as well. The brains a weird place. Bad teeth can effect the brain as well. Perhaps we search for the root of the problem we root out the disease. The brain scans are going to say what they say which tells us the symptom is evident but is it endocrine? Is it a complication of disease advanced to the brain or what have you? And then work accordingly with best treatment plans. Just wondering.

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      • That’s all very theoretically interesting, but it’s not much of a practical improvement. If you’re dealing with the interaction between the environment and the genome, then environment is the critical factor. Investigating human cognitive and behavioural response to the environment can already be done with psychology, and understandings of underlying mechanisms are not likely to be revolutionary in that field.

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      • Man, it must be so good doing this research and getting all that data to number crunch with us being the lab rats. I hope it was a good “productive” career. It was only years of mockery, gaslighting and harrassment for a lot of us for you guys to be able to procure our details, measurements and data from hospitals and boost your careers (and there is no help after that when it happens and we don’t get a cent for it). Bravo.

        You guys get awards, publish books, give speeches and drink wine at posh seminars doing this “research” while we become comments and blog posts, die in bitterness and pain. I don’t resent anyone’s success. We all want to be successful. But I do resent the success of a class of people who get their career boosts out of stigmatising others and then not even accepting it as a problem. God knows how many people in those datasets got screwed over after they were categorised as “schizophrenics”, “bipolars” or whatever. Even if you weren’t directly involved in it, you still used what comes out of it.

        Julie Greene, a poster here, once told me (before her death) about MIA: “look who they allow to write on here” referencing all the doctors and mental health workers who get to write articles here. I didn’t understand her at first. I understand her now.

        There was a psychologist who ended up here after getting categorised as “bipolar” himself and started facing problems with his own colleagues due to it. When I asked him about how many people he must have categorised that way he said something along the lines of “I had no power when it came to labelling or not labelling people with DSM categorisations! I just did it for insurance!” (something to that effect; I can’t find the article now). People’s mindsets change so much once they become the nails instead of the hammers. You don’t really want to forgive them when that happens. It’s nice to see them squirm the same way they made others do so.

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  2. Fantastic article! I never thought I’d see the day when Torrey of all people would acknowledge the paucity of support for a genetic theory of schizophrenia. It will be interesting to see the reception to his analysis. Will he be dissed like Joanna Moncrieff regarding the chemical imbalance theory of depression…or??

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        • There’s a lot of evidence pointing towards it providing little to no explanatory value. What we do know is people can have psychotic breaks from missing necessary sleep, nutrition, and socialization/stimulation, all of which have been demonstrated in the research to affect otherwise “normal” people when a threshold is met. The threshold varies by person and their stress tolerance. Perhaps in people most prone to psychosis, the ideal thing to do is help rehabilitate them with a healthy lifestyle of sleeping, eating, and socializing regularly. I believe that’s a lot of what the therapeutic non-traditional models do.

          I suppose it’s possible that these factors create a vulnerable environment where the person is infected with a pathogen and develops psychosis from that. The research supporting this being common in the chain of events is lacking, but if it were true, then it would make me question why Torrey is focusing so much on antipsychotics rather than treatments for the infections he thinks are the root cause.

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    • What kind of mathematical analysis was done? Analysis of Variance, Nested Analysis of Variance, or Analysis of Covariance? I had fun writing said programs for analyzing biology markers. Only 3 pages in Fortran. Much longer in C. Faster with modern technology.

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  3. Psychiatrists are still convinced there’s a genetic link partly due to the subjective diagnoses and trying to force-fit a diagnosis onto new family members. If someone in their family history was labeled bipolar or schizophrenic, the psychiatrist will try to search for elements of the person’s behavior to fit the same diagnosis to them.

    Psychiatrists like to act like they can test for psychotic disorder like real doctors test for pathogens. They can’t. They decide what they think is inappropriate behavior or delusion based on how outlandish they personally find the other person’s ideas and actions. Oftentimes, people get called delusional by “experts” for valid fears or things they aren’t even wrong about. The reliability is low for these disorders, with no objective tests, and they’ve never been proven to be the “lifelong disorders” a lot of psychiatrists claim them to be in double-blinded long term observational studies.

    Also, they often diagnose psychotic disorders upon the first real or perceived psychosis/mania. Pretty much anyone can be considered to have been “manic” at least once in their life if you scrutinize them hard enough and bring them into a conservative psychiatrist enough times. Also, anyone in an extreme environment can develop hallucinations. I doubt most people would be okay with CIA torture victims who develop hallucinations being immediately diagnosed with schizophrenia and coercively treated. They are okay doing this to the unhoused and abuse victims despite the extreme conditions they endure, though. Regardless of if hallucination is “illness” or is inherently negative, addressing people’s health holistically is always the best answer. People who have sleep issues, insufficient nutrition, inadequate socialization, etc. should not be immediately subjected to these damaging drugs that worsen outcomes.

    Torrey is a weird character. He used to be a liberationist. Then, he decided to sell out and terrorize millions of innocent people. Even though he used to do liberation work, he knowingly betrayed the people he is supposed to help. I find him worse than someone who was on the “dark side” all along.

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      • Yeah, the whole concept of “delusion” is subjective and often political. It doesn’t mean “incorrect” because correct people get labeled “delusional” sometimes, while often incorrect people don’t… if the psychiatrist personally feels, from their loins, that their beliefs are acceptable. I’ve seen people get labeled delusional by “professionals” for stating documented facts, for having valid fears, for speaking in metaphors, etc. while others can spout verifiable nonsense and escape psych label free. It’s completely arbitrary.

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        • That a delusion is not real, it is a false belief has to be proven by the psychiatrist, not the patient.

          The definition implies an inversion of probatory burden that can’t fall on the believer. “despite evidence to the contrary”. That means evidence must be presented, not that evidence is not perceived.

          And psychiatrists don’t do investigative work wether a romantic partner is unfaithfull, the most common delusion. And by statistics that might happen to around 50% of people, wether they believe it or not.

          So, without further ado, that belief is around 50% chance of being correct. Hardly a delusion or a false idea even if no argument or evidence can be presented by the believer in favor of it. The evidence must be presented by the questioner of the belief, there is an inversion of probatory burden in the definition of delusion.

          Persecutory delusions are never presented evidence to the contrary. Ever, psychiatrists are no journalists, PIs, etc. They have trouble understanding what evidence of a concealed crime is: mostly mere testimony.

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    • Another ‘covariant’ is the mental institutions. They could put them all together and they interbreed. That could be why these problems run in families. Some are not related to each other, but related to historic institutionalization.

      With bipolar, you are normal when pregnant. You could ‘recover’. Same with unipolar. So they seem related in that respect.

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      • As in, like, people find mates in mental institutions? I know you’re not supposed to. I wonder if there is some eugenic purpose to those rules, to not wanting people to get too comfortable with each other in the institution. It’s definitely not for the benefit of the patients. I think it’s a lot more related to them just not wanting to be sued, though. It’s a lot harder if you don’t have a group of friends bringing on a class action suit.

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  6. Just some questions after reading:
    What is the meaning of “non-biological understandings of psychosis”?
    Could please someone explain me how to understand brain functions without biology?
    How can we find new treatments without understanding the biology of this syndrome?

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    • “However, the NIMH’s tight focus on funding genetic research has also prevented the exploration of the known psychological causes of schizophrenia, such as the impact of trauma, isolation, and poverty. It has also prevented the proliferation of non-biological understandings of psychosis, such as the Hearing Voices movement, and non-medical treatments, like Open Dialogue and Soteria.”

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    • You make the assumption that psychosis is a biological process.
      Etymology of “psychosis:” Modern Latin, from Greek psykhē “mind, life, soul” (see psyche) + -osis “abnormal condition.” Greek psykhosis meant “a giving of life; animation; principle of life.”

      Are the mind, life or soul biological processes? That’s the real question here. The Greeks, apparently, doubted this. I wonder why.

      The ancients of Asia knew better than this. “Modern” academia has yet to apprehend this, and thus has failed us.

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  7. Peter, this is superb and so timely. Pitch perfect and rock solid. Torrey should study toxoplasmosis, not SZ. He is the biopsychiatry pot calling the kettle black. He has unwittingly shown that the Stanley Institute is another colossal folly. But he might be doing a great service without knowing it. While basically destroying the Broad Institute (GWAS factory) he may have destroyed the Stanley along with it. Funding is what keeps biopsychiatry alive whether it’s genetic or non-genetic “bio”. A banner day. Thank you.

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    • Our Dad was a physicist and our Mom a mathematician (WW2). The youngest was diagnosed schizophrenic (era – 1980ish), followed by a menopausal diagnosis of Bipolar for me (garbage diagnosis – don’t we all know there are mood swings in menopause? – it was this hypothesis of possible genes that drugged me), and our cousin claims the oldest has Asperger’s. The youngest is the smartest.

      We are all really really really smart nerds – geeks – brainiacs. We are all social incompetents. We are all, not into sports.

      Sometimes I wonder if this whole mental health thing is the triumph of the EQ people over the IQ people? Perhaps the DSM has masterfully diagrammed “human nature” – the whole spectrum of it … and would be better off conversing with the authors of great literature?

      Definitely – violence (the gang of 8) and their mind altering drugs – will never win the argument amongst me and my siblings. Not for ourselves, or against our siblings.

      Have they found a gene for high IQ’s? (of the 3 siblings, there are 2 engineers and one lawyer) I don’t believe any of us our “mentally ill”, or on the spectrum. But we are all darn close. We are “weirdo’s” (popular slur)

      My request would be for those who are handing out state sanctioned violence against humans who have committed no crimes – to have a little humility. It is obvious – you guys are guessing. If you take away my ability to think, then who or what am I?

      2 of us our home owners.
      The other is in a sedated trance, meditating on his CPAP machine.

      That gene hypothesis had real world consequences, for me. And not for the better. Learn how to say “I don’t know” – when clearly – you don’t!
      There is nothing the current healthcare system is selling, that I want.
      But then again, I am healthy.

      For the amusement of the readers of this – I once told a mental health worker – “just because you don’t understand what I am talking about, doesn’t mean I am psychotic”. They drugged me anyways, of course.

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      • I think a big determinant part of diagosing people with inexistant disorders is intolerance, aversion, spite and even hate for diversity.

        People labeled with “psychotic” disorders are considered “offish”, excentric, outside the normies, the average, the expected, etc.

        Sort of an ugly duckling unstated diagnostic creterion. Not to do with smarts, but it might weight against in the sense of: if you are SO smart, why can’t you behave like a normie, like me the pro?. I am reasonable!, I am not psychotic!.

        Right… right…

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        • Behavioral “norms” don’t necessarily make sense.
          Flight of Ideas and Loose Associations are useful abilities in an engineering design brainstorming meeting.
          Captured and held against one’s will by the mental health industry – these attributes are defined as disease.
          In what universe does this make any sense?

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  9. You claim that “But, according to Torrey, more modern research has shown that these studies are methodologically flawed.” I followed the link. There is nothing about Torrey in the link. The link is to an article written by you for Mad in America that cites concerns by Jay Joseph about DZA twins that were not included in the Minnesota twin study (MISTRA). Contrary to what Joseph allegedly says, nowhere in the Minnesota twin study do the authors say that MZA should be compared to DZA as a control. The correct control for MZA reared together is MZA reared apart (there is only one difference — that is what a good control is all about; DZA data adds more than one difference). That is exactly the method used by the MISTRA authors.

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    • You are mistaken about DZA twins not being the MISTRA control group. The MISTRA compared MZ twins reared together (MZTs) vs. MZ twins reared apart (MZAs) twins only for the purpose of assessing the role of the family environment. In his 2023 reply to my article, lead investigator T. Bouchard did not dispute my claim that reared-part DZ twins (DZAs) were the official MISTRA control group. Here is a 1986 publication where Bouchard et al. said that DZAs were the MISTRA control group:

      Bouchard et al., (1986), “Development in Twins Reared Apart: A Test of the Chronogenetic Hypothesis,” in A. Demirjian (Ed.), Human Growth: A Multidisciplinary Review (pp. 299-310), London: Taylor & Francis. On page 300, they wrote:

      “Our study is the first to have included a control group of dizygotic twins reared apart
      (DZA). … DZA twins allow us to test the two most common competing hypotheses
      proposed as alternatives to the genetic hypothesis as an explanation of the similarity
      between MZA twins: placement bias and recruitment bias.”

      See also page 12 of Nancy Segal’s 2012 book on the MISTRA, “Born Together: Reared Apart,” where she wrote:

      “The MISTRA was … the first study of its kind to include both MZA and DZA twin pairs.
      Bouchard’s decision to use DZA twins as controls was made in a very early [1979] memo
      to the ‘Twin Research Team.’ This was an important methodological improvement over past
      projects”

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    • I’m not a statistician, but I’m pretty sure there’s more than one variable not accounted for in all of these studies. Did anyone test the water and soil where the test subjects resided? Did anyone follow them around through their entire childhoods, taking notes? Was the person who followed them around their entire childhood, taking notes, studied for his or her own biases (which would necessitate, at the very least, someone following the note-taker around through their entire childhood)?

      I don’t see how anyone can take these studies seriously.

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      • I am a Statistician and Six Sigma Master Black Belt who applied statistical methodologies professionally for years before teaching. Currently, I teach university Applied Statistical Methods and Linear Algebra.

        I am also the son of a mother who was very successfully treated with Psychiatry, anti -psychotics and, yes, “involuntary” institutionalization. Upon exiting the Mental Hospital, my mother thanked everyone who institutionalized her “involuntarily” and requested that she be institutionalized anytime she should ever go off her meds.

        As any Statistician will tell you, your intuition is correct: just because the data fails to show a correlation does not mean it doesn’t exist. We just need to search for more predictors.

        The attitudes expressed in this article harm patients by closing Mental Institutions and fueling hysteria which blocks treatment. My mother, my family and I suffered for 2 nightmarish years trying to get my mother treatment. We’ve lived in fear ever since that Mom’s might forget to take a dose or grow resistant to her meds. The fear is that we’ll have to face this ignorance again in another epic battle to find her treatment.

        My suspicion is that those of us with a familial predisposition have weak neural regulators which are affected by environmental contaminants such as aluminum or narcotics. My family avoids these KNOWN contributors.

        Whereas the author cites actual ongoing genetic research, no research is cited showing the opinion that psychotherapy and institutionalization is harmful in all cases.

        Please support mental health by supporting mental institutions.

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        • “As any Statistician will tell you, your intuition is correct: just because the data fails to show a correlation does not mean it doesn’t exist. We just need to search for more predictors.”

          My intuition is *not* telling me that just because the data fails to show a correlation does not mean it doesn’t exist.

          My intelligence tells me that no studies I’ve ever heard of on this topic (including these twin studies) are reliable because they always choose one or two variables that they think are important while ignoring 100 others. They are not valid science.

          I do not support psychiatry, mental institutions, the DSM, psychiatric drugging, or any kind of forced treatment.

          I believe the last thing we need to do is spend more billions of dollars looking for biomarkers or “genetic predictors”. I believe the money should be spent on providing basic needs for people and addressing worsening crises that are impossible to ignore, such as pollutants in the air, water and soil (just one example).

          You might want to read the article on this website by Rob Wipond, which demystifies the notion that there are fewer psychiatric beds now since the majority of the long-term institutions were closed. In fact, there are many more psychiatric treatment facilities now than at any time in the past. More people are subject to forced treatment now than at any time in the past, with mostly devastating consequences.

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        • You claim to be a statistician, yet your only research in support of violent “treatment” is the one successful case that you personally know. This is laughable, considering there is plenty of actual research in this area and we know that a lot of people are being harmed. They would never ask for further restrictions to their freedoms, yet you seem very comfortable calling to remove them at a legislative level… Based on solely personal experience. Arrogance is all over your comment.

          Also, nowhere did anyone call for the “closing of mental institutions.” Being against forced treatment just means they would have to change. And they would change for the better.

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        • A correlation first needs proof that such correlation is feasible.

          Today I wear red, tomorrow will rain is a correlation in the sense if P then Q.

          If it rains, there will be no umbrella.

          Here, I wear read today, tomorrow I won’t have my umbrella, have it, keep it from disappearing. Sort of thing…

          I can build a correlation with two symbols and a number: Red, Rain, 80%, and spend a whole career looking into the causality of that, without finding any, regardless the “strength”, hehe, of the correlation is above chance.

          No statistician, and no scientist would look into THAT correlation and it’s causality.

          Lewis Carroll I think spoke about it. At least I read an intro to his Alice, longer than the book that spoke he did. That seems logical, if P then Q, but it’s irrational: I wear red today then tomorrow will rain. It’s beyond and BEFORE looking for causality.

          It’s about reason, rationality, not merely causality and logic. Looking for causality of such relationships is pseudoscientific, none will be found.

          Psychiatry is irrational because it’s concepts are irrational, can’t be used to build arguments, let alone test them, and therefore not even correlations are valid from those concepts…

          On top of that red, rain and umbrella are visible concepts if not defined enough to be reasoned by machines applying formal rules. That lead to all sort of irrational statements by old AI.

          Psychiatric concepts are invisible in that regard: we don’t know what schizophrenia is!… Mental illness can’t be defined!, one of the latest by Allen Frances, nonetheless…

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        • I am also a statistician. I have a master’s degree in statistics and worked in the area of continuous quality improvement and variability reduction, Statistical Process Control, designed experiments, etc. I received some training in Six Sigma, which I found to be an interesting approach for electronic applications.

          The real issue has to do with percentages. I am glad that the treatment course for your mother worked well. However, there are any number of other people (a percentage) of people for whom that same treatment does not work well. In fact, for many, that approach is more harmful and traumatizing.

          The Martin Harrow – Thomas Jobe research indicates the same. There is a percentage of people for whom the treatment of long-term drugs and medications worked. People who stayed on the drugs were able to recover and then function in society, i.e. holding jobs and supporting themselves. There was a larger percentage of people, though, who did better long term when they did not take any drugs or medications (or used them short term). By a roughly two-to-one factor, those who didn’t take the drugs long-term fared better and “recovered” and functioned in their communities (by holding a job, etc.)

          So the real issue is determining which person falls into which category. That is a basic combinatorics question of for a given person which approach is the best “match.”

          For too long, people have been told there is only one approach to take — that of long-term medication — especially since they are told their conditions are chronic and life-long with no “cure.” And for too long, people who have been harmed by institutional processes have not been listened to. (Don’t get me going on the variability between different programs, institutions, and the people involved.

          Again, there is a significant percentage of people who come through their experiences without institutionalization, without long-term drugs and do well with basic support and co-regulation, such as from a Soteria House-type environment. Those experiences represent a significant percentage of the overall population struggling with mental difficulties and even mental crises.

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        • It is hard when you have to contend with someone, especially a family member, going through a mental health crisis (except in cases where family members have created that crisis with their own behaviour, which is true in some cases, and not true in others).

          Again, if the psychiatric help around her benefitted her, more power to her and god bless her. There are a lot of factors that go into it.

          But saying “support mental hospitals” because it has worked out for you is a stretch. What when the case is a woman being gaslighted and blackmailed by her husband using threats of psychiatric institutionalisation, degrading use of psychiatric terminology against her etc.? Do you think someone like that will see things the way you do and want to support psychiatric institutions? To her, such an institution would be more similar to a human slaughter house than what it is for you (a hospital for help).

          Also, MadInAmerica closing psychiatric institutions is a massive stretch. This place barely has any power compared to psychiatry. MadinAmerica vs Psychiatry is like a rural police station in Bolivia trying to take on the US Army.

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  10. Having known 3 family members with the diagnosis of schizophrenia within 2 generations, who grew up in different US states and definitely did not have the same pets, this sounds like hogwash. No one has disproven a genetic link.

    As for outcomes with or without medication and the concept of forced medication, I would love to see a means of helping ill, un-medicated patients. Distrust and paranoia are primary symptoms of the disease. They cannot always be trusted to know what is best. In our legal system, one would not assume a suicididal person on a bridge was simply exercising their right to jump. Why, then, should a schizophrenic who refuses to accept SSI, clothing, or medication that keeps them from arming themselves with weapons be allowed to do so?? Consider their potential victims when deciding to do no harm. And fund treatment and better drugs.

    I have held a sibling who was in spasm from Haldol 40 years ago and have seen loved ones be victimized by strangers when off meds and vulnerable. There has to be a better way. Yes, they are sick. Yes, they need treatment and protection.

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    • “No one who has disproven a genetic link.”
      No one has quality evidence of a proven one either, not to mention how unreliable the diagnosis is. The best evidence we have shows very little contribution of genes.

      Plus, psychiatrists often try to force-fit diagnoses based on family history. It’s a subjective label. That’s why you have to, you know, actually study it with relevant controls rather than rely on anecdotes… Also, trauma runs in families. It seems like you haven’t considered any other explanation than genes when it comes to this.

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    • Exactly the author will be the first one to rush to a psychiatrist in private shamelessly if it happens to his kith and kin ! All those who run a tirade against psychiatry don’t give a solution , and hinder the only solution that is there !

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      • Apparently you haven’t read the book Mad in America. Robert Whitaker does a thorough analysis of the various so-called treatments even going back historically. Towards the end of the book, he mentions Soteria House and how it had a degree of effectiveness that matched what the psychiatric industry promoted. Open Dialogue and the Hearing Voices Network have also helped a number of people without relying on drugs and medication as the primary approach.

        I do wish there was basic reference information more readily available that summarized the effectiveness (or promoted effectiveness) of the various approaches.

        Even some kind of table that compares approaches and effectivity would be helpful. Something like:

        Long-term drug treatment: X % effective
        Short-term drug treatment: Y – X % effective
        Soteria House: A – B % effective
        Harrow – Jobe summary material: C-D % effective
        Open Dialoge: J – K % effective
        Placebo approach: F-G % effective

        As I understand it, each approach has some level of effectiveness.
        As I mentioned in another comment, the real issue is to determine which approach is best for the specific person involved.

        What gets labeled as bipolar, and even schizoaffective, and schizophrenia are often long-term trauma responses. According to Bessel van der Kolk’s book, when he was working at a mental facility as a young psychiatrist in the 1970s, he noticed that a high percentage of women on the ward diagnosed with schizophrenia identified as having been sexually abused as a young child. To ignore that kind of trauma — and how it ends up stored in the mind and body — is malpractice. And too often people end up diagnosed sheerly based on behavior without any kind of assessment of context involved. That is absurd.

        His book is entitled, “The Body Keeps the Score.”

        Trauma is not an “illness.” And long-term stored trauma is not an “illness.” That is why so many people reject the model that mental distress is illness. Too often the professionals ignore and skip a person’s frame of reference and any number of other factors that influence a person’s life and well-being.

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      • People rush to psychiatrists not necessarily because they want to go there, but because there is no other alternative in place and the way the whole thing operates already restricts them in many ways.

        Smug comments about “they will rush to psychiatrists in times of need” or “why do you go to them if you don’t like them” are very myopic. In a desperate moment, a person does not know what to do, he may be pressurised by the people around them to visit the only known place of help they know, the mental health industry. The person may have ended up in a situation where the only people who understand him because of his pre-existing involvement with the profession in a time of crisis are either other psychiatrists or other patients who have far less power.

        Doctors, nurses, patient supporters of psychiatry etc. who feel offended by what people on websites like MadInAmerica write often say things like “don’t like psychiatry, don’t go to them!”. Correspondingly, don’t like what we say? Don’t take psychiatry as a specialisation! Study cardiology or dentistry instead. No one will talk all this about you.

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      • And the only solution that is there for whom? Perhaps, for you and your family/friends. Others don’t want the “solutions” you guys throw at them. Places like MadinAmerica, SurvivingAntidepressants etc. came up precisely because of those “solutions” thrust onto people.

        I am grateful for this place. It was a lot worse between 2000-2010 before this place became somewhat popular and the only thing you got in return for saying anything back to psychiatrists and their kapo-like patient supporters/families was getting called a scientologist or being mocked into oblivion.

        I totally get that people suffer from a myriad of problems and need help in those vulnerable moments. Everyone does, and not just in the context of mental health, but other life problems too. But just because something is a solution for you, doesn’t mean it’s a solution for others.

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    • Schizophrenic people (in fact, all people with a mental illness) are far, far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Also, several studies have shown that patients who are medicated for a period of crisis and then gradually tapered off the meds do much better in the long term than patients who remain on long-term antipsychotics.

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    • The burden of proof is on the experts to prove that there *is* a genetic link, not for anyone to disprove their claim.
      Billions of dollars have been spent looking for this so-called genetic link, or biomarker, as Thomas Insel, former head of the NIMH admitted. None has been found.

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      • And as falsifiability requires, it should be possible to prove there isn’t a link. That should be possible, should be doable, before doing experiments, otherwise it’s not science.

        Not just the burden of proof not being met, it should be possible to call it quits at some point: falsifiability.

        Which in psychiatry never will be, it’s pseudoscientific…

        And not proving a hypothesis should be evidence that the opposite hypothesis must be true. Excluded middle. The P, the significance, stands in the way, but that’s why science should do conclusive experiments, not fishing trips.

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        • Or maybe they can tally up the amount of money they’ve spent searching for a genetic link, however many billions of dollars, and spend an equal amount studying the hypothesis that there is no link — put all of that money into environmental improvements for a given population (some of whom have relatives who experienced unshared reality), following them from birth through age 40, make sure they have all of their basic needs met, love, safety, encouragement. Protect them from trauma as much as possible, but if trauma happens, give them support…and see how they do.

          Pro-status quo psychiatry proponents say that we don’t offer other solutions. There are solutions, but they require a reallocation of the funds that are now spent looking for a genetic link.

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    • It’s not paranoia to believe that people want to see you locked up and force drugged in this society. I’m aware on a constant basis that someone might try to subject me to forced treatment or violate my rights in some way because of my “record”. That’s just reality, and it’s gotten a lot worse (more surveillance, more messaging to report people who look “suspicious”, more intolerance.)

      Imagine if some of those billions of dollars still being spent looking for biomarkers and force drugging people were instead spent on basic things like food, clothing, shelter, treatment for medical issues (without the threat of forced psychiatry) and community spaces.

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      • Basic universal income for all psychiatrists to leave everyone else alone!.

        Or just legalize now illegal drugs and put psychiatrists as physicians experts in addiction to provide safe, affordable care in facilities to do that. They hook up people on chemicals that cause dependency now, just a small step for the benefit of mankind.

        Like 21th century opium houses to keep psychiatrists employed in ways less harmfull. No much difference considering only that.

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    • “Why, then, should a schizophrenic who refuses to accept SSI, clothing, or medication that keeps them from arming themselves with weapons be allowed to do so?? Consider their potential victims when deciding to do no harm. And fund treatment and better drugs. ”

      Why should an industry that statistically has caused a spike of mental illness with their treatment, an epidemic (one in more than 2000 used to be seen as “schizophrenic” now it’s one in 100), why should they be given the green flag to continue, when other modalities other treatments never have caused such a spike. And WHY should an industry whose treatments also correlate with the spike in the problem involving arms mentioned be allowed to continue with such treatments? Before the biological theory of “mental illness” there weren’t all these mass shootings. Psychiatric drugs are in the category of “medications” that correlate the most with causing violence. You can go to https://www.ssristories.net/ and find a whole plethora of stories regarding the violence coming from just antidepressants, with the drugs for “schizophrenia” there are quite a few stories a well, only that information is often withheld because of medical confidentiality.

      You’d have to be going on about a treatment that correlates with recovery, not just a drugging regimen which for an initial interim causes less symptoms at a marginal level, but then afterwards causes more relapsing, loss of life, disability, more cost, more addiction, and then when this sets in it’s blamed on there not being enough of the “treatment” that in the long run correlates with all of that.

      And IF you are going to go on about who is allowed to arm themselves, you might start with a country that spends more money on the military than any other country, or whole groups of other countries, a country with a whole list of questionable interventions and “strategic” alliances that in reality keep a whole list of developing countries destabilized and vulnerable to exploitation where it would be redundant for me to go into, a country that also has more mass shootings than any other country, and also has more psychiatric drugging that any other…….https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/may/mental-health-conditions-substance-use-comparing-us-other-countries

      In contrast, countries that don’t have the money for such mass drugging regarding “mental illness” the WHO has shown that there’s more recovery, even when the asylum setting is quite a bit more harsh…….

      Who is losing “money” would it get better?

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    • That doesn’t just apply to a “schizophrenic”. Obviously anyone who is being irrationally harmful to someone who has done no harm to them must be prevented from doing so.

      Distrust and paranoia cannot be symptoms of the disease given that the “disease” itself is “diagnosed” on the basis of having such behaviours. It would be interesting to know why that person is paranoid. He could be irrationally paranoid (where someone is actually safe and still believes someone is out to get them) or paranoid for rational reasons like KateL puts it:

      It’s not paranoia to believe that people want to see you locked up and force drugged in this society. I’m aware on a constant basis that someone might try to subject me to forced treatment or violate my rights in some way because of my “record”. That’s just reality.

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    • It’s amazing how people are able to other someone by just using the term “why should a schizophrenic be allowed to do X” rather than simply saying that someone who is delusional or irrationally paranoid needs to be prevented from harming someone else. Naturally I or anyone else wouldn’t want someone who is delusional and thinks I’m Satan from coming after me with a weapon.

      We need to fight till a day comes where making a statement like “why should a schizophrenic be allowed to do X” is seen in the same light and receives the same social condemnation as saying “why should a n*g*r be allowed to run free from the plantation”.

      Also, consider, that sometimes the meds have such awful unwanted effects that people try to come off them in ways which are not appropriate because they have no other option. Going back to a psychiatrist or confiding in family might be too dangerous (coercion, control etc.). Those situations may make a person behave in an aggressive manner due to drug withdrawal putting other people in unnecessary danger. There definitely should be some way to help people in such situations but in such a way that they don’t have more psychiatry and more diagnoses thrust on them.

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      • Sure, most of us here would avoid them like areas infested with the bubonic plague as much as we can. Not just the doctors, probably even patients or family members of patients like yourself. Many times people such as yourself, who either find relief because a drug has reduced years of suffering, or they’ve been able to get rid of a problematic family member or get them in control come here outraged because it is hard to accept what has helped them in life has been pretty damaging to someone else. It’s been a pattern on this site for years.

        But it is what it is. I can accept that you have found some solution to your problem in the hands of some psychiatrist if you can also accept that there is some serious harm going on, despite their best wishes. Most psychiatrists are not “evil” per se. But that doesn’t matter.

        In any case, I think improvements in AI, patient coalition groups, collaborative websites etc. might give back some agency back to sufferers rather than psychiatrists. They already do in small ways.

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  13. Or an attempt by well meaning but flawed people doing their best. Similar to every other specialty in Healthcare. OB/GYN comes to mind with routines that are physician focused and not patient focused. Higher education/training could offer new methods and perspectives. Once out of formal training Healthcare professionals are at the mercy of big Pharma, Big insurance, and corporate Healthcare systems. It’s over at that point when it comes to change.

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    • Healthcare professionals have freedom of choice. People being subjected to forced psychiatry don’t have that freedom.

      Healthcare professionals could effect substantive change in short order if they so desired. Together, they have an enormous amount of power and influence. They choose to comply with an authoritarian, pseudoscientific, dehumanizing “helping system” that’s actively harming people.

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      • I agree, KateL, it’s so sad. As one pediatrician – who I confronted with the systemic harms of the mass psych drugging of our children said – “It’s too profitable to end” the systemic neurotoxic poisoning of our children.

        It’s very sad, that mainstream medicine has seemingly lost their minds, due to their seemingly insatiable greed.

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  14. Superior beings, when of late
    they saw a mortal man unfold
    all nature’s law
    Admired such wisdom in a
    mortal shape
    And showed a Newton as we
    Show an ape–Alexander Pope

    I can calculate the motion of
    heavenly bodies, but not the
    madness of people.–Isaac Newton

    I

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  15. “the failure to identify any genes for schizophrenia should definitively put to rest the notion that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder, according to E. Fuller Torrey.” I agree, this is a big confession from E. Fuller Torrey, albeit, based upon common sense and science.

    Let’s hope and pray some day he may also confess that the anticholinergic drugs, like the antipsychotics and antidepressants, can create “hallucinations” and “psychosis,” via anticholinergic toxidrome.

    Plus the antipsychotics / neuroleptics can also create the negative symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome.

    So, in reality, most “schizophrenia” is likely an iatrogenic – not “genetic” – illness.

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  16. I think the article is a little misleading especially broad stroke with all the headlines, they are more sensational if anything.

    Science works by discovery and learning (whether by finding something new or failing to find something), and each step opens a door to new questions.

    If going just by what the article says is happening instead. To clarify, although in science exact mechanisms aren’t known yet, it has been shown by many that environment directly impacts the human genome. Famous example, starved pregnant mothers during world war passed on their response to starvation to as much as their grandkids (through epigenetics). Schizophrenia is a complex disease, so maybe its not a single gene but the interplay of many coding or non coding genes. Or if it’s only the environmental, it could be how body epigenetically (e.g. maybe by changes in some methylation marks) stores dealing with trauma.

    The human genome project has opened the doors for seeing how much more complexity exists in how the genome stores information. We are fascinatingly complex beings biologically. Hence, just saying science has failed is not accurate and also hurtful to taxpayers whose money has been spent on research, as well as disrespectful to scientists who work hard constantly learning and updating knowledge. More than anything, it is evident that different fields of research need to work together to bridge the gap between behavior to and response to environment at both the level of an individual and at the level of how the individuals genome is incorporating the information, only then can one truly understand and help people in the future.

    Granted scientists need to work better with communicating to the public, but articles like these that don’t do full homework are not fair.

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    • Articles like this are not fair? It’s not fair to have my life destroyed by pseudoscience-practicing, power-tripping brain-shocking drug pushers. It’s not fair to have a label slapped on me and written in my chart that means I had to stop going to the doctor because they only hurt people with that label. It’s not fair that my brother died at 50 after being force drugged because he grew up in an abusive home.

      I hope articles like this become the norm and mainstream media finally starts telling the truth about psychiatry. I hope future generations don’t have to suffer the way 3 generations of my family have suffered because doctors sold out to pharma.

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    • “I think the article is a little misleading especially broad stroke with all the headlines, they are more sensational if anything.”

      Why is this article “misleading” or “sensational”, compared with this pattern in the mainstream media in the past 30 years, as pointed out by Torrey, where one study would find a “breakthrough” genetic correlation, but the next study would prove it wrong, and would find a completely different correlation and get heralded as another “breakthrough”—until the next one proved it wrong and found a new “breakthrough”?

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      • All the media articles and media soundbites that falsely proclaim the existence of a “schizophrenic” gene (or set of genes) ALWAYS appear on the front page of newspapers, or are the lead story on the nightly news.

        The scientific stories that subsequently disprove the original research will SOMETIMES appear on page 17, or page 37, in a tiny corner of a newspaper, and it may never reach the nightly news.

        The power and profit of psychiatry and Big Pharma (and all their “genetic theories of original sin”) determines whether or not “truth” will be disseminated to the masses.

        Richard

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        • You have said it so well, Richard! Thank you!

          Yes, front pages and the lead stories are controlled by the power and profit-driven force. They decide on what “truth” to have the masses to hear. We need to be very careful about that.

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    • “To clarify, although in science exact mechanisms aren’t known yet” they are known enough to prove hypothesis repeatedly, time and time again.

      No real science comes empty handed after at least 30yrs of experiments in the 20th-21st century. That does not happen*. It would cut the funding for such experiments, no questions asked.

      A private corporation would have fired the whole department after the few failed experiments. Not after more than 30yrs. Probably no industry would have picked up that field of research if knew about the failures.

      “Schizophrenia is a complex disease…”, a car is complex too, it is driven with 2-3 pedals, one transmission control device and a driving wheel. The complex computer is turned on with a button, controlled by a keyboard and a mouse. Complexity has nothing to do with the failures of researchers.

      Psychiatry research can only drive you to failure. This review shows that quite convincingly.

      Science hasn’t failed, psychiatric researchers did.

      This article is way more than fair, it is great!.

      *String theory might be an exception.

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  19. That’s sad I hope they find some link one day, though it’s scary if that knowledge were abused to accomplish political goals. Society needs scapegoats I reckon mental health peeps will always be a target.

    In my opinion there certainly can be a link between painful memories and mental health. I guess this article backs up my previous point of view. 8 billion dollars dang, that’s more then Trump milked from his Daddy for Pete’s sake.

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  21. Sczophrenia is caused by spiritual practices in occults and in Hinduism. Opening up the spiritual or third eye. This is what Egypt was practicing during the rise of Israel. It affected King David and his descendants.
    This is why most of the world fell away from such practices however there are still some around who practice such arts.
    Unfortunately my daughters have it to and I was blessed enough to know who attacked them. He in fact was a Satanist. The illusions they experienced are dark shrouded in evil.
    We must make great medical and spiritual efforts to thwart this ungodly afflictions. Most people didn’t agree to it nor did they ask for it and their inner emotional gardens are completely in turmoil and chaos.
    Nothing makes since to them, we must abolish the occults all over the world.
    Those who kill a bunch of people and say a voice told them to do it is a prime example of what I have said above.

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    • I thought the old Solomon brought suffering by marrying foreign women, nothing to do with David, I think his father?.

      And Solomon controlled demons with a ring?. Was that a do or do not?. Like mingling with the diabolical is ok if you put a ring on it?.

      And the one with no name forgave, as far as I poorly understand some of David’s and Solomon’s descendants because, well, you know boys!. I’ll talk to Solomon later, you younger fellows behave, you know the drill: If you don’t you will be for generations, this, that and the other, and the descendants of your descendants, etc. Seed issues I presume.

      Kidding, just for fun, lightening up the mood 🙂

      Your picture looks like a younger Barbra, kudos!, no offense intended.

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  22. The 2010 study Torrey uses is flawed in that it does not account for a broader period of time or socioeconomic forces, let alone a seeming increase in misdiagnosis and treatment. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia by a chiropractor who had a questionable MD and for over 20 years I was required to take Abilify, which has caused permanent damage to my heart. Only recently have I been given a reevaluation by competent psychiatric team. Repeated violence inflicted by my mother, including suffocations while sleeping, being repeatedly abandoned on highways and an extremely violent abduction attempt by a child predator who I ultimately killed by a knife hidden in my bed, all before age of 7. These are just highlights, my point is I never had schizophrenia, but severe ptsd, depression, anxiety, survivor’s guilt and continual violence against me by my mother, sister, sexual battery/r*pe by both female and male neighbors, etc. A lifetime of abuse and misdiagnosis which I’m only now able to openly discuss now my entire family has passed away. As for Torreys conclusions and the 2010 study, the severe angst, fear, mistrust, in women and absence of legal support…ie rule of law for men, men are not wanting relationships with women at least in America. Men do not want marriage or children and this polarization between sexes is growing. It has nothing to do with schizophrenia or any mental illness. I would even advance that part, not all, of the trans movement is in response to the perceived treatment of men in America by the vocal majority of American females. I see the ‘genuine’ part of the trans movement sympathetic to straight mens social plight with women, the rest of the trans movement is a faceted spectrum largely a fad that will fade with time. To conclude mental illness has anything to do with the birthrate is absurd!

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  23. I have a feeling that there is more of a chance for schizophrenia to be linked to certain programming from television commercials played in certain sequences and song play lists “randomized” by ML or algorithms than from… Cats.

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  24. Sczophrenia is caused by spiritual practices in occults and in Hinduism. Opening up the spiritual or third eye. This is what Egypt was practicing during the rise of Israel. It affected King David and his descendants.
    This is why most of the world fell away from such practices however there are still some around who practice such arts.
    Unfortunately my daughters have it to and I was blessed enough to know who attacked them. He in fact was a Satanist. The illusions they experienced are dark shrouded in evil.
    We must make great medical and spiritual efforts to thwart this ungodly afflictions. Most people didn’t agree to it nor did they ask for it and their inner emotional gardens are completely in turmoil and chaos.
    Nothing makes since to them, we must abolish the occults all over the world.
    Those who kill a bunch of people and say a voice told them to do it is a prime example of what I have said above.
    My daughter is on vraylar 6MG and though it calms her down the only thing that really works is blessed salt and Holy Water. Deliverance from Christ to be free of this disorder.

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    • What about angels?, is that spiritual realm ok?.

      Riding a querub chariot to go into battles with legions of the opponents, strictly speaking as per the old testament, would be ok?.

      Did Ezekiel had a bad trip?

      What about muzzling angels after opened mouth disbelief?, that works for psychaitry?.

      Again, just kidding, lightning up the mood 🙂

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  25. I think one of the main reasons a lot of people jump on the genetics bandwagon regarding “schizophrenia” and other so-called psychiatric diseases is because they are afraid of looking critically at their own lives and feelings. It’s too much for them. Their irrational fear explains why they react like the devil themselves and feel justified punishing people who make them uncomfortable.

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  27. It has been known for at least 50 years that a monozygotic twin with a schizophrenic twin will have close to a 50% risk of being diagnosed with the disorder. I taught neuropharmacology to medical students for forty years and closely follow both the biological research and the clinical trials.

    An immediate problem is that “Schizophrenia” is a rubric for multiple disease with different pathologies that have altered thought as a common phenotype. To use Crow’s nomenclature: type 2 schizophrenics are withdrawn, by their mid-20s exhibit dementia and have a CAT scan that resembles a 75-yr old with Alzheimer’s disease (global neuronal cell loss, but no plaques or tangles). Beckmann found that 2/3 of type 1 schizophrenics have abnormal neurons and disordered layers in the cortex, especially the ventral temporal lobe. And about 1/3 of type 1s show neither global cell loss nor disordered cortex.

    A psychiatrist administering the same drug to these 3 different persons and expecting the same result meets the definition of insanity. The attempt to identify biological markers without separating the different pathologies is doomed to failure. The same is true for Alzheimer’s, depression and other disorders.

    This, decades and $billions have been wasted and people continue to suffer.

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    • In my experience, psychiatrists just put everyone on antipsychotics. I was on them for 20 years, supposedly for borderline personality disorder. They give them to people who they say have bipolar disorder (any of the 8 kinds). They use them as an “adjunct” for people with depression. They give them to the people they say have schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia. They give them to people in nursing homes, people with dementia, children.

      I agree its insanity. Maybe the psychiatrists should all be locked up.

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    • I think none of what you mention is actually true.

      This review reports 17% percent concordance among identical twins, not 50%.

      There is no schizophrenia brain shrinking, there are several MIA reviews about that being neuroleptic induced shrinking. Another falsity.

      No abnormal neurons have been found in schizophrenia, none, zero, nada. There was a dialog a few months ago here at MIA between a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist around that issue, partially. A letter bromance sort of sparky affair.

      Perhaps you got anchored to research that was not reproduced afterwards even you apparently repeated it to your students?.

      This MIA review goes into failures at replication in genetic research on schizophrenia. GWAS or SNPs I think?. Or was it linkage disequilibrium?.

      It is the history of psychiatric research. Old one, centenial at that. Hard to miss if one actualy looks for it.

      There are books by Andrew Scull, the latest has “desperate remedies” in the title, I think. It brought me up to speed on the history of recurrent failure of psychiatric treaments, remedies.

      He also has a previous very short introduction from Cambridge press that covers the same material in less detail, 140 pages long I think.

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    • I have read the same statistics regarding schizophrenia only what you’re sighting as proof was shown to be caused by the neuroleptic medications. In fact Wikipedia in 2007 still listed the same bogus data but then it was taken off. Anybody seriously looking at this with articulate information knows that for years the damage done by the medications for schizophrenia were used in attempt to make out that that damage was genetic. This had to be challenged and then it was shown that it was the medications. Again honest business does not behave in such a manner. I don’t know where you get this information regarding twins but if that’s true it seems awfully strange that this isn’t reported more widely. What they had been doing was when they were counting twins if there was a concordance with another twin all of a sudden there were four different twins both concording with each other rather than just the one pair and that then was using the statistics. Again an amazing act of misrepresenting the real data in order to make out that there’s something there that isn’t.

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  28. Schizophrenia is a disease causes by Opiate Withdrawal

    the “Monkey” on the Backs of Junkies is a VOICE

    at some some point in the Addicts journey thru the addiction they come upon a withdrawal psychosis one friend called ” Whose the Monkey” where they get confused as to which voice is theirs and which is the “Monkeys”

    and then you have Genetic Junkies whose families have been addicted for many generations in a row in their ancestral DNA

    European Hominids have had an Opiate problem since before the Last Ice Age, Ukraine was a Wild Poppy Field forever until they planted sunflowers in the past 150 years, every Tribe that Invaded Europe stopped in that Vicinity before invading!

    the Piece of the Genetic Puzzle left unexplored

    I know this is correct as I have grown up with LSD heads that had no mental problems till they started messing with Dope, and some of them went extremely crazy after giving up psychedelic’s and diving into Narcotics!

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    • I think, I believe, labeling someone with schizophrenia is caused by symbolic interpreation dysfunction in the mind of the labeler.

      Like some false ideas cause cognitive distortions in the mind of believers in the reality of schizophrenia.

      Like seeing a UFO in every airplane, ballon or atmospheric phenomena, just by believing UFOs are real. And some other characteristics I assume.

      An unexplored and more fertile research ground to look for the existance of UFOs, sorry, I mean, schizophrenia.

      I want to believe in UFOs, perhaps why the typo, I hope I don’t start seen them everywhere. Just one convicing case would be enough for me.

      There are several almost in Richard Dolan’s two book set!, if anyone is interested…

      Long live Richard Dolan, he..is…the greatest!.

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  29. I don’t know what the answer is. As a mother of an adult son with schizophrenia, who has lived with me most of his life, I could tell you the events of his life, and perhaps it could be compared to others’ stories to find a pattern. He has experienced trauma and toxic stress, but so has his sister, who does not live with schizophrenia. Our family was never around cats because I’m allergic and so is my daughter. Is uncle has schizophrenia so that is our familiar connection. He was born in winter which also seems to be a commonality.

    I can say in my experience, large mental institutions are not the answer. He has been in and out twice and seemed to get worse. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put someone whos paranoid thru metal detectors, security guards and locked wards with unfamiliar people and expect them to get better. As a matter of fact, my son thought he was there to be tortured. He actually had a better experience and outcome when he stayed at our local hospital on two occasions, once as an inpatient and once as an outpatient.

    Dismantling the huge mental health facility and creating neighborhood clinics was the best thing that happened in our city. It is safe, familiar, family oriented and has CITs (Crisis Intervention Teams) available. We could actually use more of them within our city – like one on every block as I know three young adults with schizophrenia within six blocks of me (which confirmed shockingly to me that it affects about 1 in every 100 people).

    The CITs will even come to our house to talk to and encourage my son to take care of himself and make healthy decisions.

    It wasn’t too long ago that the police were the only ones aloud to “help” him even though he is a totally passive, quiet. Introverted and frightened individual. As you can imagine that situation did not help at all.

    In fact, most of you already know that those with schizophrenia are more likely to be the victims of a crime not the cause of them.

    All the medications he’s been on has not helped, he either feels like a zombie or numb or doesn’t feel at all.

    I can tell you he’s extremely talented both creatively and mathematically. In fact what helps him the most is talking to a local psychologist (which there is a shortage of) and keeping busy doing projects, creating, reading and learning. He does take a small amount of medication (most of the time) enough to help him cope without being flat. But mostly he has learned to live with and take charge of his voices.

    As I said I don’t know the answer but I think it at least has something to do with a vulnerability to toxic stress. If we could eliminate that on day one – it may be the start of an end to one of the most dehabiiting, self-destructive illnesses of all time. Thanks for taking time to read this.

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    • You make a lot of sense, Yvette. Your son is lucky to have a mother like you. My brother suffered and had similar responses to being locked up and force-treated. He’s at rest, now, I hope. I’m worried about my son. I know what the “help” out there can look like, especially since I was a victim of forced treatment. We can do much better as a society for people who are vulnerable.

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  30. Imagine if they spent all those hundreds of billions over the past decades on providing a foundation for those impaired and those who are incapacitated due to unknown causes and provide provide supports like housing, proper food, and a sense of community?

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  31. Sincere thanks to Peter and to MIA for a meticulous and magnificent report, even if one which lacks scores of tremendously important quotation marks.

    Does the Yeti exist? Sasquatch? The Abominable Snowman? Do neanderthals still walk on this planet? For all I know, they all may do. And no amount of complete absences of evidence may yet amount to any evidence of their complete absence.

    Does modern Medicine still preach that we humans have nociceptors and noceciceptive pathways just about everywhere throughout our bodies – except in our brains…when a thought experiment can prove that the reverse is true?

    I believe it does!

    Eckhart Tolle, in “Stillness Speaks,” observes:

    “The human condition: lost in thought.”

    Our minds, left to their own devices, think thought after thought and produce emotion after emotion…mostly to try and ensure our and/or our genes’ survival, or so it seems to me.

    And, of course, “nothing’s either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

    Don’t you agree?

    https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/where-do-feelings-come-from/

    The human condition, up until now, for the most part IS a mental condition.

    Peter, in his excellent essay, I believe twice refers to “mental illness,” but only once wraps it in “”

    Peter mentions “mental disorders” and “psychiatric disorders” along with “schizophrenia” and “bipolar disorder ” repeatedly without, I believe, once wrapping them in “” or calling them “so-called:” Peter and MIA give them some legitimacy.

    A psychiatric disorder may be the appropriate term for any disorder induced by psychiatry.

    If our psyches consist of both our minds (thoughts and emotions) and our awareness, then psychiatry, or psyche-healing, itself, is also a misnomer, and at more than one level.

    I suggest that our very expensive and extremely valuable Human Genome Project has yielded many treasures, so far, and that not least of these is the legitimacy of never agreeing to type any such term as “schizophrenia “ or “mental disorder” or “clinical depression” without “”, at least.

    There is and can be no behavior, no sign and no symptom which is itself a disease or disorder – neither hallucinations of ANY kind nor mood swings nor grief (however prolonged!), nor hopelessness nor fearfulness.

    There may be any number of brain or nervous or “neurological” diseases and disorders, but neither “personality illnesses” nor “mental illnesses” nor “mental disorders.”

    The ancient Jews had many, many words for “sin,” and our modern bibles, the DSM’s and their authors even vastly more numerous terms for their supposed thinking disorders.

    The Greeks spoke of “hamartia” – missing the mark, the point.

    Perhaps to suffer is simply to miss, or to forget the point of our human experience?

    If (Jewish) psychiatrist Viktor Frank, by dint of his own immense suffering and sacrifices, was closer to the mark, or hit the bullseye in suggesting that we can find purpose and meaning and thereby alleviate our own and others’ sufferings, are we now not all waking up to this fact?

    In a follow-up comment, I hope to show that the painstaking work of Jill Bolte Taylor has yielded similar precious results to the HGP by showing that “schizophrenia” etc. are not to be found by…

    https://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU?si=U11W4AhvDuMNRYsq

    But perhaps we none of us should have needed either the genome or Jill to demonstrate what Thomas Szasz has already so thoroughly proven – the myth of “mental illness?”

    Thanks again for outstanding service, MIA and Peter.

    Thanks, too, not just to those souls who played and play the roles of Carl Jung, R.D. Laing, Loren Mosher, Thomas Szasz and Joanna Moncrieff, but also, EQUALLY, to those who have played the roles of Allen Frances, E. Torrey Fuller, Ronald Pies and, not least H. Steven Moffic, also!

    “Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just as it must be.”

    And:

    “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.” –

    Niels Bohr – Wikiquote.

    Namaste, and have a great, GREAT day!

    Tom.

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  34. That’s a nice admition, although partial that a huge important chunk of psychiatric research is worthless. Also no brain abnormalities, no biological markers, no symptoms distinguishable from normal. NO, zero, nada of hypothesis.

    From this review I am flabergasted if comprehensive that the conclusion that schizophrenia is not genetic is because schizophrenia does not exist is not clearly stated yet.

    I’ve argued also from two paragraphs of the DSM, the irrationality of the concepts and symbols, words of psychiatry for such inexistence, and now genetic studies do support that inexistence. More for my arguments, not hypotheses.

    That I think it’s the most parsimonious and productive interpretation from the reviewed results to me in this great MIA post: schizophrenia is not real. Kudos!.

    The “would have died out” narrative is such a compelling case with real scientific basis: evolution.

    Since the reality without much thinking the whys, almost agnostically, already provided said historic experiment: Diagnoses have increased of a disease that actually makes people less fertile. Contrary to evolutionary reasoning, or else a part of schizo is advantageous, unclear why. As I pushed in another MIA post on epigenetics, autism and schizophrenia from older fathers.

    Bridging the gap, contortively: schizophrenia might be advantegous when there is no diagnosis of it. No persecution of it, no medication of it, no incarceration of it, etc. Smart sensitive, caring, intuitive, spiritual fellows in a humane society, what can go wrong with that?. The different that can’t stand diversity at least.

    Paradoxically, a nature message saying this is a good thing, why are you humans trying to supress it?!.

    Motives might be there, and those are in the mind, predominantly of the diagnostitians, not on the labeled. A more fertile avenue to research if schizophrenia exists, it should be there represented like symbols in the mind of believers in the reality of schizophrenia. In the detector of the phenomena, not in the phenomena itself.

    Researchers, research thyselves!, hihihi (mouth covered).

    As people who believe, feel God, apparently have different “workings” on their brains going on than in atheists, such as myself. An that mostly works for them!, and I am gratefull that is the case. I try to embrace diversity not to put it off like it was a fire…

    Returning from lalaland: therefore it’s not genetic and might after all not be real, counterintuitively. Like “mass delusions”, witch-hunting, ufo waves, big-foot sightings, fads, fashions and fallacies, etc. Nonsense in short, irrationality at it’s most apparent, it’s most evident. Concealed behind the psychiatric rhetoric…

    This is starting to look like a dance of many veils, the genetic one lifted and they can’t see something does not exist…

    Now, the social factors increasing the diagnoses, not the detection of A disease are 6 times more influential than genetic ones. That suggests the diagnosis, not the disease is a social thing.

    As per the hypothesis of being biological, brain based on the labeled.

    Second, if it were somehow related to the environment in a physicial not social way, that would have appeared in the genetic studies.

    Like genes for susceptibility to Toxoplasma, to the toxic effects of environmental and food chemicals. The discordance among identical twins kind of points that way?. Then perhaps, no susceptibility required to any of those environmental factors to be labeled with schizophrenia.

    In fact, genetics might decrease the chances because the concordance among identical twins is HALF, not similar, than infectious, communicable diseases.

    As is the case for mercury, lead and the like: there are genes that make one susceptible to the brain damage from exposure to them. Mostly by toxicokinetics: absorption, distribution, accumulation, elimination, etc.

    That should have been picked up in the genetic studies. They unwittingly already did that! and apparently found no lead from the genetics. Zero, no, nada of leads.

    A blank page to start again looking somewhere else for the inexistant.

    So, to me no veil lifted: Case closed, researchers were test crash dummies… 🙂

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  35. I haven’t read through the comments yet, but I would be very surprised if anyone has mentioned the research of Hubbard, or any other later “fringe” researchers, into the whole realm of reincarnation and past lives.

    Though it has been widely demonstrated outside of academia, and inside academia by Ian Stevenson’s group, that past life recall does exist and can be accurate, everyone in the field of mental health acts like they have never heard of it.

    This is extremely unhelpful in moving the discussion forward. In the realm of human psychology, past lives is an obvious place to look for the origin of emotional disorders. And not only that, past lives have been looked into, origins found, and people helped on that basis. That so many in the field are totally ignorant of these facts is deplorable and needs to be remedied.

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  36. Larry, more fundamentally, you may agree, the unspoken but, in Western societies, at least, pervasive assumption that we each have but one, finite human lifetime may naturally be used, even by the most well-meaning, to justify drastic, forced “treatments” of those considered erring, deviant, misguided.

    Once we buy into this assumption, we may reasonably conclude that we are always behind time, and never starting from the right place, that we cannot possibly be all equal and that there are good guys and bad guys: We have endless cause fro existential angst.

    Indeed, it may be understood that this is what Abramic/Abrahamic religions have been teaching us for many generations past, and that, like The Serpent in the Garden, by convincing us we are actually flawed miscreants, and imbuing us with shame, having been made to believe absurdities, we have been persuaded to commit atrocities – not least such human rights abuse as coercive psychiatry.

    “Caesar made similar observations:

    With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed. Subsidiary to the teachings of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on the stars and their movement, on the extent and geographical distribution of the earth, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion.

    — Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, VI, 14 – according to Wikipedia,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid

    (but I think it was actually Book VII).

    Like compelling past life evidence, I think a rapidly growing number of NDE accounts nowadays also supports the understanding that we must be immortal beings, don’t you?

    And, when we are no longer in such an unending race, hellbent on getting things right first time, we can relax, be patient, and even listen to one another, for as long as it takes – right?

    “Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her. Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks, which may be for half an hour or forty-five minutes. During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-product of this work. But first of all listen with compassion.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh.

    Thank you very much for your fascinating comments, Larry.

    Namaste!

    Tom.

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  37. Thank you for this excellent summary.
    However, with the extraordinary amount of manic depression, ADHD, psychosis, delusions, deaths from ECT, deaths caused by antipsychotics, trauma, improvement with lithium, etc, etc., over many generations in my family – I would be grateful if our tax dollars researched every possible angle – including environmental – to see just what’s what.
    There are only two of the lot of us – in the younger generation – who opted to have children, for a wide assortment of reasons. Perhaps the most prominent is the young set’s own struggles and feelings that they have too much on their own plates to take on the responsibility for little ones. Another has to do with the planet.

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  38. You are wrong about genes for depression. So far some people have been found to have defects in the serotonin receptor gene or the serotonin transmitter gene or in the case of mood instability, the CACNA1C and ANK3 genes. We are now able to test for those defects.

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    • There was a review here at MIA I think a few months ago that went over A meta-analysis that shows exactly that depression has no gene for it.

      The authors of that meta-analysis I think kind of claimed that the problem is there were dozens or a few hundred ways to be “depressed”.

      And that kind of added fuel to the, yet another try by psychiatry, to instead of using symptoms, use a framework that uses neurological signs.

      So, respectfully I think the information in your comment is quite wrong.

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    • We keep hearing this “we are now able to test for these defects”, yet not a single hospital I know of does this. Is there such a hospital that does that? What proportion of hospitals have these tests? 0.001% of them in the world? Don’t give me “they are unnecessary, expensive” etc. crap. All those are the same kind of excuses you hear with respect to neuroimaging in psychiatry.

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  39. Just a wild guess but how much with these billions of dollars and the consequent social forming that people are to believe there’s just something biologically wrong with schizophrenics, with all of that how much honest research was done actually talking to people who have recovered from schizophrenia or or are going through it and experience it themselves and know what might trigger them? It’s interesting that somebody who was actually involved with this research states that after those billions of dollars they found this and that but not what they were looking for and so is believed they still might find something although all this time they haven’t other than things not really related to what they were looking for, and the meantime the whole population was made to believe that people who are completely on the wrong track, and it’s interesting that Torrie Fuller is in another camp but he’s not listening either to those that have recovered or are experiencing it themselves really, he can talk about the wild goose chase but he’s just chasing another goose or animal that doesn’t exist, while the whole population is made to believe some convenient psychological story designed to make them think there is some evil being eradicated while there’s more than one camp completely on the wrong track, and not listening to those who actually have experienced healing or going through it themselves. If you’re part of a camp that actually correlates with recovery then you don’t get any attention. And if you don’t want to listen to those on the wrong track you’re force treated. And to excuse all of this is that we’ll still find something rather than taking note that you’re on the wrong track and put money into areas or effort into areas that are leading towards answers. And of course you’ll find something no matter how much money you put into the wrong path, let’s then make this out to be something amazing to deny that if you actually put money and effort into looking where it shows that there’s results that this will actually find perhaps more answers. Go on what’s called the wild goose chase and if you find anything this is amazing because you know there’s all this psychological fantastical Superman ideology involved and who knows what that’s supposed to lead into. As long as it’s fantastical great but if it’s actually practical and grounded and responsible no…..

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  40. Reading over the comments, after reading the article, is quite something.
    To begin with, when it’s stated that supposedly this 8 billion dollars of research that went nowhere led to the discovery of looking into MRNA and RNA molecular activity, and thus the road that lead to a dead end isn’t a waste of time, because now we’re to find another compelling solution:
    1) No, the discovery of MRNA or RNA in not thanks to looking for a genetic cause for “schizophrenia,” anyone can see where that research came from by looking it up online; and just because MRNA and RNA are related to genes doesn’t mean this is a new magic solution, added to that during the whole process of coming up with no results the solutions that were there offering results, these were denied because of this soon to be discovered, this making headway, this compelling evidence that never played out.
    2) There’s then reference to epigenetics. If you look that up: “Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.” you get EXACTLY the kind of therapy, when looking at environment, or behavior, the kind of therapy that has shown to help. Because it looks at environment and consequently behavior. We then are supposed to believe that the ideology which pushed the therapies to the side which have been shown to work, the ideology that couldn’t let go of believing in biological sources such as a chemical imbalance that’s partly genetic, that this ideology which force treated people, lead the world at large to believe what didn’t pan out was already the solution, that this ideology now will work because in the end the one good thing that came from it is or was what it was repressing from being allowed the whole time. EXCUSE ME! “We wore all these people out, didn’t let them rest, and now we find they need rest, an ideology we weren’t allowing before, so it’s good we know they need rest, because we will be able to tell you chemically how this works, but we don’t really know yet, which is the next need for funding us rather than what we repressed from being allowed that has shown to work…” That ISN’T about healing, it’s not about looking at clear evidence, it’s not about science, it’s about ideology, and who gets the money, and who gets a paycheck when they put their blinders on to hand out fantastical sounding solutions, super stories.
    3) All the stories that are anecdotal, anyone seeing connections they believe are genetic, or reasons why a person needs “treatment” this DOES NOT change the fact that these treatments have in the end lead to MORE of the problem they are said to heal, it DOES NOT take away the reality of all the people who have been FORCE treated in a way which, apart from these minority of cases used as media fodder that in the end, in the long run, there’s MORE of the problem, as well as less recovery. We are CONSTANTLY told that what in reality is statistically in correlation with a spike will be the solution. Statistically the result is that it has disabled their lives, put them in an environment where they can’t even express how the treatment makes them feel because of then being seen as non compliant and a danger which actually correlates in the spike caused by the treatment rather than being “non compliant” to it. And shortened their lives, and filled them and society with extreme fear of “symptoms” that when looked at in an intelligent manner to understand the underlying causes could be seen as necessary warning signals, or simply go away; while continued “treatment” correlates with less recovery.

    The people for whom it didn’t work; for whom it disabled their lives; for whom moving away from treatment, often through very difficult maneuvers, only gave them a portion of their lives back that the treatment was robbing them of, they aren’t given a voice, they aren’t acknowledged, their stories aren’t reported; and the people who learned not to avoid the symptoms, who learned what the symptoms were trying to tell them, whose lives were improved by understanding the expression of their symptoms and dealing with underlying causes, they again aren’t really given a voice, let alone that their understanding and ability to relate to what they’ve been through is listened to in order to actually do something mainstream that DOES NOT end up correlating in a spike of the problem, and then the call for more forced treatment, more funding, more tests for symptoms to treat more people which statistically then become included in a spike, in an epidemic…….

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  41. What is this about magic (or “holy”) pills, and the solution will be found by more “research!?” Add genetics….

    Isn’t this an old story? God doesn’t favor us, so we need to make an offering, if not sacrificing an animal, why not virgins or who knows what. And all of the fear it wages, as if not going along with such is why God doesn’t favor us, and the crops don’t grow, or who knows what. Like this person called “the dreamer” by his brothers and his father who had stolen his brother’s birthright, but ended up being able to prevent a famine interpreting the pharaoh’s dreams, which I don’t think happened because some goat or a virgin was massacred. Those are dreams, something on the inside, something you can deem reality based or not by the limitations put on what’s “sane” or not. Or look at how such a society worships trauma and fear. Anyone not controlled by it has something wrong with them.

    What all called “crazy” is being offered for “treatment” to this “God!?”

    Just to show where research doesn’t go, to go way over the bend, research doesn’t even go to people who have learned to understand what “non reality based” thoughts were trying to tell them, or the people that found how to just ease their mind without “medical” treatment, there’s stuff way beyond that.

    I literally TWICE in my life have had an illness, an actual physical illness that went away by help of someone that was deemed “crazy.” The first time (that I know of, I’m sure there are other incidents not so tangible) was when I had prostatitus, and I had actually had a session with a healer, on the phone, but nothing much happened. I had a tape of his, a friend had bought it, and awhile after my session with him, I got prostatitus, which isn’t pleasant at all, and was bogging me down significantly. I thought I should see this healer again (Gene Egidio who passed away 2009), and had actually called to make an appointment, had written out the check (not much, I think only 65$ so he could keep his centers open, he wasn’t at all well to do), but then in watching his tape, where one usually falls asleep for the healing, I did find myself falling asleep; and as I passed into wherever you go when you fall asleep (he says you go into the halls of learning) it was like the event horizon perhaps or so but I knew I would be healed. I woke up, and it was better, gone enough that I could tell how to change my behavior if it came back slightly for maybe a day, or maybe a week. That was 2005 and I haven’t had it the slight way it might come back for which didn’t really bog me down anymore for years, probably at least ten or so. But you see this healer, because healing happened around him as a child, given the environment and the control tactics of the Catholic Church, he was told that was from the devil, the priest tried to “exorcise” this demon, which didn’t do anything, and then a “psychiatrist” got involved and said if poor Gene would have shock therapy the devil wouldn’t like that and loosen his grip. You can listen to him tell his story about that starting here on this video: https://youtu.be/g9edB02jWP0?si=3DCCjzz487RKNw5w&t=721 And hear him tell how it all came back to him later in life, after the torture he endured because of the “psychiatrist.”

    Not just Gene, but a healer that recently has helped me I found out as a child ALSO had to deal with these “psychiatric” ideas, but somehow managed to be free of it. With what the medical profession is making out is “treatment” for “schizophrenia,” when one is having to deal with that possibly turning up every time you see a medical profession, one does start looking for other modalities. It really was incredibly stubborn of me. I had a tooth infection, it wasn’t because of decay, they had done treatment at the center that they didn’t need to, and it was irritating, I didn’t know it was causing me to grind at night, and I had caused trauma to the ligatures holding the teeth to my jaw, so the teeth hurt. After quite a few months, someone finally told me that they it was the ligatures, but I wasn’t told I would need a bit. By the time I found that out myself, the infection had started. I had ENOUGH of it. They couldn’t even inform me about what was going on enough to prevent all of that. The infection got really bad, but I just wanted something beyond them to heal it, and I wanted to see what what’s called a miracle really is, this would be what I could invest in when the medical establishment was acting so paranoid and actually unprofessional. I tried all sorts of stuff, and colloidal silver in the end sprayed with a water pik machine into the gum area of that one tooth held it at bay, but it didn’t really get better. Then I found a healer (after an experience I might detail later, which told me it WOULD heal); this is Carol Everett who has a healing sanctuary (Carol Everett Healing Sanctuary) and she’s actually been tested in Japan where they determined she (or rather the healing energy she brings down from the source), got a cancerous tumor to dissolved in ten minutes. Going into her healing sanctuary, the infection got better enough that it wasn’t hold me back. Before this it would make me tired, I felt woozy, if I was outside in the cold my gums hurt. That took three months meditating each day for the healing energies. I had to laugh when I had a healing spurt, and it simply was better, because I had turned around the corner, and it just was better. The infection still turned up in x-rays for maybe a couple of years, but I got them to leave it alone, and the last couple of years it’s simply gone, which puzzles the dentists. There were at least 5 x-rays where the infection turned up, but when it was gone, first the dentist said if that was the first x-ray they never would have determined there was an infection; and then the second time made a remark about it being a wrong x-ray. I supposed I was supposed to point out that then there were FIVE wrong x-rays, and there truly might be something wrong with their machinery, or how they interpret the x-rays, but hearing this kind of stuff so often, people finagling to keep their beliefs going, I didn’t say anything yet. What’s the funniest, is when I thought that this had been going on long enough, it still was bothering me a bit, the tooth, and I started to think I was just being stubborn, or even “crazy” obsessed with this miracle thing, that I was glorifying this stuff out of wack, and maybe should just have the tooth pulled. THAT was when the first x-ray showed the infection was gone, but I had first said to the dentist: “maybe I should have the tooth pulled now,” and he came back saying there was no sign of an infection. So EXACTLY when I thought this is “crazy” was when I was shown it WAS NOT! Sorry, but that’s the fact. Turn out that poor Carol ALSO as a child had to deal with some “medical” person asking her about her hearing voices. That’s talked about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfKQJClFjDA

    And to add to this, when the healing happened with Carol’s help, with her sanctuary, her virtual sanctuary, it became clear to me that it had to do with stuff I was picking up, thoughts I had that were made out to not only be “schizophrenic” to be non reality based, but signs that I might get violent. To begin with I never could get violent, it was more the people trying to make out I could with their alarmist need to think they were finding some danger that wasn’t there, it was more their paranoia that could become violent, actually. And then the stuff called non reality based, this actually was perspective on the matrix of thoughts, and what one invests in, that allow a miracle, the healing that happened. There were a group of people, involving a social worker who could look into her computer and see I had a diagnosis, and they were already trying to make me out to be some dangerous person. This social worker was teaching a “yoga” class at parks and recreation, which I was taking, and had I known how brainwashed and paranoid she was, I NEVER would have taken any of her classes, that’s that. What’s really quite funny, is that in taking her classes, I heard a voice tell me to not even ask her questions after class, to simply go to class and then leave, which bothered me, because I knew there was no concern, I had paid for the class, had legitimate questions, and so still asked simple questions or shared things, which I later found were all HORRIBLY misinterpreted. I didn’t know this paranoia was going on, and in disassociating from it had entered a matrix of thought depicting such investment in alarmist paranoia, and then also stereotyping, and symbolism that went with it involving some stuff I had already encountered in life, and then also some confusion on my own part. But this yoga teacher actually said to a judge, in trying to make me out to be a dangerous psychotic, that: “I know, trust me, he doesn’t hear voices, he sees things that aren’t there, they’re non reality based.” with such pretension, I don’t know how to describe it. You only find this with fundamentalists, like those who think they have some special knowledge. Seriously, when I had clearly heard a voice, and her interpretation would be would I hear such, that it would be non reality based, but I did, and the voice was. I also know which spirit that would be, but that gets into a lot of stuff. If I went into all of that, the whole compacted need of a myriad of things to come out, all of it making too much sense for this “yoga” teacher of the rest of them to understand making me out to be some dangerous person I never could be. The fascinating logic of the the symbolism of the way even what was called non reality based went beyond the limitations of tangible objectivity and touched on what can only be approached beyond the limitations of the physical senses to an objectivity flexible enough to touch upon forever, what remains, what can’t be destroyed or pinned down into what the ego makes out to be objective, and with such a “reality” it could never remain with such limitations. Instead of even judging these pathetic paranoid people, and their investments with what they thought was protection from something that didn’t exist, it took the idea of investments (which was what I was trying to communicate to begin with), to an area when investing in spiritual investments changes things. My other half, the spirit I’ve moved throughout “time” with in her last incarnation was Mozart’s mother Anna. She had a difficult childhood, was known as the girl that was always sick. She had lost her father, because he made bad investment, regarding money. Lost everything and died. I had thought this yoga teacher was the father, tried to say something regarding investments, in this whole jumble, which clearly wasn’t understood at all (the guy I tried to say something to at Parks and Recreation even said he didn’t understand it at all, but then made out that this paranoid brainwashed “social worker yoga teacher” had a real concern that I might get violent, regarding stuff NONE OF THEM understood enough to even know what was going on). It turned out, if anything this paranoid person would have been the mother, not the father of my spirit friend, and part of the reason she spent her youth bed ridden with such paranoia. Later Leopold Mozart came along, and they became the handsomest couple in town. But in this adventure with the tooth infection, I ran into a dentist who I noticed regarding treatment was investing in the same kind of stuff that goes along with the kind of mainstream stuff that causes the bubbles and the then bursting bubbles where some people lose everything (whether it’s medical or financial), but when I mentioned spiritual healing, he softened and adored me; and then I “knew” this was the father I had been picking up on, and him adoring such simple trust would change things regarding investments, and my tooth would heal, which it did after finding this healer. There’s a lot more regarding what was going through my head I was supposed to think was “schizophrenic,” and whether you give it that name or not because it was such compacted stuff that needed to have some legroom, or you call it the need for some space without it being called crazy or discriminated against, but there’s a lot that unraveled. So much from beyond linear time, as branches of consciousness and life’s experience blossom beyond what’s visible (the stuff I see that’s supposedly non reality based, but when understood or interpreted correctly transcends the limitations of what’s “objective” in the physical). The voice I heard warning me, and a colleague of his (the best violin makers the world has known so far), and what his colleague had to deal with and how this was reflected in the harmonic of what went on “then,” and then running into this colleague, although I’m not going to say which side he is on……

    I could lay it all out, or how this paranoid person misinterpreted anything she could, and spiced it up with lies, because I really never did anything to warrant their idea I could become violent. I wouldn’t even join them in such paranoia, you see, whether it’s about me or others, and they don’t seem to deal with that very well. I was kicked out of Parks and Recreations classes, and there was a restraining order, but had I known this person was THAT paranoid, I wouldn’t have wanted to take yoga classes from her, and known she wasn’t teaching it to help me, to begin with. So no, I didn’t want to be there, to begin with, or around such “society.”

    The classes actually caused stress I wasn’t aware of. It was cold weather already, and then I had gotten bad eczema (I haven’t had it for years now, gotten away from such stress, that was 2008 or 2009), I would have had to wear gloves to ride my bike there, given the cold, but this would cause my hands to sweat, and with the eczema on my hands this feels like someone is scraping your skin off, when it sweats like that. So I had gotten to a bus stop, and there are racks for the bikes on the bus up front, but this rack was full, so I couldn’t take the bus, nor could I ride my bike that distance without the torture, so I didn’t go. This “teacher” had been complaining, the class prior, about having to have vaccine shots, and her arms hurting, which she did right in front of me, to a person on my side. I couldn’t like avoid this conversation, so I added my two cents, asking whether such vaccines helped as much as they say they do (whether you are for them or not, you still have to eat healthy, rest, stay home till you get better to not spread it around etc.). She didn’t like this simple question. When I didn’t show up to class she ACTUALLY stated that I was resentful because of this disagreement, and thus hadn’t shown up (seriously, as if she KNEW why I hadn’t shown up), and along with misinterpreting everything else imaginable, and adding some lies, that’s taken seriously. If I was in class anything I did could be misinterpreted, did I not show up, the same! I could go on for pages about her paranoia…..

    This is genetic I wasn’t equally paranoid!?

    One thing: the nebulous reality where creativity comes from…. Last time I went through such a period, they could label me such, I was composing a Cadenza for a Mozart concerto, had already a working one, but there was something more. This nebulous something so flexible that it could be anything, when an emotion, an experience needs so legroom. In this case it was the emotion from the concerto, or a release, perhaps the same kind of disassociation from drama, just something that needed enough legroom to have enough variation to calm down, perhaps. I had already I don’t know how many variations (1,2,3 and then more I won’t count, but there was this nebulous something just there, seemingly out of nowhere, and I would have not integrated it, thinking it was too much), but then an angel amongst us showed up, and I integrated it, because of that. But this nebulous energy, this is like anything in life before it takes form. It’s not the form it takes, it’s not whether it considered reality based, or objective of what, but it’s that it has something to say about life, it’s there for us to grow, and there’s no limit to what kind of form it can take, and it will keep taking on whatever form it can until it’s understood.

    There’s perhaps not anything wrong with those who aren’t understood, it’s those deciding there’s no meaning there that have the problem. Especially when the enforce with such violence anyone not being convinced they are right. Perhaps THEY are stuck in time going round in circles….

    I’ll just leave them there, whether they go on about genetics, RNA or whatever…..

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    • I have to add, that this is my experience, the spiritual stuff going on when I was listed as “psychotic.” And it took years to be able to navigate through the stuff, so much I couldn’t talk about or sort through, and then there was other stuff going on, when I could be quite paranoid, but it was always a kind of paranoia that exposes itself, didn’t go along with the accepted stereotyping of statistical based norms. Almost as if at a subconscious level I decided to animate paranoia at a level where it would expose itself or wouldn’t be believed by others. Or maybe not even almost, maybe that is what one holds onto, knowing in the end it’s symbolic and can be understood as such, when the paranoia of societal stereotyping wouldn’t be. I’m just concerned, when I delineate my experience with spiritual, metaphysical stuff or miracle healing, this does require one to detach from the world’s way of thinking.

      The “schizophrenic” side actually is how the trauma expresses itself, the disinhibition allowing the self to interact with something beyond the world’s way of thinking, something that’s there for healing despite how the world says that’s impossible. And thus the whole array, for me, of spiritual experiences and “miracles.” But this doesn’t have to be the case for everyone going through such an experience. There’s a whole layer of unspoken and unexposed trauma going on.

      Only after experiencing both metaphysical healings is when I was able to understand my responses to life, and did go through a couple more “episodes,” where I could have been labeled as schizo-effective or schizophrenic. Only recently, when my father finally moved out of the city to be with a sister out of state, who takes care of him, being that he’s 95 years old, only then did I actually have the space to deal with all of the anxiety he had caused in my youth, in the basic ways I interact with life, my reflexes. I think that everyone has been so anxious that they just think they are supposed to do “something,” anything to escape from the anxiety. Whatever the trauma or difficulty is causing the anxiety. Imagine that feeling, but not being able to navigate through to why you’re anxious. This happens when a child isn’t allowed to express their own thoughts as a child, their own feelings, their own experience, their own input, their own relationship with life. My father (and my mother also, in always defending him), as a psychologist was good in shutting down me having any input. And so whenever I started simply expressing my own views, he would play mind games, or become abusive to shut me down. What a child needs to do to feel comfortable in order to have the thoughts they have because they are themselves, and no one else: the thoughts that are there for them from their own nature and how they are part of the whole, their given part in the matrix of life, the quiet thoughts that just are there and not indoctrinated, that come from how everyone is unique, these were not allowed. And so a whole part of me, when push came to shove, and I would HAVE TO heed those thoughts in order to relate to life, when the interactions in life had become that critical, I wasn’t able to think through, to navigate through to these more quiet thoughts, and wouldn’t know I was being controlled by inner anxiety, and disassociate from it. And then not even understanding my own actions, anxiety from a difficulty situation would trigger inner anxiety from my youth I wasn’t able to consciously be aware of. Quite a pile up. Quite a pressure. And I didn’t know the worth of simply slowing down. Miraculously, I didn’t do drugs, didn’t even go on psychiatric drugs, I only smoked, or drank too much coffee. And all of that is real subtle reflexes, how you hold a cup, how you move through a room, whether you feel free to take a moment to slow down to heed your own thoughts, what you eat, where you go, what “entertainment” you hook up with. To actually come to terms with a whole array of thoughts that have become reflexes in order to avoid condemnation as a child, that took a whole lot of meditating, slowing down, doing yoga, feldenkrais, and then the healing modalities to know something was there allowing me the space to be myself. And it’s not pleasant actually allowing those memories, those feelings to emerge, as anyone knows who can be triggered with flashbacks, a whole lot of people with one’s that could be quite a bit more horrible than mine, although mine weren’t as clearly from behavior that would be labeled as abuse. During that whole period I composed a lot of music, because it was healing. I reached the point at times where I would become aware that either I would loose it, end up like the people you see ranting and raving on a street corner, or just get really really mad, or I could go to my computer with midi keyboard and compose. I had something to do with my ears, my eyes, my fingers, my brain, I had something to respond to rather than being disenfranchised; and it was like water to a parched plant. This would calm me. It actually reached the point that there wasn’t a difference between the inner and outer voices, like they say with “schizophrenia,” because would I have been working on a musical composition, and then would start making a meal or so in the kitchen, a gentle light would come on in my brain, and the composition I would have been working on had by itself taken a new turn, without me consciously doing anything, because I would hear this in my head the same objectivity as the sounds on the “outside.”

      But these experiences of what one is escaping from, whether it’s trauma or just a challenge to go beyond the world’s limitations, this needs to be acknowledged how someone can be disassociating from childhood or other trauma, and to actually get in touch with those memories, even when they are partially there, to actually get in touch with them enough so that when push comes to shove a person can navigate through to allow their own insights to be conscious, this does require a type of therapy that I don’t see really being mainstream at all, hardly. And psychiatric drugs really only turn the neural pathways off that would allow for such integration, which is then convenient for society when it’s already in denial what it’s idea of “discipline,” or statistical based norms, consensual reality deportment or that status quo is requiring of people, and when they don’t comply more trauma, whether that’s social, from psychiatry, from religions, from the economy, the judicial system, all which train people to traumatize others when they don’t comply, just like the military. A person simply needing this space to be a bit crazy is hit with all of those barriers, not matter how non violent they are.

      I think it everyone was allowed their inner voice, which was there as a child already, we wouldn’t have all the problems that “society” thinks it needs to train people to traumatize others when they don’t “behave.” And everyone does this, one of the first things they think when a person doesn’t behave according to their logic or morals, is that that person should be punished, as if that couldn’t be what caused the problem to begin with……

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  42. Never trust an article that lumps neurodevelopmental conditions like autism and ADHD in with “mental illness” and psychiatric conditions. Both ADHD and autism are shown in many peer reviewed studies to have very stong genetic risk factors with specific genes.

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    • Hi, Karla.

      I wonder if you could please provide us with even one compelling piece of robust research to support what you told us about “ADHD” above?

      Failing that, any attempt, at all, at a rigorously scientific defintion of “ADHD” would be most welcome, please?

      Many thanks in anticipation.

      Tom.

      PS: As the old Golden Rule has naturally and predictably clearly failed us Homo sapiens sapiens, any suggestions for a new one would be extremely welcome, too, please.

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    • Sarcasm aside: As has been typed: “Both ADHD and autism are shown in many peer reviewed studies to have very stong genetic risk factors with specific genes.” If you look at the lives of artists, and being creative, I meant the kind of creative beauty you find in museums, on stage, in the concert hall and in books; there being ANYTHING genetic going on, and you look at the preponderance of supposed “genetic” diseases of the “mental health” variety among artists whose work after hundreds of years continues to bless human nature, to nurture mental well being by its very beauty; any reasonable person might stop to wonder whether it’s having to do with how art is valued (is it truly healing and spiritual, or is it just entertainment and stimulant?). This is not even considered that the expression of what nature put there as genetic material isn’t allowed true expression? And no it isn’t considered. Genetic difficulties then are supposed to point out a gene that can lead towards illness and death, such as that involving breast cancer, although even that I’ve read one is less susceptible to it than most when eating healthy, which makes me actually wonder about whether a person’s feeling regarding what’s good for them or not is even allowed, because those voices are instinctive not programmed; that aside, that’s a gene that when not treated leads towards death, but the genetic supposed insight into mental illness leads towards supposing this exists, void of true data we hear these misleading catch phrases such as “Strong genetic risk factors with certain genes,” to excuse coerced or promoting treatment, that THEN correlates with a lessening of one’s life expectancy, after an interim of symptoms being suppressed more recycling of “symptoms”, addiction to the “medications” often forced on one, withdrawal symptoms would one want to get off, otherwise side effects, and then after the interim of symptoms suppressed more drugs, or withdrawal symptoms, and more anxiety trying to find an environment that’s not discriminating against symptoms that are still in comparison to others quite non violent, although people are made to become extremely alarmist about. Instead of looking at what the environment does, it’s again: “there are strong genetic factors with certain genes,” after they spent many times the amount of money looking for these genes that would have funded a change of environment SHOWN to promote recovery instead, instead force treating many, advertising all of it, filling doctors offices and schools with their ideology that hasn’t panned out but for how many years it will “compelling evidence” it will for once again another angle that how many times already failed, or that after all these years, the drug companies not really finding this proof of chemical imbalance of genes not even really looking for it anymore, just suppressing symptoms with “treatment,” much like anything that brings people out of their “comfort zone,” their game theory or fitting in, rather: replacing comfort with complacency and fear. And the way the “behavior” of who is given such a label is put into a box, just look at ADHD: When someone has to sit the whole day (how many hours) in a room, listen to someone say things they aren’t necessarily particularly interested in, be able to reproduce such, aren’t allowed to get up off of their desk or even go to the bathroom without asking, aren’t allowed to interact with anyone else mostly or be punished for not paying attention, then go home and do more of the same, a condition that when people were asked as adults would they take a high salary to endure said no to; someone not being able to compromise themselves to all of that is then “ADHD.” I lose track of how many were labeled “Autistic” such as for example Einstein would have been, who flunked beginning math because he he would be captured by real simple things another part of his mind being compelled to look at it rather than following formulaic instruction, he then might never have done what he’s known for, did such a diagnosis exist; or a whole group of others who also have their own stories and from there on to more environmental issues. There’s a whole list of environmental issues, emotional and also physical that can and have been proven to be STRONG risk factors with mental illnesses, whether it’s ADHD, Autism or any other; and the degree to which all of that is simply dismissed, any gene that might get a human to look beyond programmed thinking, or be part of a minority group, or race, or culture, that share certain genes, ALL OF THAT, that can end up being listed as: “Both ADHD and autism are shown in many peer reviewed studies to have very stong [SIC] genetic risk factors with specific genes.” or however the challenge to society expresses itself can be then instead labeled as a strong [SIC] genetic marker, whether it’s a gene involving critical thinking or from a minority group. And then how basically poverty, minority status, having lived in a war zone, being a woman, being an orphan, being a foster child, or simply being too intelligent to be able to be brainwashed to fit into “statistical based norms,” or “consensual reality deportments,” all of that isn’t looked at as environment, for the most part, unless the response can be disabled (locked up, drugged, told there’s something wrong with them, targeted for paranoia), rather than handled with true response rather than discrimination.

      “We don’t believe, you; or we can’t relate to you; and the people who can just don’t fit into our academic-economical-social network…… so let us be “nice” to you….. and actually YOU lose, there’s a whole other matrix out there and not looking at it robs you of understanding what’s going on; discriminating against those who just have started to go where others fear to tread, that still leaves you out, yourselves.”

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  43. It’s heartbreaking & infuriating to think how many family lines have ended, and how many people have not experienced the joy of creating a family in the New Eugenics Era. With this new revelation, will doctors stop encouraging people with mental illness diagnoses to refrain from having children, or to seek “genetic counseling” when they are considering starting a family?

    Since there is now strong evidence that there is no evidence of a genetic basis for MI, doctors who continue the practice of referring MI patients for genetic counseling should lose their license (just as they should have before genetic theories were disproven) for attempting to obliterate a group of *perceived* “genetically inferior” people via New Eugenics practices.

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  45. Wait. Am I the only one thinking that if 15% of the separated twins where one had schizophrenia, the other one had it too, that is a MUCH higher prevalence than the general population (less than 0.5%)… Meaning there’s a clear indication of a genetic predisposition. Combine that with external circumstances… Isn’t that what was always said?

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    • 15% certainly does not suggest CAUSALITY. It suggests vulnerability of certain genetic subgroups, who may have many other things in common, not a ‘schizophrenia gene.’ Causality figures would need to be in the 85-90% range. 15% says that at least 85% is NOT caused by genetics. So genetics is a secondary factor.

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      • 83% at best.

        Considering the sum of the best genetic findings explaining only 3% of the diagnoses, gives another 80% that is shared among identical twins that are “separated” at birth, I presume. 3% by genetics in identical twins and 14% by something else.

        So, not only 83% of cases are not explained by genetics, when there is a presumed, presumed, genetic basis for it, again, another 80% of it,the 14% in identical twins, is not genetic, AND is shared by people presumed to be TREATED differently despite being genetically identical.

        So, 97%, not 3% of diagnoses, not cases, of schizophrenia are NOT explained by genetics, not 85%…

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  46. Fascinating discussion in the comments. My quick response is this link to an article in my news feed this morning that ironically supports a genetic factor. Reminds me of the controversy over the benefits of margarine vs butter… The so called experts contradict each other on the daily. It’s absurd and to me a clear damning testiment to the unreliability of “the science” in psychiatry.
    https://www.sciencealert.com/the-seeds-of-schizophrenia-could-be-planted-in-the-earliest-moments-of-life

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  47. As an empirical search, the fact that using several tecniques they have come up with DIFFERENT false positives tells us that if there is a genetic influence for schizophrenia, that if it were there there in the genome which was thorougly searched for, it’s probably so small that for ALL practical purposes is irrelevant and dang right inconsequential.

    I have another metaphor:

    Like searching for Nessy everywhere it could live, we catched sardines, some trouts, nothing big, some catched some, some others and we searched literaly everywhere. Overall, they explain less than 3% of Nessy’s sightings and testimonials..

    That to a reasonable person would mean, either Nessy does not exist, or it does not live where we look for her. I like to think of it as a her… 🙂

    And invoking other places, toxicology, food, epigenetics would probably also mean it’s gonna probably come up also irrelevant and inconsequential.

    The genes that control such events, toxicological and epigenetic, would have been also picken up by the copious research, they would have pick up a lead if the signal was strong enough to be seen in the genome searches, since the genome controls the susceptibility to toxins and pressumably epigenetic changes too…

    Therefore looking for toxicology, epigenetics and the like is going to come up empty handed too: the signal in the genome of such things is also very weak, probably even weaker than the mythical 3%.

    To a reasonable person, I think, elaborated thus…

    If schizophrenia has causes,and if the genome has an influence in it, it is very weak, less than 3%, regardless of how that genome works particularly for schizophrenia, including toxicology and epigenetics, and probably a lot of stuff we do not know now!. The door to positive searches in the future if influenced by the genome are closed.

    Researchers mark my words (finger pointing at them, up and down, smirk in me face…).

    That is a general lesson of this great article.

    Another lesson I think is that it is necessary to have a theory to look for something passed as scientific, decades, centuries? could elapse, one can come empty handed again and again, and still BE convinced there is something there there…

    Again: I am guessing I can confidently claim that all psychiatry has replicated but not apparently understood, is its FAILURES.

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  48. Maybe it’s spiritual in which psychiatry dusavows and society. Most without danger to self of others is torture of the innocent eccentrics…maybe there are a lot more your paranoid psychiatrists never validated as diseased of mind as they aren’t open with themselves or so called symptoms. I’m in canada and no proof needed for forced treatment of political dissidents or for medical malpractice victims or battered woman. There’s a lot said here in thus article kn the failure to protect children being neglected sbused even in cas care or murdered in care or victims in general revictimized and not believed and traumaticized unable to disclose is not schizophrenia…smoking in pregnancy very bad and smoking in geneneral no free patches 20 dollars a pack in canada all going to taxes to pay for this crappy medicine to violate us no lawsuits against tobacco industry that got us addicted or that puts toxic chemical weapons that made addictive to sell cigarettes maybe schizophrenia is learned behavior bad parenting or just plain vampirism like Bram stoker society as in gypsy weaken you so Dracula can feed on you as in revictimization Dracula being the invalidating discrediting no burden of proof of disclosure reality of victims…maybe societal marginalization and ostracisaztion maybe it’s all bullshit medicine misogynist medical matriarchal medicine they were all burnt AR the stake called female healers and female scientists 100 years ahead of their time lost in history nameless and erased…

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    • Nothing spiritual, poor use of rationality, that’s all.

      In my country, from my personal experience, psychiatrist aspirants are among the worst peformers in standardized tests for becoming specialists. Granted, I only took the exam once, and from that I can conclude: they were lousy medical students.

      From my experience dealing with several of them as graduates: they never learned medicine as surgeons, obstetricians, internists and pediatritians to be did. Not even family physicians in training, and they had low reputation….

      And there is the issue, that, why did they choose such speciality?. Without much data on that, I can especulate they struggled with the same issues as their “patients”. False ideas, paranormal, unusual experiences, voices in their head, etc. I especulate they joined such speciality to deal with their issues not to deal with someone elses, as a lupus sufferer becomes rheumatologist, as a very ill in childhood folk wants to be a pediatrian, etc. One who lost a dear one to cancer becomes an oncologist…

      Just these folks couldn’t aspire to nothing else: they were poor medical trainees…

      They just never addressed those issues, there is no scientific way to do that!, they drank the cool-aid, believing they did “understand”, and came out convinced psychiatry was real, and it could provide answers for everyone one else…

      They changed a set of false of ideas with another, with an underlying incapacity to learn any better. At least in part, because they can’t listen to anyone else, to anything else than their own “thoughts”. As they impute their patients.

      And they like to see people suffering, or at least they can stand it for at least 3 to 4 yrs of “in hospital” training. They would not have survived the residenship if they did not enjoy it or could put up with it. I don’t see any other explanation. What happens in psychiatric hospitals is atrocious, it has been for centuries!: rape, torture, cruel and unusual punishment, killings by neglent medical or non-medical, etc. Even to kids!. How does a “normal” person deals with that?, it’s worse than going to actual war…

      At best, one gets from them: “I’ve never seen that!, I’ve never heard of that!”. That speaks to me of “not paying attention”?. Let’s get real. It’s all over the news, and during your training and 10 yrs hospital experience you never heard or seen that?. Come on…

      How does a “normal” ethical person, with the ability to reason and learn, come out conviced she or he can do better?. At least inability to understand why that happens.

      It’ s pretty well elaborated as narratives, but it’s all there if one is willing to accept people who go into the psychiatry training have severe issues not unlike what they blame their patients. ALL of them, even the critical ones…

      Just the narratives are incomplete, they were always like that, I haven’t heard of one spelling the beans in a clear way, just pieces here and there, they can’t admit, after decades, they might have been worse than the most notorious serial killers, and for the benefit or pleasure of NO ONE ELSE.

      And unlike their victims, are convinced they can’t do any other…

      Again: I am guessing I can confidently claim that all psychiatry has replicated but not apparently understood, is its FAILURES.

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  49. I have another metaphor.

    Searching/researching mental disorders is looking for Yetis, researching the genetics of mental illnesses, disorders or diseases is looking for the genetics of Yetis, not looking for Yetis. They never had a Yeti in the first place.

    Researchers of the “genetics” of schizophrenia not only did poor research with numbers, genes and correlations widely distributed among their overinflated expectations. For I think a century, more or less.

    If I remeber correctly from 80% concordance in identical twins, to 50% concordance, to 17% concordance that can be explained BY GENETICS only with a 3%, less than a fifth of that residual 17% concordance. And certainly appaling when compared to 80% or 50%.

    So, they were actually looking for the genetics of the Yeti, kinda trying to figure out why it’s so elusive, so shy…

    As is schizophrenia, elusive, mythical and non-existant outside the minds of believers, schizophrenia IS the Yeti of psychiatry, and researchers where trying, yeah, right, to elucidate it’s genetics without EVEN having the actual Yeti to do that…

    Similar as the “genetics” of depression: not enough depressed people to find genes if there were some among the thousands of “research subjects” involved/used in that research. Most people in those studies on the genetics of depression and schizophrenia, empirically, probably don’t have the “conditions”***. Aren’t Yetis so to speak. Optimistically, I believe confidently, at a 5% confidence level, less than 5% were “Yetis”. Haha…

    Even if depression and/or schizophrenia were real, empirically one would have to conclude that if both are brain diseases, and if genetics influences brain susceptibility to them, then it should be in the genes, even if it were epigenetic.

    How much the genes influence epigenetics is an open question, but it most certainly does, even if they were viral, or remnants of viral genes in the human genome. Junk genes to put another metaphor.

    All experiences that are proposed to cause epigenetic changes, necessarily have to have a gene or genes, something in the genome, that makes said epigenetic changes either easier or more difficult to happen under the same stimuli.

    That is cell biology, genetics and evolution 101, I think.

    That is why that uncertainty might fuel another, now epigenetic search for the same unexistant creature: schizophrenia. The Yeti of psychiatry.

    But having no Yeti yet to study it is the current argument to pivot to the research domain criteria, looking for money, funds, to keep searching for Yetis, under different definitions of Yetis. Like let’s search now for AquaYeti, scales, gills, flippers are the thing of the Yetis now.

    Trying to bridge the gap between believers and non-believers I think there could be agreement that if the brain has an influence in mental disorders it’s around the 3% ball park influence.

    I certainly find difficult to believe it can jump to 30% or 90% if the genetics of both depression and schizophrenia, perhaps other mental disorders too, when the betting, the expectation of it being organic starts at 3%.

    Going from 3% to 30%, let alone 90%, would require extraordinary findings missed during the century or more of research into mental disorders, diseases, illnesses and the like*.

    Not finding biological bases for mental disorders does tell us if those bases existed they are relatively inconsequential. Their signal and influence is too WEAK, that’s why researchers haven’t found one YET, after at least decades of looking for it.

    That sounds to me like scientific common sense.

    And the data does not allow more than claiming 3%, as it stands now*.

    And I think that is made more evident as relevant when I consider that mental disorders, illnesses or diseases are like crimes:

    They are constructed, created, defined, identified and addressed/treated socially, not biologically.

    Simple as that.

    Crime is not a biological issue, it’s a social one. The definitions and criteria to claim a crime was comited, that a crime exists!, that a crime is “real”, are socially defined, same as for mental disorders**.

    There is no biology, no organicity to those definitions.

    We can all agree there is a crime and who did it, what the punishment, the “treatment” should be, and that does not make that crime real in the scientific sense. It makes it a social agreement, not a scientific one. Even if there was science involved.

    Even if as analogy I would take the criminal mind, I would get the “disordered mind”, not the biologically diseased brain.

    * We are talking of hundreds of genes with “small” influences that explain the 3%. Not one gene they missed that explains 90%.

    ** I am no lawyer, but Fraud is a good example of how socially defined a crime is. It keeps changing like mental illnesses recognition/definition, and the DSM more recently. Even the psychotherapeutic approaches suffer that socially defined “issue”, like fraud, keep changing…

    *** I think it is scientific common sense that if what I was looking in a sample is real, actually real, not imaginary like constructs, and I looked everywhere in multiple samples, literally everywhere and everyhow, with very expensive, sensitive and corroborated techniques, I must conclude, even under empirical common sense, that none of my samples had the thing I thought was real. A skeptic might even doubt what I was looking for was real in the first place.

    Again: I am guessing I can confidently claim that all psychiatry has replicated but not apparently understood, is its FAILURES.

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  50. I checked your link to “a large twin study in 2018″**

    The study you linked showed that there was a 33% heritability for Schizophrenia in monozygotic twins; 7% in Dizygotic twins. But, in your article, you said 15% and 3% resectively.

    Care to explain the discrepancy…?

    “RESULTS: The probandwise concordance rate of SZ is 33% in monozygotic twins and 7% in dizygotic twins. We estimated the heritability of SZ to be 79%.”**

    ** https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28987712/

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    • In twin studies, they counted the twins twice. In other words if I had a twin and my twin also had “schizophrenia” this doesn’t all of a sudden make us two sets of twins each showing concordance, however that is how they counted it, as if instead of two people there were four and they were excusing this by saying that each twin had concordance but that doesn’t excuse bumping the numbers up like that, and completely doesn’t make two people out to be four. That would explain the discrepancy and why the numbers you say were reported actually are half of what was reported. And sorry I find this difficult to explain, and I have to look into it more because I don’t know if I explained it correctly I’ll try to add on more with another comment because I’m now time dependent regarding having to save this comment before the time is up for editing it. This kind of a game playing with numbers goes on all the time when they’re trying to scientifically prove something regarding mental illness. In studies regarding depression and antidepressants, they would take anyone out of the non-control group The felt they got better within the first week or so deciding that then person wasn’t really depressed even though before this they were that way and they got better and that shows that they got better without medications. I don’t see how that’s honest either, nor is not reporting it when sometimes most of the people in the control group had to leave the experiment because of side effects, nor is when the results they wanted aren’t coming up to then hand out not just antidepressants but antidepressants and a sedative in the control group, nor is not reporting the amount of withdrawal symptoms from people in the control group that had to get off of the medications after the trial and had horrible withdrawal symptoms, nor is having a whole number of trials and most of them not at all coming up with the results they wanted and just dismissing that and and having a new trial and rearranging things to see if what they wanted turns up rather than looking at what already was shown to be going on. Nor is not sharing the fact that in the trial periods already many people became suicidal in fact suicides happened, and then when the pills are handed out not taking in and not reporting the incidents where people got suicidal and homicidal while a whole populace of people are making themselves terribly addicted to these medications and consequently I depended on them to avoid withdrawal symptoms, which also weren’t reported in the trials to begin with. And now so after years, even though this was reported the whole time but was not acknowledged by the drug companies, because of the amount of correspondence with homicidal and suicidal behavior that couldn’t be ignored although they tried to advocate that it should there is now a black warning label on something called an antidepressant that says it could make you homicidal or suicidal. In other words this treatment for depression can make you suicidal or homicidal. This is also quite a game to take people that are already addicted to for example neuroleptic medications put them in a trial period in the non-control group and then list their withdrawal symptoms as proof that the medications work while giving the same people addicted to neurolectics medications in the control group another medication which works similar enough they do not have withdrawal symptoms. That proves how strong the addiction is to the neuroleptics and it would be better to try the other methods which correlate more with recovery. It’s also quite a game too, with any or all psychiatric medications, to only look at the initial interim when what is labeled as symptoms are suppressed because natural brain functions are disabled, and then call that treating a chemical imbalance when in reality it’s causing one, and then not look at the long-term result where there’s less recovery, loss of life expectancy, more disability, more side effects, more withdrawal symptoms, more added on diagnosis, more added on medications, more paranoia against reactions that aren’t understood which correlate more with treatment than with the actual disease. Or you can just look at the statistical results.

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  51. I looked into this, and it’s similar to what I was saying. In probandwise concordance, they count both twins as concording, but they DO NOT count both twins when they don’t concord, and that doesn’t seem right. When one twin is “schizophrenic” and the others doesn’t end up that way, NEITHER are concording with the other, and so there REMAINS two of them. Both DO NOT concord with the other.

    “Pairwise concordance

    For a group of twins, pairwise concordance is defined as C/(C+D), where C is the number of concordant pairs and D is the number of discordant pairs.

    For example, a group of 10 twins have been pre-selected to have one affected member (of the pair). During the course of the study four other previously non-affected members become affected, giving a pairwise concordance of 4/(4+6) or 4/10 or 40%.
    Probandwise concordance

    from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study

    “For a group of twins in which at least one member of each pair is affected, probandwise concordance is a measure of the proportion of twins who have the illness who have an affected twin and can be calculated with the formula of 2C/(2C+D), in which C is the number of concordant pairs and D is the number of discordant pairs.

    For example, consider a group of 10 twins that have been pre-selected to have one affected member. During the course of the study, four other previously non-affected members become affected, giving a probandwise concordance of 8/(8+6) or 8/14 or 57%. ”

    Online it’s also stated that Torrey decided to used pairwise, by the way.

    Further more, all of this becomes irrelevant if in reality it’s that the environment is similar, and with the whole push to find ANYTHING that promotes the chemical imbalance theory (THAT while the “medications” have been scientifically PROVEN to cause chemical imbalance, and the disease remains only an alleged source, so that also becomes quite irrelevant, even if a genetic concordance was “treated” with medications to counteract a chemical imbalance)…. with the whole push to find ANYTHING that promotes the chemical imbalance theory, the overwhelming funding for such in contrast to anything alternative…. I really wonder whether environment was efficiently looked at.

    It remains that people not treated for a biological source for “schizophrenia” recover more, that also was the conclusion of the WHO when they saw that in “developing countries” where they had no money for such “medicines” that there was more recovery. As with the studies Whitaker reported, as with the history of treatment BEFORE the advent of the biological model, and that remains despite the abysmal lack of funding for alternative treatments. In fact, the environmental causes for “schizophrenia” or “psychosis,” aren’t really acknowledged when there’s a whole group of people who have experienced recovery but either can not express this for being labeled non compliant or aren’t listened to to begin with. People who do have the experience, the ability to understand responses to life, to trauma, to challenges, to not being able to fit into the status quo, they aren’t really given a platform.

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  52. In living with psychosis and dealing with the symptoms, until I finally reached a certain point and was hospitalized after a suicide attempt; I had been hearing voices for years. It was like people were around me, following me and talking about what I was doing amongst themselves, they would let me know things that were going on in the other room just by chatting to eachother. I was meditating and was in a trance like state and something shifted in my mind and body like a door was opened and something came through and spoke to me. It had its own thoughts, feelings, and wants. Looking back I think I was in touch with my soul and the other voices I could hear were in the spirit realm having a talk with my spirit. I had so much self hate, shame, regret and pain inside I drank Four Loko by the case trying to forget or stop re-living my horrible choices in life and constantly thinking how worthless I was. I wasn’t sleeping but once every few days, would go weeks without saying a word to anyone at work or at home; just played video games and got black out drunk listening to all the voices in my head have conversations. Some of my family members on my grandpa’s side had schizophrenia, a few cousins with bi-polar, and we all had PTSD. I started seeing bugs in my carpet that had no body, just a shadow vibrating like static; seeing a fog in the air that looked like the surface of water and could see which way the wind was going ‘cuz I could watch the air flow. I forgot my point. The western world doesn’t see “Spirit” as being something real, they just put a label on it and tell you it’s a hallucination and it’s only in your head. My soul was trying to help me and I was scared of it, ended up having my pastor try to cast out a demon I thought was in me. I’m on a monthly injection of Invega Sustenna now and that keeps my hallucinations to a minimum, but I still feel like they’re there still, I just can’t really hear them anymore. Anyway thanks for letting me post this.

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  53. I would just like to say that if all of the money that was spent on trying to assign blame had been spent on affordable housing, work programs and other forms of support for people who have mental disabilities, it would have been money well spent. The priorities are backwards.

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