Of course, in this case the issue seems like it's caused by a general deficiency of single protein, maybe that's a good sign for adapting the treatment to humans.
There is a very active landscape of people developing/validating 'biomarkers' for neurological and psychiatric disorders and developing drugs specifically for those populations with the biomarker present; this news is far from extraordinary.
The real news is when these reach FDA approval.
What is actually weird is how often users here makes it an issue when research papers on novel drugs are shared here.
I feel like our society over-pathologizes a lot of stuff and it would be a shame if we "cured" something that doesn't need a cure.
[0] https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/schizophrenia-is-the-pri...
I'm a non expert but I believe some people are starting to see it that way. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=schizophrenia+spectrum+disor...
Also there's huge overlap in symptoms between bipolar I with psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia. People sometimes move around between these diagnoses throughout treatment, different doctors have different opinions, patient behavior changes, etc.
I personally think these symptoms come about through many different causes and the labels are somewhat inadequate. They capture a symptom profile rather than a full understanding.
I also know of numerous people who have spoken publicly about receiving a schizophrenia diagnosis and having it later be revised to schizoaffective disorder.
I also came to the impression that it is common to receive a bipolar I diagnosis during a psychotic episode and have it later the diagnosed as schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.
Sometimes if your doctor sucks you may stay in the less accurate diagnosis, sometimes for years.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luh...
> In the United States, the voices are harsher, and in Africa and India, more benign, said Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford professor of anthropology and first author of the article in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
That should not be your conclusion from the article.
"the voices" are hardly the only symptom that people with schizophrenia suffer from. A lot of those affected don't have auditory hallucinations at all and are still suffering from one of the (if not the) most debilitating mental disorders out there.
Calling it "friendly" risks trivialising of the very real symptoms.
> In Accra, Ghana, where the culture accepts that disembodied spirits can talk, few subjects described voices in brain disease terms. When people talked about their voices, 10 of them called the experience predominantly positive; 16 of them reported hearing God audibly. “‘Mostly, the voices are good,’” one participant remarked.
This seems clinically useful. The existence of other symptoms doesn't really change that fact.
I am merely commenting on your takeaway that this somehow means that some cultures see schizophrenia as "friendly", which does absolutely does not follow from the fact that the "mostly, the voices are good".
I would also think that this is likely due to cultural differences and in many cases probably adds to the problem.
https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2012.711746
From the full Article:
"People suffering from psychotic illness continue to hold multi-explanatory models. The cultural, religious and social explanatory models are predominant in non-western cultures."
"Limited evidence suggests that traditional belief models affect [duration of untreated psychosis], and explanatory models based on spiritual and social causes of illness may result in delayed presentations for professional help."
I also have a hard time believing that schizophrenia manifests as something like benign quirkiness in some other country.
Well, publish that null result in a journal!
> This idea relocates the problem from the individual to “culture” or “society”...
No, one could incorporate this information just fine on an individual level by treating it as less of a scary symptom and more of something to understand.
I'm generally skeptical of too-good-to-be-true factoids. My skepticism is not publication-worthy, it's pretty common, and taken too far it becomes cynicism. Every once in while my skepticism is misplaced.
I am curious though - do you have individual examples, or personal experience, of how some other culture handles schizophrenia in an understanding way? I saw the journal reference...i'm more interested in specific examples.
But if a respected peer-reviewed journal published a study demonstrating evidence of it, you'd want to at least take a peek.
> I am curious though - do you have individual examples, or personal experience, of how some other culture handles schizophrenia in an understanding way? I saw the journal reference...i'm more interested in specific examples.
These are in the article and the study itself.
"Among the Indians in Chennai, more than half (11) heard voices of kin or family members commanding them to do tasks. “They talk as if elder people advising younger people,” one subject said. That contrasts to the Americans, only two of whom heard family members. Also, the Indians heard fewer threatening voices than the Americans – several heard the voices as playful, as manifesting spirits or magic, and even as entertaining. Finally, not as many of them described the voices in terms of a medical or psychiatric problem, as all of the Americans did."
Other delusions, hallucinations, hearing malicious voices, hearing voices which you feel you must obey, end up with individuals who have the same relative level of schizophrenic dysfunction, in terms of the way the brain operates, but the nature of the delusion can make them dangerous - "god told me to direct traffic on the freeway" or "god told me to slay demons disguised as humans".
The particulars of the case make a huge difference in how much medicine and treatment can help them live independent, normal lives. This potential treatment would be wonderful if it restores normal brain function. It also hints at why antipsychotic and other drugs which increase inhibitory signaling were partially effective.
Heck, it even has explanatory power for the different triggers of psychotic breaks - once a threshold of activity gets passed, the brain loses its ability to discriminate between legitimate, reality grounded signals and feedback that should have been inhibited, and once those neural connections are made and "configured" to operate as part of the default mode network, that person will have permanent cognitive problems.
Very cool research, and I hope it bears fruit.
Sometimes, that line is whether or not the state is somehow involved through social services or the criminal justice system.
I've noticed something similar with people on say heavy doses if hallucinogens. Some people just ride it out knowing it's the mind playing tricks on them, others hopelessly panic or make irreversible decisions.
That is there are many different things that can cause the behaviour.
Anyway on your main point, the definition of all psychiatric disorders has requirements of subjective suffering. So if you don't have subjective suffering you don't have the disorder.
I highly recommend the book Hidden Valley Road for anyone curious about how difficult schizophrenia is for families and the researchers trying to find treatments.
Also, and this depends on the jurisdiction, but people can be forced to take psychiatric medication against their will. Or even forced to go through a treatment like ECT, for example when presenting with strong and dangerous mania. BTW, ECT has an extremely unfair popular opinion, it's one of the best treatments in all of psychiatry. It could even be that it is impossible to get a response from the patient, for example if they are catatonic and don't budge within a reasonable time - you just inject them with benzodiazepines, as this is a serious condition if left to last a long time.
ECT might seem barbaric and unsexy compared to dosing some psilocybin and listening to some ambient music in a cozy room, but that doesn’t reduce its clinical value for people with serious, treatment resistant disorders.
BTW, and not many people know this, it is a procedure performed under full anesthesia, including muscle blockers. From the outside it looks very calm, and from the inside the patient's experience is pretty much identical to taking a nap.
It is not risk free, precisely because of the anesthesia, so in most areas one can only get it if they try enough other treatments - like 2 or 3 or something like that, ideally from different classes of drugs. But definitely do consider this if you're suffering and nothing seems to help (enough).
I would advise anyone against this. Don't believe the weird hype (that mostly all comes from a few small clicks of people looking to profit off this drug) about mushrooms being some spiritual, mental catch all. If you have any sort of mental illness you probably should avoid. Don't play Russian roulette with your sanity.
Maybe if guns weren’t so accessible people wouldn’t be so quick to use them on themselves in those moments. There’s a statistic out there where a gun in the home is most likely to harm you.