DoomYoshi wrote:I'll admit it's been at least 4 months since I did a literature review on dopaminergic pathways but I'm pretty sure that isn't true. Who has proven schizophrenia is a degenerative disorder?
It falls under the
cognitive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Negative symptoms: “Negative” symptoms are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors. Symptoms include:
“Flat affect” (reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone)
Reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life
Difficulty beginning and sustaining activities
Reduced speaking
Cognitive symptoms: For some patients, the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia are subtle, but for others, they are more severe and patients may notice changes in their memory or other aspects of thinking. Symptoms include:
Poor “executive functioning” (the ability to understand information and use it to make decisions)
Trouble focusing or paying attention
Problems with “working memory” (the ability to use information immediately after learning it)
Apparently it's still under much heavier debate than I initially thought. Click on the url if you want to know more. It's part of a much much larger text, that does somewhat compile and list multiple researches.
US national library of medicine national institutes of health wrote:Neuropsychological data indicate that neurocognitive functions are relatively stable over time after illness onset. Several studies show that there is a decline in neurocognitive functioning prior to and in connection with onset of illness. There is no convincing evidence, however, that there is a progressive neurodegenerative process after onset of illness. Morphological data, on the other hand, indicate a degenerative process. Several novel longitudinal studies indicate a rapid reduction of vital brain tissues after onset of illness.
...However, a few years ago the hypothesis of schizophrenia as a degenerative disorder re-emerged. This was primarily based on several new longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that showed substantial increases in the brains cavities (see next section), and corresponding excessive shrinkage of vital brain tissue, during the first years after the onset of illness. These studies have led some to opine that the neurodegenerative hypothesis may have been overshadowed by the ascendancy of the neurodevelopmental hypothesis (Weinberger and McClure, 2005).
...Another issue supporting a neurodegenerative hypothesis can be found in a study by Harvey et al. (1996). They found that in elderly patients with schizophrenia (above 65 years) there is a further reduction of neurocognitive functions beyond what would be expected from ageing. These results are based on a large patient sample. The findings of Harvey et al. (1996) may lead to speculation as to whether schizophrenia in some way makes the person particularly sensitive to the development of dementia in old age, or whether the brain in this group of patients is more sensitive to neurocognitive impairments as a response to normal age-related neurodegeneration (2003).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2773152/
DoomYoshi wrote:Imprisonment, death penalty, exorcisms... all viable options. The easiest one is to slowly start degrading the individualism of the Renaissance, and have people stop imagining they need to live their own life by themselves. What makes people crazy is a lack of familial and social support. It's ok to rely on other people, and I don't mean in an economic sense. There is a reason schizophrenia usually doesn't kick in until the 20s, because that is when the expectations to succeed are placed on people.
You are ignoring the main point. Schizophrenia, as much as it can be defined as brain issue, is due to hyperactivity in a particular pathway, the same pathway used for generic lust. According to your reasoning, thinking an apple might be delicious is the same as homicide, since your only attempt to define the issue of schizophrenia has been on the "potential harm". Pathways for depression use the same pathways as language. Is learning French the same as being despondent? I don't know why you can't understand that you aren't describing a physical reality, only a social reality.
I'm not as studied in the topic as you are apparently, so I simply don't understand the functioning of pathways and such. Those things go over my head. I'm basing myself on the conclusions-sections of articles, books and researches; the parts that are understandable for the general public, like me.
As such knowing I have a lack of specialized knowledge, I can only put my trust in the conclusions, accepted and spelled out by the general medical associations. And for the moment, though the disease and its functionings are still under debate, the overlapping organizations do generally accept it as a brain disease rather than purely psychological.
But yes I do focus more on the symptoms and consequences. How can I not? The disease is for the moment incurable, the only thing we can try is mitigation, which currently means therapy and medication. This goes for every disease. If it can't be cured yet, doctors and society still have to do all they can according to their limited options.
ps: imprisonment is actually proven to exacerbate the onset of schizophrenia. Some of the environmental factors associated with the disease are stress and malnourishment, both of them the case in prisons especially american prisons, where people are exposed to maltreatment by guards and other inmates and to the torture that are isolation cells. These are circumstances that can have negative effects even on the healthy, how can they be expected to have any positive effect on the mentally ill.
pps: please don't mention exorcism again. I know you mean it as an attempt of ridicule but it's plain disrespectful to mention hocus pocus in the same breath as medical research, even if inconclusive. It's not as if I'm suggesting sticking them in Bedlam Asylum or lobotomizing them.