Mythbusting - Part 5

Myth: Most mental illnesses are actually schizophrenia.

I just want to say that schizophrenia is more a category of poorly-understood conditions than it is a single disease. My hope is that within the next few years, researchers can isolate several distinct brain diseases, with distinct causes and distinct cures/treatments, all of which are currently being diagnosed as schizophrenia.

For now, let's say that schizophrenia involves a naturally-occuring checmical imbalance of the brain fluid. The embalance causes hyper-activity of the impulses we call "thoughts." This is counter-intuitive, because when you observe people with untreated schizophrenia, they frequently seem flat, lethargic, even vacant of thought. What apprently is going on here is that they have too many thoughts - so many that they can't sort out what is real and what is not.

There's lots of stuff going on in my brain as I type this: A conversation in the next room, overly-oud stereos on Nicollet Avenue, other work I need to do, the ballgame on TV tonight, food, sex, etc. But, not having this checmical imbalance called schizophrenia, I have the ability to focus enought brain power to finish this article. People with untreated chemical imbalance often find themselves unable to focus sufficiently to complete even the simplest of tasks; that's schizophrenia.

Mythbusting part 1

I talk to a lot of people every day and the same questions come up all the time. With all the information available these days, I'm still shocked that mental illness is still so misunderstood. So, when someone came up to me the other and told me that he thought that mental illness isn't real, I knew I had to do something.

Most mental health professionals forget that most members of our society do not believe in mental illness. What do you think of when you hear the term "mental illness"?

• Mental illness is imaginary
• Those people are stupid
• Those people are lazy
• Those people are weak
• Those people have screwed their minds with drugs
• Those people need to find God
• They are controlled by "spiritual possession"
• (and worst of all) those people are dangerous

Certainly there are individuals with mental illness who are stupid, lazy, weak of character, dangerous, drug-addled, and out-of-touch with God - but these conditions are conincidental; not the primary nature of their condition.

We, in the mental health profession have confused the issue by talking about "physical vs "mental illnesses, as though mental illnesses were meta-physical. they are not. Mental illnesses are real illness, which operate under the laws of physics, physiology and bio-chemistry.

People with major mental illness, schizophrenia for example, have brains that don't look or work the same as those with healthy brains. Autopsies reveal striking differences in the size and texture of different cerebral lobes; brain scans reveal different patterns of electrical activity; fluid samples reveal different concentrations of the chemicals which transmit thoughts.

Schizophrenia's effect on the brain: while
patients performed a working memory task,
the less the prefrontal cortex (red)
activated, the more dopamine increased
in the striatum (green). Source: Andreas
Meyer-Lindenberg, M.D., Ph.D., NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch
Image source wikimedia commons

We don't understand the physics of the brain very well because the brain is our most complex organ and we have only recently begun to study it, but there is little doubt that hallucinations and delusions are based on organic dysfunction. We may not believe the guy who is claiming to receive radio signals though his dental work but that doesn't mean that he isn't experiencing it.

The fact that we don't understand these diseases very well, and can't cure them, doesn't mean they aren't real.