Discussion
Schizophrenia study finds new biomarker, drug candidate to treat cognitive symptoms
treyd: Drug has only been tested in mice.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.
readthenotes1: That would be an incredible cure and raises the ethical question of how to get schizophrenic people well enough to understand that they need it.
H8crilA: This seems to be mainly about the so called negative symptoms, not positive symptoms (like hallucinations or delusions). While it is often hard to argue with people about their positive symptoms in schizophrenia or in mania, pretty much nobody who has negative symptoms wants to have them. The fact that antipsychotics do little about the negative symptoms is probably the biggest pain of schizophrenia sufferers - and they are aware of that.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.
intrasight: ECT just comes across as a bit barbaric. I'd welcome more research into Psilocybin to achieve system reset.
booleandilemma: [delayed]
ceejayoz: To this point, some cultures see schizophrenia as friendly, not scary.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.
shermantanktop: This idea relocates the problem from the individual to “culture” or “society,” leaving no solutions for someone suffering from schizophrenia.I also have a hard time believing that schizophrenia manifests as something like benign quirkiness in some other country.
dakolli: My great friend, when we were 20, shot himself in the head while we were doing shrooms. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Thousands of incidents of self harm happen every year in the US alone because of these drugs.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.
kjkjadksj: People do that after getting drunk too.
mdevere: Very strange how HN elevates news about random drug candidates at very early stages of development.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.
derektank: Identifying a biomarker for a psychological condition, particularly one like schizophrenia which is hugely disruptive for individuals affected and has a seemingly random onset around early adulthood, is significant in its own right even if it doesn’t lead to a pharmaceutical intervention. It could help identify new risk factors, potential non-pharmaceutical interventions like life style changes, and maybe even identify people who are at risk of developing schizophrenia and preparing them for its onset before their first hallucination and avoiding a downward spiral.
blazarquasar: > To this point, some cultures see schizophrenia as friendly, not scary.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.
ceejayoz: > The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition.> 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.
breggles: You might be interested in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctoring_the_Mind
booleandilemma: [delayed]
