|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 9:58:28 GMT
On your integral model. We've discussed that quite a few tines including quite recently.but it's clear we won't see to eye. Your integral model appears as an abstraction on ,as used to be said, the back of an envelope. Detail is needed both on what provision is needed, how this might be met and implemented. But your model is a good starting place but the issye remains on which details are/not negotiable /open to modification. i have provided massive amounts of detail on this forum - from a layperson / service user / individual sufferer of schizophrenia perspective.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 11:39:04 GMT
I think dual diagnosis places you in a partially separate grouo esp re severity. Brain injuries / trauma / 17 years in addiction / schizophrenia - how is anyone meant to make complete sense or comprehensible analysis of it all on any level - biological / psychogenic / sociological / spiritual / integral - the variables are infinite. What i do think however is that everyone should be being treated more humanely & compassionately, regardless of who they are & what they have done & their circumstances. & addiction / mental illness is no fault / no blame medical conditions.
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 12:06:09 GMT
We should move away from the moralizing / blame & crime & punishment approaches.
AGREE
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 12:16:26 GMT
Or rather blame should be directed away from the individual
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 17:11:37 GMT
Or rather blame should be directed away from the individual Within a more ideal World people would still be mentally ill in various ways & to various degrees. There isn't the real evidence that comprehensive integral / psychological & social approaches would work any better than primary biomedical ones & the current system. What's the issue in seeing people as mentally ill & it being a problem with their biology? There are myriad questions as well as to what a more ideal society would entail & how to change the current dominant scientific / biomedical / political / socioeconomic / religious / academic / cultural / establishment / nationalist etc systems to something a lot better?
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 17:48:09 GMT
Or rather blame should be directed away from the individual How do you get society / culture / humanity as a whole to stop all the conflict & division, stupidity & ignorance, hate & blame, ego, greed & selfishness? The World is descending into catastrophic ecological / civilizational Collapse - that may see the end of our species. If humans survive it will take hundreds if not thousands or millions of years to sort out the global mess that has been created & to create a genuinely Enlightened Global civilization - But it remains to be seen if humanity has the capability for such a global society? i will always maintain that the model & approach to mental health should be integrated / integral covering - Biology Psychology - inner World of thoughts, feelings & emotions. Sociology / Environment. Spirituality - Soul as incarnated aspect of Self & Spirit as Higher aspects of Self.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 21:24:52 GMT
New strong evidence for neurological cause of schizophrenia A team of scientists claims to have finally started to understand what goes wrong in schizophrenia, following the discovery that disease-linked mutations disrupt genes responsible for maintaining a chemical balance in the brain crucial for healthy brain development and function www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/294880The mutations disrupt genes that regulate excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission, which needs to be delicately balanced to ensure the brain functions properly. “Our study marks a significant step towards understanding the biology underpinning schizophrenia, which is an incredibly complex condition and has up until very recently kept scientists largely mystified as to its origins,” says lead author Dr. Andrew Pocklington of Cardiff University, Wales. “We now have what we hope is a pretty sizable piece of the jigsaw puzzle that will help us develop a coherent model of the disease, while helping us to rule out some of the alternatives. A reliable model of disease is urgently needed to direct future efforts in developing new treatments, which haven’t really improved a great deal since the 1970s.” Experts have known for some time that schizophrenia is a highly heritable disorder. While schizophrenia occurs in 1% of the general population, it occurs in 10% of people who have a first-degree relative with the condition. The identical twin of someone with schizophrenia has a 40-65% chance of developing the disorder themselves. The healthy functioning of a brain is dependent on the balance between chemical signals that regulate the activity of nerve cells. In the past, psychiatric disorder experts have suggested that disruption of this balance could contribute to the development of schizophrenia. In 2011, the authors – based at Cardiff University’s MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics – found evidence that schizophrenia mutations interfere with excitatory chemical signaling. Their new study, published in Neuron, not only confirms these findings but also provides strong evidence that the disruption of inhibitory signaling also contributes to schizophrenia. Mutations may contribute to other disorders such as autism spectrum disorder For the study, the team compared the genetic data of 11,355 people diagnosed with schizophrenia with data for 16,416 people without the disorder. These data were obtained from three separate studies: the International Schizophrenia Consortium, the Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia and a UK-based study of patients with schizophrenia taking an antipsychotic drug. The researchers examined the genetic data, searching specifically for types of mutation referred to as copy number variants (CNVs) – mutations whereby large stretches of DNA are either missing or multiplied. CNVs in the participants with schizophrenia typically disrupted genes that were involved in neurotransmission in the brain, compared with CNVs found in people without the disorder. The findings indicate that disruption of this signaling is of direct causal relevance. These mutations are also believed to be implicated in the development of other neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). “This work builds on our understanding of the genetic causes of schizophrenia – unravelling how a combination of genetic faults can disrupt the chemical balance of the brain,” says Prof. Hugh Perry, chair of the Medical Research Council Neuroscience and Mental Health Board in the UK. “In the future, this work could lead to new ways of predicting an individual’s risk of developing schizophrenia and form the basis of new targeted treatments that are based on an individual’s genetic makeup.” Previously, Medical News Today reported on a Canadian study that found immigrants from Bermuda and the Caribbean and refugees from East Africa and South Asia are up to two times as likely to develop psychotic disorders in comparison with the general population.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 21:25:57 GMT
Structural and Functional Brain Abnormalities in Schizophrenia Katherine H. Karlsgodt,1 Daqiang Sun,2 and Tyrone D. Cannon1,2 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235761/Abstract Schizophrenia is associated with changes in the structure and functioning of a number of key brain systems, including prefrontal and medial temporal lobe regions involved in working memory and declarative memory, respectively. Imaging techniques provide an unparalleled window into these changes, allowing repeated assessments across pre- and post-onset stages of the disorder and in relation to critical periods of brain development. Here we review recent directions in structural and functional neuroimaging research on schizophrenia. The view emerging from this work is that schizophrenia is fundamentally a disorder of disrupted neural connectivity, the sources of which appear to be genetic and environmental risk factors influencing brain development both prenatally and during adolescence. Keywords: schizophrenia, structural MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, connectivity, development, adolescence
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 21:28:46 GMT
Schizophrenia Prof. Michael J Owen, PhD, Prof. Akira Sawa, MD, and Prof. Preben B Mortensen, PhD www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940219/Summary Schizophrenia is a complex, heterogeneous behavioural and cognitive syndrome whose origins appear to lie in genetic and/or environmental disruption of brain development. Dysfunction of dopaminergic neurotransmission appears to contribute to the genesis of psychotic symptoms but the evidence also points to a more widespread and variable involvement of brain areas and circuits. There is emerging evidence that disturbances of synaptic function might underlie abnormalities of neuronal connectivity possibly involving interneurons, but the precise nature, location and timing of these events is uncertain. Current treatment consists largely in the administration of antipsychotic drugs combined with psychological therapies, social support and rehabilitation, but there is a pressing need for more effective treatments and for services to be delivered more effectively. Progress in understanding the disorder has been great in recent years with advances in genomics, epidemiology and neuroscience, and the opportunities for further scientific advance are great: but so are the challenges. Go to: Introduction Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder that has a profound impact on the individual and society. While outcomes may not be as uniformly negative as is commonly believed, over 50% of those individuals who receive a diagnosis have intermittent but long-term psychiatric problems and around 20% have chronic symptoms and disability.1 Unemployment is staggeringly high at 80–90%2,3 and life expectancy is reduced by 10–20 years.4 In England schizophrenia costs society £11.8 billion per year with around a third of this accounted for by direct expenditure on health and social care, provided both in hospitals and the community.5 Understanding the aetiology and pathogenesis of schizophrenia and developing new more effective and acceptable treatments remains one of the most formidable challenges facing modern medicine. However, the past decade has seen substantial advances in the application of genomics, epidemiology and neuroscience to schizophrenia; while many challenges remain, the opportunities for progress have never been better. Go to: Clinical presentation, signs and symptoms Schizophrenia is characterised by diverse psychopathology (Box 1); the core features are positive symptoms (delusions and hallucinations; so-called psychotic symptoms in which there is a loss of contact with reality), negative symptoms (in particular impaired motivation, reduction in spontaneous speech, and social withdrawal) and cognitive impairment (as a group patients with schizophrenia perform more poorly than controls over a wide range of cognitive functions though there is much individual variability).6 The positive symptoms tend to relapse and remit, though some patients experience residual long-term psychotic symptoms. The negative and cognitive symptoms tend to be chronic and are associated with long-term effects on social function. The first episode of psychosis usually occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood but is frequently preceded by a prodromal phase or “at risk mental state”7, 8 and in some instances premorbid impairments in cognition and/or social functioning go back many years.9 However, in other instances onset is sudden in previously well-functioning individuals. Go to: Diagnosis and differential diagnosis Diagnosis is made clinically on the basis of history and by examination of the mental state; there are no diagnostic tests or biomarkers. Schizophrenia usually presents with psychosis and the main differential diagnoses, in DSM510, are affective psychoses (bipolar disorder with psychotic features and major depressive disorder with psychotic features), other, closely related, non-affective psychoses (schizoaffective disorder, schizophreniform disorder, delusional disorder, brief psychotic disorder and psychotic disorder not otherwise specified), substance induced psychotic disorders (alcohol induced, other substance induced) and psychotic disorders due to a general medical condition. Differential diagnosis takes into account the duration of illness, the nature and pattern of associated substance abuse, the co-occurrence of depression or mania and the presence of somatic illness. Schizophrenia, like the majority of psychiatric diagnoses, remains a syndromic concept. The use of operational criteria, such as those embodied in the Diagnostic or Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM),11 or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) of the World Health Organisation12 has provided a reliable approach to making psychiatric diagnoses in the clinic. However, the assumption that the clinical syndromes defined in this way represent valid disease entities with distinct underlying aetiology and pathogenesis is increasingly seen as having impeded research.13–15 Indeed psychiatric diagnoses have the unusual property of being simultaneously too broad and too narrow.15 Individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia vary greatly in predominant symptoms, response to treatment, course and outcome. However, attempts to resolve this heterogeneity into valid subtypes has repeatedly failed. On the other hand, many psychiatric diagnoses have symptoms in common (Box 1) and the boundaries between schizophrenia and other disorders are indistinct as are the boundaries between disorder and wellness. With regard to the latter there is an increasing realization that psychotic symptoms, such as auditory hallucinations and paranoid thinking, occur in attenuated form in 5–8% of the healthy population.16 This has led to suggestions that dimensional approaches to diagnosis and classification might replace or enhance current categorical approaches.15,17,18 Go to: Genetics It has long been known on the basis of many genetic epidemiological studies that there is a substantial, but not exclusive, contribution of genetic factors to the aetiology of schizophrenia.19,20 What has changed recently is that, thanks to recent large-scale genomic studies, the contribution of specific variants at the DNA level has begun to emerge and we are beginning to get a clearer picture of how risk alleles (Box 2) of different types contribute to the disorder. We can draw three lessons of general importance from these recent findings. The first is that schizophrenia is highly polygenic, as predicted many years ago on the basis of genetic epidemiological findings,21 with hundreds, and possibly thousands, of distinct genetic loci (Box 2) involved at the population level. The findings suggest that alleles with a spectrum of population frequencies contribute to risk (Fig 1).22 Genome-wide association studies (GWAS, Box 2) have identified over 100 distinct genetic loci containing relatively common alleles of small effect and the en masse effects of many hundreds of such loci.22,23 Genomic studies have also identified 11 rare, but recurrent, copy number variants (CNVs, Box 2) that individually confer relatively high risk of schizophrenia (Fig 1).24,25 Recent studies have also demonstrated a role of newly occurring (de novo) CNV mutations in schizophrenia.24,26,27 Recent whole exome sequencing studies (Box 2) have implicated rare, inherited and de novo single nucleotide and insertion/deletion variants (indels) in schizophrenia,28,29 though the net contribution of mutations of this type is unknown pending much larger sequencing studies. Bearing in mind that schizophrenia is associated with reduced fecundity,30 the picture that is emerging is one in which alleles that confer high individual risk are rare in the population due to the effects of natural selection,31 whereas those conferring small effects on individual risk can become common due to genetic drift or balancing selection (Fig 1). rest in link.
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 21:45:20 GMT
I tend to think of physiology Physiology is the science of life. It is the branch of biology that aims to understand the mechanisms of living things, from the basis of cell function at the ionic and molecular level to the integrated behaviour of the whole body and the influence of the external environment. www.physoc.org › what-is-p... Imo we cannot ignore physiology. It underpins experience. In our interest in mental health, however this is designed, physiology cannot be ignored. Nor can we ignore our enviroments which I think of as - physical - social, cultural , (and secondarily, polical, economic, religious). - spiritual.conscious/soul/ spirit. On this I personally aren't able yet to say anything more than that I sense somethings. And that we cannot ignore how much psychotic experience has spiritual/religious aspect to it. Your studies and interests have made you far more knowlegeable here than I am. But I do have a science degree (OU) and studied social science ar uni although I did not sit my finals and became involved in grassroot poltics. Hence my interest in detail ? In the detail of your integral model and my framework, I would guess you and I would find a lot we would agree upon but, not surprisely, some significant differences. On a practical level, for example, I look very carefully at what are claimed to be facts. Re research I would look at what precisely is being addressed, at the design of the research, at who is chosen to be in the experimental groups/controls, the time period covered by the research, how results are measured and interpreted - not just by the researchers, but also pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrisrs, the media ....on these you and I will make our own subjective judgements.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 22:06:51 GMT
I tend to think of physiology Physiology is the science of life. It is the branch of biology that aims to understand the mechanisms of living things, from the basis of cell function at the ionic and molecular level to the integrated behaviour of the whole body and the influence of the external environment. www.physoc.org › what-is-p... Imo we cannot ignore physiology. It underpins experience. In our interest in mental health, however this is designed, physiology cannot be ignored. Nor can we ignore our enviroments which I think of as - physical - social, cultural , (and secondarily, polical, economic, religious). - spiritual.conscious/soul/ spirit. On this I personally aren't able yet to say anything more than that I sense somethings. And that we cannot ignore how much psychotic experience has spiritual/religious aspect to it. Your studies and interests have made you far more knowlegeable here than I am. But I do have a science degree (OU) and studied social science ar uni although I did not sit my finals and became involved in grassroot poltics. Hence my interest in detail ? In the detail of your integral model and my framework, I would guess you and I would find a lot we would agree upon but, not surprisely, some significant differences. On a practical level, for example, I look very carefully at what are claimed to be facts. Re research I would look at what precisely is being addressed, at the design of the research, at who is chosen to be in the experimental groups/controls, the time period covered by the research, how results are measured and interpreted - not just by the researchers, but also pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrisrs, the media ....on these you and I will make our own subjective judgements. The human brain is the most complex thing in the known Universe - science does not understand mind / consciousness / awareness or the totality of truth / reality. Until we categorically know everything there is to know there is always going to be the same debate / argument / disagreement. i don't see what is unreasonable to state that mental health covers individual interrelated variable biological / psychological / environmental & spiritual (even if seen only from cultural perspectives) areas? That these are whole person conditions / experiences. It is impossible to categorically state etiology as no one knows. i would wager as well it is impossible to fully separate biology from psychology & environment, & in my view spirituality, & so arguments as to whether the primary etiology is biological or psychogenic or environmental or spiritual are always going to remain a matter of debate & conjecture. i'd wager that there are different weightings of biological, psychogenic, environmental & spiritual causes within each individual case. i tend to think some people do have a primary genetic brain condition. With other people maybe it is more trauma / abuse / sociological factors - with others more psychogenic - with others more spiritual - with others a combination of various variables.
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 22:28:21 GMT
[New strong evidence for neurological cause of schizophrenia A team of scientists claims to have finally started to understand what goes wrong in schizophrenia, following the discovery that disease-linked mutations disrupt genes responsible for maintaining a chemical balance in the brain crucial for healthy brain development and function] I see parallels with debates around Myalgic Encephalopathy (The ME Asooc's preferred tern) Encephalopathy. a disease in which the functioning of the brain is affected by some agent or condition (such as viral infection or toxins in the blood). The effects of such agents can be long term if not permanent . Given that - Genes carry instructions that tell your cells how to work and grow. + Cells are the building blocks of the body. Any mutation or damage may have widespread implications Such as epigenitics included in your integral model. 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.3 Aug 2020 www.cdc.gov › disease › epi... I've noted your posts, to take a closer look at sometime
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 22:40:14 GMT
The problem is that people seem to feel they have to dismiss/disparage all but the point they want to make themselves.
I feel you do this when you talk of 'mental illness deniers', applying it to anyone who questions any aspect of your favoured genetic model not just those people who explicitly refute psychiatry and its application.
|
|
|
Post by flyingcarpet46 on Jun 18, 2022 22:45:21 GMT
I am referring in my post to your comment
i tend to think some people do have a primary genetic brain condition. With other people maybe it is more trauma / abuse / sociological factors - with others more psychogenic - with others more spiritual -
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2022 23:48:36 GMT
I am referring in my post to your comment i tend to think some people do have a primary genetic brain condition. With other people maybe it is more trauma / abuse / sociological factors - with others more psychogenic - with others more spiritual - How are you any different with your highly critical view of psychiatry / pharma & focus on the sociological / cultural / environment? i was the same for 20 years - it's 20 years of on-line discussions with thousands of people that did it to me & actually studying science / medicine / psychiatry - people are definitely mentally ill in various ways & to various degrees - some severely - & i have little doubt given our current scientific understandings & the fragility of our biology that a lot of it is biological - doesn't mean that i don't support in depth integral approaches as that is what i have campaigned for for the past 20 years; however psychiatry really does have a point. i would love to see a transformation of this World / Civilization / Humanity to transform to truly Enlightened ways of Being within the collective - a harmony within humanity & with nature. We're going to destroy ourselves & this 'civilization' if we carry on with business as usual for much longer - the window of opportunity is closing; certainly on an ecological level. Nothing is going to change with all the different groups / camps / agendas arguing over it all.
|
|