Evolutionary Benefit for Schizophrenia.

Great Debates
21

I would question the number of mentally ill persons whom you’ve met. There are several mental illnesses whose primary cause is biological in nature. You can “resolve” all the so called childhood trauma in the world, and it won’t do a thing for a chemical imbalance, brain tumor, or other physical defect within the brain. This is why Prozac is far more effective at treating depression than psycotherapy alone ever was.

Better still, explain dementia brought on by Alzheimers as a result of unresolved childhood trauma, please.

Multiple personality disorder has nothing to do with schizophrenia. In fact, the current thinking among many researchers is that MSD is not even a real illness. It may be as phony as past life regression.

22

I’ll agree and disagree with you all at once. I agree that childhood trauma isn’t the root of all mental illnesses; there are definitely vulnerabilities formed when trauma is experienced (it doesn’t have to be experienced as a child), but some mental illnesses appear without any significant precursor event.

It’s difficult, however, to say that Prozac is more valuable than good therapy. Depends a lot on the mental illness - depression is almost equally responsive to medication and cognitive therapy, and they’re better again when used in conjunction. Prozac isn’t any more effective than earlier tricyclic antidepressants (although its ad campaigns were a lot more impressive :)), but the reduced side effect profile and decreased potential for fatal overdose make the SSRIs a good alternative. (Source: Handbook of Depression 2nd Ed.).

And ditto on the multiple personality disorder (now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder) not having anything to do with schizophrenia. That’s a common misconception of the general public.

Oh, and sorry about the hijack, oldscratch. I don’t feel schizophrenia has any evolutionary advantage, for what it’s worth.

23

I think it more likely that shizophrenia doesn’t have enough of an evolutionary disadvantage to be selected against.

I don’t buy the “childhood trauma” explanation (then again, I tend to keep a protective hand on my wallet at any psychological “explanation” of why people are the way they are). Plenty of people have traumas of various sizes and levels of horridness, yet not all, or even most, become shizophrenic.

If anything, I suspect it’s a side-effect that shows up due to the nature of how consciousness works–however the heck it does–and consciousness, so far, has had evolutionary advantage that outweighs any disadvantage of it turning schizophrenic in a small percentage of folks.

24

berdollos, it is clear from this post that you have never been around a true schizophrenic. I have, and I can tell you this much: Imagining that there are assasins tunneling into your house does not make you a shaman or a religious visionary. It means that you are delusional.

25

Again, I don’t think this is as different from small-town life as you think. In fact, having your neighbors in your face and your business all the time is the main complaint people have about small towns, in my experience. You still have to pretend to like them, you still have to play politics. That’s part of living in any human community.

26

The OP betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of natural selection.

A particular trait need not have any positive value to the survival of the organism to be retained. Only if it has a negative affect on the reproductive capability of the organism will it be selected against.

In other words, the traits mentioned in the OP are traits which may not confer specific advantages, but have not been entirely “bred out” because their retention causes the organism no reproductive harm. Although their rarity may suggest something.

27

Small towns have gossips and such, but large, crowded places have much more personal, visual, auditory and subliminal pressures. You walk with 500 other people on a sidewalk, where in a small town you might share it with 10 or 20, plus the background noise is not as obnoxious like in NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, and so on, nor is the daily pollution rate so high from hundreds of thousands of cars.

Small towns are usually spread out, with ample room between many neighbors unlike living cramped in small, expensive apartments listening to every fart your neighbors make
. In some places, you get to hear every argument, fight, rumble and discussion of the street accompanied by gunshots, screams, constantly wailing sirens and the downshift blast big rigs make.

Businesses in small towns are more personal, often more honest with your druggist knowing you well, your doctor having time to explain things to you, your grocery store clerks and checkers might know you, and you might even have a mechanic who does a real good job for a reasonable price because he needs your business.

In big towns, or cities, hostility and suspicion roam the streets, people in NYC step over apparently unconscious bodies in their way, cabbies have an international reputation there as being nasty, obnoxious and devious. Even just ordinary folks on the street are overly suspicious of being cheated, attacked, or argued with.

The places are too busy, too crowded, too noisy, too expensive, too uncaring and too competitive.

Relatives of mine used to come down from around NYC, driving these huge cars, wielding rolls of bucks, speaking that fast, aggressive lingo and jumping at a chance to argue with anyone, especially people in stores, over buying goods and considering everyone here in the South as hicks, cowboys and generally idiots.

When I visited NYC and Los Angeles I found the very noise level annoying and most of the people I dealt with in deli’s, news stands, restaurants and even pan handlers seemed like smart asses and out for an argument. The stink got to me first off and it took awhile to get used to it.

In NYC, in a cafeteria, crowded, I first experienced strangers just sitting down at my table and eating because there was no room. Twice I got bitched at for not making a choice fast enough at a deli because I was so overwhelmed with the choices and the crowd. I got bumped into numerous times on the street and even shoved once and no one even said ‘excuse me.’

The pressure from all sides in a big city is definitely a factor in the increased rates of various mental illnesses in them, including schizophrenia, depression, agoraphobia and antisocial behavior.

Look back in history, not all small towns are boring, but it shows increases in mental diseases and crime, psychotic behavior and suicide as the population goes up.

Anyone ever notice how serial killers seemed to pop almost out of nowhere once our population passed one and a half million? Things got worse when it reached the point that it’s hard to find an untouched, private place where one could be alone for a time. Hikers fight to find untouched areas because the get tired of walking for two days to reach a secluded spot only to find the remains of campfires, discarded beer cans or piles of human poop behind the trees.

Even here, our population has gone from around 10,000 when I was a kid, to over 90,000. The long, beautiful stretches of tropical beaches and wild woods are mostly under houses and motels, the river which once required only a days fishing to get enough sweet crabs, clams, oysters and fish to last a week now has fishing bans and limits in place because it’s almost fished out and polluted from heavy boat traffic and homes.

Once, slightly drunk, I sat in the middle of the main beach highway after 2 AM, on the yellow stripe, smoked a cigarette, laid down, looked at the stars, then returned to my friends without a single car coming by. Today, I’d have to move shortly after getting there because of the 24 hour traffic. Our crime has gone up, sparsely developed subdivisions are crowded and you get to listen to everyone doing what they want, more subdivisions are going in – I counted 4 the other day in the stages of being built – and even the police are not as laid back and friendly as they used to be.

So, yes, I firmly agree that environmental pressure in large cities heavily influences the increasing incidents of schizophrenia.

By the way, many schizophrenics actually hear voices telling them things, which has been linked by some to Multiple Personalities and while some psychiatrists feel there is no such thing, many, many others do.

So do I. Mainly because I’ve know people who have changed attitude and personalities frequently, and while they did not perform a complete separation in identities, the differences were astonishing.

28

I don’t deny that city life has many pressures that small-town life lacks. I just disagree with your characterization of that as individual freedom. Small towns can offer community, nurture, etc. but the people I know who have grown up in them tend to find the anonymity of the city much more freeing. It’s hard to have that much freedom of movement, or personal change, if everybody knows who you are and who your family is and what you are supposed to be.

In fact, the real stress if city life in my view is not too little freedom, but, in a way, too much. You are surrounded by people, but you are alone, and you can disappear. You can do whatever you want with your life, including massively screw it up. It seems to me that it’s not lack of solitude, but emotional solitude despite the crowds, that makes it mentally stressful.

However, I would add your impression of cities seems overly influenced by New York, and the behavior of relatives therein. Few cities are that crowded and aggressive. You can create a village for yourself in a city–but you have to work at it, rather than being born into it.

29

I disagree, but, then, psychiatric and criminal statistics tend to agree with me.

In large cities the records of various mental illnesses spike sharply. It has long been known that increases in population density on limited land space affect the human psyche adversely, even though most adept to the loss of individual space.

Basically, it works out to over population of set living space causes a dramatic increase in deviational behavior, which tends to increase geometrically if the population continues to increase.

However, there are many who thrive in such a lifestyle, accepting the difficulties as normal and often subtly changing in their own psyche in relation to the over all norm of the general population. It is well known that aggressive tendencies increase within the majority of large cities, and well known that stress rates soar.

A small town is not like Mayberry USA but may consist of 20 to 30,000 people, which, when spread out over an area of 6 or 7 square miles, not including the county area, which can add another 6 or 7 square miles, gives people ample spread out room.

Sometimes too much freedom can cause various types of people to infringe on the rights of others because they have little regard for such rights, especially within the confines of a city containing half a million people in an area normally designed to support something like 200,000.

So, it is not unexpected that incidents of schizophrenia increase dramatically.

Other aspects are being looked into, because, while schizophrenia can run in families, there is no proof yet that it is genetic, especially since cases spring up in people with no family history of the illness. In large cities, influences such as noise, over crowding, pollution, lack of personal space, the need for constant personal caution, poor diet, poor wages, poor living conditions, crowded public transportation and even unpleasant smells, exposed garbage, run down areas and the sound of nearly constant construction are considered as contributing to causing the condition in a person predestined to psychosis.

You, perhaps not being predestined to any form of mental disease, might shrug off these things, but a lot of people cannot. In lessor forms, the influences show themselves as increased aggression, marked intolerance to different races, religions, homophobia, selfishness, defensive ‘shells’, some personal isolation, a ‘hardening’ of the personality to avoid injury, an exaggerated feeling of self worth, lack of empathy towards others, a potential to have a short fuse and so on.

Like I indicated in a previous post, NYC waiters have been known to follow patrons out of a restaurant, demanding more of a tip if they felt the customer under tipped them, not caring if the customer considered the amount left sufficient for their services.

In Miami Florida, many natural born Americans find it irritating to have to speak Spanish in many areas of their city because Cubans make up a huge part of the population, forced through bilingual laws, and often refuse to learn English, plus they have tremendously increased the population, creating a heavily crowded city. Traffic alone can virtually drive you nuts.

Another example is road rage, mainly from people driving on over crowded highways that were designed origonally for much less traffic. Short fuses can be generated by irrititation over the many different versions of driving skills, or lack of, by other drivers. Add to that commercial drivers or businessmen having to make appointments, where they are pushed for time and get slowed by traffic, road construction, have to put up with the fumes from thousands of cars, the weather conditions, the price of gas and even the loud music from other cars.

I think I can really understand road rage.

Now, we know that such influences contribute enough stress to make drivers kill, and to encourage high blood pressure and heart attacks, ulcers and nervous tics, so what do you thing it can do to an overly sensitive person or a pre-psychotic?