Has anybody here ever checked out Recovery Incorporated? I accompanied someone to one of their meetings and it seemed quite useful to the people there.
Most of the folks at this meeting were dealing with auditory hallucinations and/or bizarre thoughts and this self-help program gave them tips and techniques for dealing with them.
Time for some humor: “I am serotonin impaired, so am I too”
This is probably the place to mention that schizophrenia != Multiple Personality Disorder, despite the popular misconception.
A little while ago on Discover or TLC I saw a segment on “Virtual Schizophrenia”, a VR unit that was set up to mimic the effects of the condition. The goal of the device was to give people who know someone with schizophrenia at least a glimpse into what that person is living with. The segment I saw showed the viewer walking around a living room set where all of a sudden pieces of furniture would morph into faces, and voices would be heard coming from nowhere. The site below has an article that I think is describing something similar.
Thank you, AHunter3. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I see at least one outcome of schizophrenia, a funky view of metaphysics and epistemology. 
I seem to recall that schizophrenia can be understood by an excess of dopamine???
I asked a teacher about this once, that is, if I could theoretically simulate schizophrenia by somehow adding to my natural amount of dopamine, and she said “yes” but I remain skeptical. This thread seems to shy away from that. Can someone clear this up for me, please?
I should add, young Atreidies, that Mr. Hunter and I happen to agree on quite a bit of philosophy/metaphysics. So brain chemistry is in no way required for such views.
Besides which, I hear voices too. I just happen to be able to attribute all of those voices to specific stimulation patterns in my visual field.
I have a medical condition caused by low levels of dopamine, and take a medication that increases the sensitivity of my dopamine receptors. The list of potential side effects for this medication include schizophrenia-like symptoms such as vivid hallucinations. I take it that if a person with normal dopamine levels were to take this medication, or if someone like me were to overdose on it, we would experience something similar to schizophrenia.
However, while excess dopamine is associated with schizophrenia it is unlikely that it is the lone factor in the disease, and I wouldn’t expect that you’d be able to precisely “simulate schizophrenia” with dopamine alone.
Interesting Lamia… might I inquire as to what this medication is exactly (name)? Those whacky chemists, so inventive. I had never considered increasing the receptor’s sensistivity rather than just putting more dopamine into the system.
So there was some truth to it after all. How very interesting. Thanks, even if you don’t give me the medicinal name.
Most of the original neuroreceptor research (including theories about dopamine and serotonin uptake) was derived from backwards reasoning: psychiatric medications were studies for their efficacy and mechanism, and it was discovered that the neuroleptics (e.g., phenothiazines, such as stelazine, thorazine, haldol, prolixin, etc) dampened the effectiveness of neurotransmitters, making neural tissue less responsive to dopamine. From this it was hypothesized that, therefore, the people who “need” the medication must have too much dopamine or must be too sensitive to it.
Some initial research on mental patients seemed to support this hypothesis.
There were some problems with the underlying logic, though. First off, “schizophrenia” (that still-hypothetical brain disease diagnostically known only by its subjectively interpreted behavioral symptoms) is not a thorazine deficiency disease. Second, the population on which the original research was performed consisted in large part of long-term patients who had been taking neuroleptic medication for years before the research had been conducted.
Well, gee, if I made you take something that dampened your system’s responsiveness to something it needs, then took you off it long enough to do some research a few years later, I’d probably find your tissues hyperresponsive at that point, too, due to compensation effects!
I don’t know the state of the research and knowledge base at this point, but I have a sense that it is still common for test populations of “schizophrenics” to include people who have been taking psych medications over a long period and/or who are taking it during the course of the studies.
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OTHER PROBLEMS ENDEMIC TO PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH
It is still common for research that includes behavioral outcome assessments to NOT be double-blind (i.e., researchers know the schizzies from whatever control group they are using at all times, assuming there even exists a control group of non-schizzies); and, if the research revolves around the use of pharmaceuticals, vitamins, dietary components, etc., the psychiatrists, psych nurses, or researchers are often aware of who is taking the substance under consideration, and in many cases so are the patients themselves (they may not be informed of the particulars but they know if their ‘meds’ have been changed or not).
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All in all, though, I associate dopamine, and the ability of the neurons to fire easily with little resistance, with a tendency to think “outside the box”, to have a good imagination, but also to have a tendency to connect up ideas and thoughts that aren’t associated in any meaningful sense, or to jump “off-track” from one line of thought to another as if they fed into each other when they do not, and, in particular, to think metaphorically and at times to have trouble distinguishing between metaphorical representation of a thought or idea and the thought or idea itself.
LSD and other psychedelics tend to nudge the brain in the easy-firing direction, and these psychoactive chemicals were once called “psychotomimetic” under the theory that they mimic the experiences of psychosis. But that viewpoint fell out of vogue some time ago in the study of psychoactive compounds, or so I think I recall.
All in all, the psychiatric researchers have been barking up the neurotransmitter (esp. dopamine) tree for several decades now with little concrete to show for it, so it may be the wrong tree. (An inability to DEFINE schizophrenia in a manner that can successfully survive a double-blind trial is part of the problem!!!). But they may nevertheless be on to something.
I do feel a bit icky about giving out the names of my meds. I guess it just seems a little too personal, although goodness knows that hasn’t stopped me from revealing other details of my life in the past. But if you’re looking to do some research on the subject, my medication is one of many drugs (including LSD) derived from ergot. They all serve as dopamine agonists (the opposite of an antagonist).
For some reason “just putting more dopamine into the system” of people with low dopamine levels doesn’t work – although it would take someone with a stronger background in brain chemistry can explain why. Drugs used to treat dopamine deficiencies must therefore approach the problem in a roundabout way.
At 17 I was diagnosed with a Depressive Psychosis. This means that I personally am a Psychotic Depressive.
Essentially all I do is take depression very very seriously indeed, although I did have a brief episode of auditory hallucination when I was 17. Later I was able to stabilise with antipsychotics (calmingly known as major tranquillisers) and have since successfully cut down to just antidepressants.
It’s a chemical thing as far as I’m concerned, although personality gets involved, inevitably. An episode feels real enough although if one’s able to concentrate it’s possible to experience an episode lucidly - to know you’re going mad. The trick, I found, is to hang onto that side of things, although of course concentration is usually the first thing to disappear with mental illness. What really finally helped me was my own prayers. From my point of view, they centred me on something other than myself, something stronger. From the doctors’, they just helped me concentrate.
Depressive Psychosis is not the same thing as Schizophrenia, although the latter has tended, particularly in the past, to become a bit of a blanket term for any difficult illness. We’re getting there, slowly.
I respectfully disagree.
Ahh, I see. Doesn’t make me agree though. 
FrogMonk, In case you hadn’t noticed this thread dates from 2001 and many of the posters are no longer around.
(I’ll leave out the jokes about zombies - doesn’t seem right for this topic!)
Interesting thread-in the time of Jesus, when someone was said to be “possessed by an evil spirit”-were they most likely talking about schizophrenia? It certainly sounds like it.
Schizophrenia, or paranoia, or had St Vitus’ dance (epilepsy) only without the reference to an as-yet-unborn saint. Depending on the culture, the “evil spirit” label would have been stuck only on certain illnesses, or it would have been a general description. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the “bugs” theory of illness was proven; previously, any illness got attributed to “evil spirits”, “the evil eye” or “having pissed God off” (maybe not even you directly, but your great-grandmother).