Posted by xbunny on October 11, 2006, at 5:08:29
In reply to Re: experts say...ditch schizophrenia label » xbunny, posted by SLS on October 10, 2006, at 23:07:09
> Continued research will ultimately resolve the details and produce biological and psychometric tests to segregate out the various illnesses that might be currently portrayed by the single diagnosis of schizophrenia. Although to the credit of the establishment, the identification of the various subtypes makes for a recognition of different illnesses.
I think it will be interesting to see whether the breakdown of schizophrenia like illnesses will be drug driven or observationally driven. I think what should happen is that at some point in the future we will discover drug X effects only some group of schizophrenia sufferers but much more effectively. This is in turn will lead researchers to investigate this group more closely and disambiguate its symptoms from the cloud of schizophrenia and a new disorder will be born. This approach I feel is better than an observational approach which says suffers X appears to like sufferer Y therefore they have the same subtype as there is little evidence other than the superficial that this is so and more importantly there is no accurate treatment for the new subtype. In fact I think it could be damaging as researchers will end up in a loop whereby they think they identify one subtype but fail to find a treatment which accurately fits it and ultimately after wasting time it will result in the disposal of the subtype and the loop will continue pointlessly.
This is the trap schizophrenia researchers will fall into if they attempt to divide schizophrenia at this current time.Bunny
poster:xbunny
thread:693568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061011/msgs/693758.html