Posted by xbunny on October 11, 2006, at 9:35:10
In reply to Re: experts say...ditch schizophrenia label » xbunny, posted by Squiggles on October 11, 2006, at 8:33:34
> I'm supporting the scrapping of the schizophrenia
> categorizing, not because i don't believe there
> are similar clusters of symptoms to be found in
> delusional psychoses of this type.
>
> Rather, it is a desperate measure in the present state of ignorance in neuropsychiatry. Until the function of the brain which gives rise to the shifting climates of thinking and feeling that we call normal, is understood, described and predicted, we have to stumble in the darkness, and listen to the patient's complaints. So, an observational approach is more reliable than a diagnostic according to diagnosic tools that we don't have. There is endocrinology, and MRIs --
> maybe those can be helpful in some cases. Etiology is so hard.I find you hard to follow, but your agreeing with me right? Your saying there is no really accurate diagnosis tools so therefore it would be meaningless to attempt to apply subcategories when we dont have the right ways to notice them? If thats what you mean I think your absolutely right.
I think your slightly disagreeing with me because I am advocating that _in the future_ one way of categorizing schizophrenia will be to investigate how different groups react to different drugs, thats fair enough. The way I see it, once we have the drug we are one step closer to infering a) how it might work (and hence other drugs too) and b) what the subtype of schizophrenia we are dealing with is. This is a net gain for all schizophrenia.
>
> Until medicine cracks this frontier, we have some mostly bad drugs to treat some of these symptoms. These drugs are made on the basis of neurological hypotheses about what causes depression and hallucinations. In a sense they are experimental. As far as the patient is concerned and how he copes with these drugs, heroin would be a more sensible drug to give, as it covers so many psychotic states, with relatively less harm. Cheaper too.Not sure if Im with you there, but it may well be my ignorance. I have never heard that heroin was an effective antipsychotic. In the other points I agree with you, the current drugs are far to inexact and the mechanism by which they work are still to vague to draw many conclusions. I disagree though that they are 'bad drugs' they are the best we have and I think better than nothing. I also think at least we are on the right track, researchers _are_ trying new drugs and forming new hypotheses about both how the drugs work and how they interact with the illness, this is good stuff. I agree its experimental its abit like trying to determine how a computer works by replacing components with ones which your not quite sure about either. Unfortunately we dont yet have suitable logic probes nor a manual! I certainly can conceive a day when we will have exact hypotheses about the way the brain works which fit actual results, but until that day I think its quite acceptable to experiment.
Bunny
poster:xbunny
thread:693568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061011/msgs/693802.html