Question:
But how long can patients wait? A year in the life of a schizophrenic can
be like an eternity. Patients and their families do not have the luxury
of waiting for the day when psychiatry will at last start treating their
patients properly. It does not provide much solace to the Wilsons and
other parents who have lost their children to suicide. (The suicide rate
for schizophrenia is about 25 times that of the general population).
Answer:
Recently, in an orthodox medical journal, the question was discussed
whether psychiatrists were still going to be needed. Basically, modern
psychiatrists have two main treatment functions: they prescribe drugs -
tranquilizers or antidepressants; and they may also do psychotherapy or
counselling. It was suggested that general practitioners are just as
capable of prescribing drugs, and that psychologists and counsellors are
perhaps even more capable of doing psychotherapy and counselling. In
other words, the family physicians could initiate the medical regimen,
and the psychologists could take over the counselling function. This was
not a very radical idea as it has been happening for many decades.
Psychiatrists themselves have started deserting the really seriously
ill--the schizophrenics, the senile states, the personality
disorders--and have devoted themselves more and more to the more benign
forms of disease such as depression and mild anxiety conditions. And
general practitioners have become more and more skillful at treating
seriously ill psychiatric diseases. I know many physicians (MDs,
osteopaths, naturopaths, chiropractors) who practice orthomolecular
medicine, and who have a much higher cure rate when treating
schizophrenics than do the psychiatrists in their area who work only with
drugs. In Saskatchewan many years ago, a family physician was so
effective local psychiatrists complained about him. Later he lost his
license to practise medicine.
Over the past 100 years, psychiatric conditions that were almost
exclusively treated in mental hospitals have disappeared from psychiatry
because they were treated successfully by general practitioners. In a
book on psychiatry written about 1900, the four differential diagnoses
for psychosis were pellagra, scurvy, general paresis of the insane and
dementia praecox. The treatment for pellagra was dietary until niacin was
recognized to be vitamin B3 in about 1935. Pellagra has disappeared; at
one time it made up as much as one-third of all admissions to mental
hospitals in the southern U.S.A. It became the province of the early
pellagrologists. But they were no longer needed when synthetic vitamin B3
became available and was added to white flour in the U.S.A. and Canada.
Most psychiatrists today would not recognize it if a patient with
pellagra walked into their office. Scurvy severe enough to cause
psychosis is no longer present. Syphilis responded to the physician and
the needle, and is rarely found in mental hospitals.
But dementia praecox, the disease, did not disappear. It was simply
renamed schizophrenia, and has remained the major problem for psychiatry.
Freud recognized that psychoanalysis would have a short career, only
until the physicians with their syringe (drugs) came along. He knew
nothing about nutrition and nutrients when he practised.
The process of breaking the broad group of the schizophrenias into
unitary syndromes still goes on. Arising from our work in Saskatchewan in
1960, Carl C. Pfeiffer was able to divide schizophrenias into three broad
groups: those excreting krytopyrrole, the high histamine group, and the
low histamine group. Each group requires a different treatment plan, and
when they are followed the results are very good. He recognized a fourth
large group, the cerebral allergies. But orthodox psychiatry is not aware
of this useful subdivision and looks upon each schizophrenic as a member
of the same class-a class for which the only treatment is to be
tranquilized.
If modern psychiatry did its job effectively, there would be no need to
consider replacing them with their more biochemically oriented
colleagues. The results of modern drug treatment are not very good
compared to what was obtained before the tranquilizers were introduced.
Thus, at a symposium held in Vancouver in the fall of 1995 sponsored by
the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Dr. Alan Brier, Chief, Unit of
Pathophysiology and Treatment, Experimental Therapeutics Branch, National
Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, is quoted as saying,
"Eighty-five percent of all people with schizophrenia who are treated
with neuroleptic drugs are deriving suboptimal benefits. So it is clear
that new and better drugs are needed". He should have said, more
appropriately, that we need better treatment. Orthomolecular treatment is
not new, but it is an awful lot better than merely allowing patients to
vegetate on tranquilizers.
A fifteen percent response rate is pretty good if there are no other
treatments which yield a better outcome. In fact, in 1850 Dr. J. Conolly
in England reported that fifty percent of his insane patients were
discharged well. The early mental hospitals in the northeastern U.S.A.
reported similarly good results. What did they use? Good food, shelter,
sympathetic care, and respect. This fifty percent is probably the natural
recovery rate if our schizophrenic patients were treated with the same
sympathetic care, good nutritious food and decent shelter (not the city
streets).
Modern psychiatry, with the huge expenditure of money for drugs, has in
150 years gone down to a 15% recovery rate. Yet its practitioners seem to
be content with this very dismal response rate while they wait for the
miracle-the drugs which will cure their patients. Each year we hear the
announcement of new, ever more expensive drugs, with little evidence they
have any major impact on the problem as a whole. I don't see reports that
the schizophrenic homeless are no longer homeless, or that the suicide
rate among young schizophrenic patients has gone down.
Recently, on Canada's news channel, Pamela Wallin discussed
schizophrenia. For the first fifteen minutes a couple spoke about their
schizophrenic son, still ill. For the next fifteen minutes the Honorable
Michael Wilson, formerly Minister of Finance, described his son's illness
culminating in his suicide. The first half hour, then, was devoted to
demonstrating the failure of modern psychiatry. The third fifteen minute
section was given to a modern psychiatrist who seemed quite cheerful with
the present treatment of schizophrenia. He gave a good account of the
nature of the illness, but was pleased with the tranquilizers and was
cheerfully hoping for that ever new, better tranquilizer. It appeared to
me that he had not seen the first half hour of this program. The last
fifteen minutes was given to a schizophrenic patient who appeared well,
and who created and edits a journal for schizophrenics. It is a good
journal to which I have made several contributions which have been
accepted, indicating a degree of broad-mindedness which does not exist in
standard psychiatric journals. This TV production typifies the state of
schizophrenia treatment today: tranquilize, be content, wait for the new,
ever-better tranquilizer.
But how long can patients wait? A year in the life of a schizophrenic can
be like an eternity. Patients and their families do not have the luxury
of waiting for the day when psychiatry will at last start treating their
patients properly. It does not provide much solace to the Wilsons and
other parents who have lost their children to suicide. (The suicide rate
for schizophrenia is about 25 times that of the general population).
In sharp contrast, at the 25th anniversary conference of the Canadian
Schizophrenia Foundation, held in Vancouver in May 1996, two chronic
schizophrenic patients, who met and married after they had recovered,
described their own illness and their recovery on the orthomolecular
program. They had both failed to respond to previous modern psychiatric
treatment.
Modern psychiatry has not been very good at treating schizophrenia. One
need only glance over at the homeless people who live in the our city
centers for the evidence. Is there any other disease, other than
addictions, where so many sufferers are forced to wind up in the streets
for lack of proper medical attention? Think what would happen if half the
homeless suffered from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is contagious, but in a
social sense so is schizophrenia. In my opinion, many patients today are
no better off than they would have been in 1950 when they were
incarcerated in hopelessly overcrowded dungeons called hospitals. Perhaps
they would have been better off then, for at least they had a few nurses
and doctors to look after them.
Today patients are released early, after a short stay in hospital in
order to start them on tranquilizers. They are discharged as soon as
their major symptoms are partially suppressed, but long before they have
regained enough health to permit them to live on their own, or with their
families. Or--and this is becoming more frequent-- their diagnosis is
changed from schizophrenia to personality disorder, and they are
discharged with the unhelpful advice that personality disorders can not
be treated.
The reason why modern psychiatry has failed is that it has such a narrow
vision of what to do. All psychiatry knows is to use tranquilizers,
waiting for that distant day when they will have a drug, the Holy Grail,
which will cure schizophrenia. I do not know of a single xenobiotic
chemical that has ever cured anything, even though some of them are
useful in ameliorating the discomfort of the disease. The answer to
schizophrenia will come from recognizing more clearly its causes and
biochemistry and dealing with them, as is done in orthomolecular
psychiatry.
Modern tranquilizer psychiatry has been struggling for the past forty
years with the tranquilizer dilemma, which they are aware of but have not
clearly faced. Very simply it is this: when one uses a tranquilizer, one
converts one psychosis, schizophrenia, into another, the tranquilizer
psychosis. I believe it was Dr. Mayer-Gross who first suggested, in about
1955, that tranquilizers converted one psychosis into another.
Tranquilizers alleviate many of the symptoms of schizophrenia, and make
life more comfortable for the patient and for their families, as ...I discontinued my risperdal about 1.5 years ago ( although
at that time I'd only been on it for about 10 months) and now
take it only when I feel that I am coming into a "bad spot"- ie
I have increased paranoia, increased "thought impressions", etc.
I take it until the "bad spot" passes me by... usually about
1 week or so.
Things that have helped me are: large doses of vitamins (100mg
of most of the b-vitamins on weekdays), getting the proper amount
of sleep for myself (this varies from person-to-person, from what I
understand), eating a decent diet, and- and this component of the
whole thing is important for me- getting regular exercise, which
for me means 1-1.5 hrs of cardio and weight training 3-4 times
a week.
If I let any of these things go for to long, I can feel a difference
in myself.
I am glad that you have found success with this regime. Unfortunately,
not everyone can discontinue medication for symptoms of altered
thought and then restart by their own volition. Often the
thought process changes, inhererent in a psychotic break, will
limited the individuals capacity to enter into this decision
making process.
I do agree that the Vitamin B 100s, which strengthen the nervous
system are an excellent addition for all to a medication regime.
Many people with schizophrenia seem to have acquired the smoking
habit, some from having been in hospital settings where smoking
was the past time of the day. It would also be beneficial for a
a person who is smoking to discontinue smoking.
