Psychosis: Mental Illness or Spiritual Awakening?

reply to post by hadriana


Crowely was likely psychotic. What sane man defecates in the floor of another mans home?

The whole idea of leaping into the Abyss and becoming one with the Dweller on the Threshold, aka the demon Choronzon doesn't sound remotely like gnosis. More like a one way ticket to self destruction.

Gnosis doesn't involve any of that. If you want smart, Plato and Aristotle are a much better choice.

reply to post by Advantage



Psychosis is very real....it is also treated very badly at present by the medical profession who often compound the problems rather than alleviate them. They require to take an holistic approach which they simply do not do. Patients admitted to a psychiatric hospital aren’t even given a physical examination to determine if there may be a physical cause behind the psychosis.

In the UK 80% of new psychiatrists come from abroad. BBC Radio 4 runs a series called ‘All in the Mind’ which is aimed at an audience of psychologists and psychiatrists. One of their programmes attempted to address the reasons why we require to import our psychiatrists. They interviewed British medical students who had started their training specifically because they wanted to enter this field...and halfway through their training changed specialism. When interviewed and asked why one student stated that psychiatry is a branch of medicine which talks at inordinate length about their patient, right down to if the pattern on the curtains is upsetting them – and almost NO time at all talking WITH their patient. The average out-patient appointment in this area is 4 minutes – even in detention a patient will see their consultant for only around 10 minutes each week. Another said they had a real problem with enforced treatment.

100 years ago they said ‘madness originated in the gut,’ and they had a far higher success rate in their treatment of psychotic patients than they do today. On the wall in the corridor of the local psychiatric unit (at one time labelled the ‘worst in Britain’) there was a display board of the hospital’s history which included a case study of a mother of three children who had recently lost her husband. She was high as a kite and no matter what she didn’t seem to be recovering. She was eventually prescribed with about 8 pints of milk per day....and a couple of shots of whisky. The case notes end with the consultant meeting Mrs X in the local grocery store with her children...and the consultant’s pleasure at seeing her life resume to normal. That doesn’t happen these days.

There is an unwritten code between patients that they do not tell their consultants about the positive phenomena of psychosis. These will occur in the early stages - prior to them being seen by a medic - which most will admit eventually gets to the point where they can no longer control their mind and it becomes frightening. Why don't they speak? - because they fear that then the medics will then become really interested in them and, if they are detained, that they will never be released.

A friend of mine worked in pharmaceutical research and resigned for ethical reasons. He stated than when working in the lab with various compounds any reaction would be taken to his superior and the question asked ‘What can we use this for?’ It was a commercial enterprise only, not an investigation of healing. The short vid below has a chap in a similar role who expresses the same opinion. My friend was later head-hunted to work for researchers in genetics. He had a personal dilemma as to what he should do. Knowing that he is fundamentally a decent person I encouraged him to go for it as he was better out than in – at least then he would know what was going on. He came to see me soon after and shook his head, citing Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and said that’s the direction they were heading in.




The marketing power of big pharma is enormous. The Emperor has no clothes and yet anyone who dares point this out is regarded as an irresponsible heretic. That is evidenced by this thread alone. Psychiatric medications and the need for them for life must be one of the greatest marketing successes of all time. There is 0% cure rate for those diagnosed with schizophrenia today who are treated solely with medication. As previously stated success rates were higher 100 years ago.


The link below is an essay by Robert Whitaker entitled ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.’ It spells out how the initial testing of chlorpromazine (largactil), the first proclaimed anti-psychotic, had a 5 year follow through which was not reported at the time. Half of a group of psychotics were given the drug – the others half were not. Those given the drug appeared to recover a lot faster than those who were not...those who were not given the drug still recovered but in more time. What was NOT reported at all was that those given the drugs suffered several relapses in the five year follow up period – those who recovered more slowly without the use of the drug had no relapse in the same period.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

The final vid is a clip from a film ‘These Broken Wings’ commenting on the treatment of patients today.

reply to post by christina-66

Your reply to my post has absolutely nothing to do with what my post said.

I thinink you may be confused as to what psychosis is.To become an armchair expert who has never experienced it is damaging to any future we have to get this under control in the future. Ive spent 30 years in the medical field and figure I have more practical experience to share rather than ancedotal heard from someone else info or something Ive read and THINK I understand. I can tell you with no shame that after 30 yrs I do not understand it.. but I can see it in a way I dont think you do. Mainly because Ive really actually seen it. Im going to be a little harsh.. but not personally to you. I understand it takes time and real in the trenches experience with mental illness to really have any sort of grasp of what it truly is. Ive seen nurses, ems, and residents/dr.s quit or be transfered when they get an up close and personal visit with a psychotic. Youve seen the possessed people in movies? They dont hole a candle to some psychotics. Its really frightening sometimes. So dont be offended.. Im not purposely trying to be a jerk I too had strange ideas about mental illness as a lot of folks do when they have not seen it up close and personal as a daily job. I spent more time caring for other people and in service of other people than I did at my home with my family. NO ONE works a 10 yr stretch in an er.. I was an RN before we had unions that keep nurses from going psychotic from stress themselves. Besides the medical issues which still invade my thoughts and dreams... the mental cases haunt me. You must understand that sometimes psychosis is sudden, without prior indication, and is sometimes somthing more mind and soul bendingly horrible than any story or movie can capture. I DO understand why in the past that psychosis was thought to be a matter of demon possession... sometimes it could fool me too. Being compelled to do things in which you do not fully choose to do is no kind of awakening.

Id say that 70% of the people I saw suffering with mental issues were brought in by the police rather than using an ER as their psychiatrist. People dont typically make Dr appointments during a during a psychotic episode or break... They end up being carted in by the police to their local trauma center. We were the largest in a tri-state area and got the worst cases of medical and mental in a 3 state area.We had a complex of 3 hospitals and 3 helipads.. not to mention the city jail was a few blocks away and they had shut down Bellevue which housed many of our mentally ill in the city. A very large portion of the cases were homeless or folks who had been in the system for years and we were well acquainted with because keeping anyone on their meds is futile unless they are in some form of residential treatment where they are forced to keep a schedule of meds. We've had them brought in from jail because the jail cant handle them and our mental health system here is terribly broken.

I dont think you have ever had any contact with someone who is actually psychotic. Your stories dont mention the real face of mental illness by any means. Your spiritual awakening idea and stories arent mentioning the person who is in a depression and wont get out of the bed to eat work or bathe... whos wife is at her wits end because he cries for no reason 24/7 to the guy who is brought in by the police for for murdering and eating his son because he thought that he was saving him from his inlaws who were satanists... so his mind told him.... he called the police on himself when he'd realized what he'd done.He really thought he could ingest his child.. and he did love the baby.. and later have that baby again with another woman thus saving the child from the evil inlaws. Because someone claims they are enlightened and see things you dont.. and its part of the psychosis.. doesnt mean they are truly awakened to anything. I guess some engage in folie a deux and feed off of a psychotic's world view and pretend its enlightenment.. but thats not typical unless you factor in the religious psychotics of varying degrees. A strange aspect of psychosis is that many many times it DOES have a religious or spiritual flavor to it. If you are speaking of spiritual awakenings due to this.. youre seeing it backward. It destroys the spirit rather than awakening it. Psychotics always have reasons for what they do.. even if it doesnt make sense to anyone who is neuro-typical. Your stories dont tell about the homeless guy who is cutting himself and putting rotten food in these lacerations to "grow" his own food. The teen girl who is eating rocks to the point of nearly killing herself and requiring emergency surgery... she thought she was going to float away and was adding weight to herself.She started throwing up the rocks and almost choked to death.. but kept eating them. The old woman you have to restrain to the striker and it takes all of us plus the cops who brought her in because she is trying to kill all of us... because we are ghosts and demons pretending to be humans. She has already cut most of her own nose and eyelids off trying to disguise herself so the ghosts wont recognize her. I have a decade of these stories Ive seen with my own eyes and are real. I have REAL stories of what psychotics or women with Post partum PSYCHOSIS( and not depression) do to their newborn infants and other children. That is not spiritual awakening.Stories which certainly shouldnt be told in an open forum woud give you a much better idea about the damage to the spirit rather than the awakening. You seem to have a very unrealistic idea of what psychosis is.. or a movie based one.

Until youve been covered in spit, puke, feces, urine, or whatever they can bite off of themselves and spit upon you becuase they are restrained and cant kill you... or have been up to your elbows in the blood of an infant who has been butchered by its parent while in a psychotic break... and they have real reasons that make perfect sense to them for what they do.. get back to the rest of us who have seen the real face of psychosis and mental illness. If anything.. its a defect in spirituality or something of that nature in combination with a chemical or mechanical defect in the brain. Some spiritual operation inside of the person that is a-typical. SOme think that schizophrenics have had the "veil" taken from them and they can see the horrors around us that are hidden and it breaks their minds. Thats a religious view I do not hold.. but maybe an adequate broken down way to get it across to someone who has no practical experience with psychosis.

If our experts are not in agreement of anything concerning mental illness other than the classification system.. how can you or any layperson claim to know what this is.. especially with no experience? Our mental health system and medical community seems to be still in the dark ages as far as treatment and compassion concerning the mentally ill. The office psychiatrist or psychologist in particular. They typically dont see the psychotic in the midst of a break or episode themselves but dare to say they have the way to treat it. This perpetuates the mistreatment and misunderstanding of the mentally ill just as much as the belief that this could be an awakening. Your typical iffice psychiatrist doesnt see the mentally ill until we emergency personnel have sedated them or manipulated their brain chemistry in such a way that the Drs arent assaulted or the person isnt intent on suicide after they have realized in some way what they have done. There are temporary episodes of psychosis and prolonged... I think the prolonged or permanent one is perhaps more merciful to the person suffering it.. they never grasp fully what they have done. We prosecute our mentally ill like criminals... and there really is a difference. We judge personally our mentally ill and refuse to believe we all are one unit of a chemical away from suffering it ourselves. They have a text book description and some idiot "experts" idea of what should be done. Mental illness is prolific and you can turn the TV on at any point of the day to see commercials for abilify, zoloft, and a plethora of drugs to mitigate the effects of mental illness. What we DONT have is a real understanding about mental illness itself. WHen I can see the same person more than I see family members over a 10 year period come into the ER for help.. we have a serious problem and its no sort of spiritual awakening or anything remotely cathartic. Its more like a perpetually skipping record.

reply to post by Advantage


Thanks for your graphic post. It is an indication of the stigma attached to psychosis and perhaps your hasty presumption that I have no experience of psychosis. I have.

My son's father is diagnosed schizophrenic and has had several psychotic breaks. Initially he had returned from a war zone where he was a journalist traumatised i.e. there was a rational explanation for his breakdown. I have heard some ludicrous explanations of what caused this psychosis over the past 30 years. How about 'the schizophrenic has more fluid in their brain than normal people'. Or, 'They've found that schizophrenics’ brains are 2 degrees cooler than a normal persons.' This is all from the medical professionals. Or when I asked his doc what effect the medications would have on me, not being labelled, he answered that they would have no effect on me whatsoever - they only affect the schizophrenic. An out and out lie.

I have seen youngsters brought onto a ward who were unable to speak, they could only growl and snarl like an animal, and had to more or less be kept on a leash, literally, by the staff. I have seen people trying to gouge out their veins.....and yet in 30 years involvement I have NEVER seen anyone in a permanent state of psychosis...that just does not happen.

I have said repeatedly in this thread that psychosis is very real. I question the validity of slapping a lifelong label on a person - telling them they are incurable - destroying family relations and career prospects...and the only treatment on offer being toxic chemicals. There is no counselling. There is no attempt to research the background circumstances that may have triggered the psychosis and rectify them - there is no attempt to sort out poor diet or life skills - there is no attempt to resolve isolation. There is just pills.

Psychiatry has no interest in curing patients not one jot - and the real sickness there is that they can be cured.

How do I know that? Because I too experienced psychosis - 3 times. Largely brought about by the stress of caring for my partner, responsibility for my children, and paying my bills while trying to hold down a job. i.e. a rational explanation behind the psychosis - it didn't 'just happen' - and it NEVER just happens.

Now I do NOT take any form of medication....and have not for many years. Had I followed doctors orders I would have been incapable of raising my children and paying my mortgage. My children have grown to be well balanced successful individuals...who, because I helped myself, have regained their faith in me as a mother....and are in fact proud of what I have achieved.

I've had several labels attached to me. Bi-polar, schizophrenic....and my very favourite - psycho manic depressive. How's that for scaring the pants of self, friends and family?

It has been a decade since I was last hospitalised. I am a patient who was given a prognosis of a worsening condition...and it hasn't happened. No-one has asked me how I've achieved that. If they were genuinely interested in finding cures - which I think even you will agree they are not (no money in it) they would be asking me how I achieved that.

A woman I know - now about 48 yrs of age was first hospitalised at the age of 14 - given largactil at the same age - followed by ECT, who was in the care of an aunt who would lock her in the shed. When I met her she hadn't taken medication for 15 years and said 'please don't tell my doc cos they'll stop my DLA (Disability Living Allowance - money). It's a common theme among patients in the hospitals - who feel victimised by enforced treatment - that 'they've got us all locked in here. They ought to have those responsible for us being here in the jail.' Referring to abusive partners/parents/neighbourhood. The cause is amost always abuse...be it physical/emotional/sexual/drugs/alcohol - there is ALWAYS an abusive background.

I would now ask you with all of your experience if you have ever taken any of the medications prescribed for psychosis/schizophrenia or bi-polar? If you had - you would know that they are poison - every last one of them. They cause physical pain and side effects that become the main problem in an already distressed person’s life. Of course the original problems remain so its a double whammy. Creative people are often diagnosed with bi-polar and then prescribed lithium. A loss of creative ability is an accepted side-effect of that drug...other side effects include coma and death.

Every death in a mental hospital here is recorded as being by natural causes...not as the side effects of the medications. Number one killer of schizophrenics is suicide - number two is heart failure generally when they are in their 50's.

The biochemical imbalance model is simply hokum. You first have to know what the correct balance of the brain is - and medicine cannot do that. There is no medical test for any of these conditions.

30 years ago if a patient was referred to a psychiatrist the psychiatrist would ask 'does this person have a mental illness?' now they ask 'what mental illness does this person have.

In the England alone, 'The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has reported that the total cost of mental health problems in England is currently more than £77 billion a year, [1] which is double previous estimates. The costs include NHS and private care for people with mental health problems. The total cost of care is estimated to be over £12 billion. A further £23 billion is lost as many people diagnosed with a mental health problem are unable to work. Reduced quality of life and loss of life may account for nearly £42 billion every year.'

The medical model ain't working. The professionals who profess to care for these patients have to go back and think again.

I attended a talk several years ago by a woman called Christine Gaylor a world leading researcher in the field. The talk was being given to psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses entitled ‘Mental Illness: Recovery, is it possible'. Her conclusion? Yes recovery is possible but that is 'in spite of medical intervention not because of it.' 'Now I know a lot of you guys will be worried about your jobs' said she, ' but I'm talking about a shift in emphasis. You are still needed'. I’ve always felt it very sad that people in this field are in a position to help people but rarely do in the long term. Their jobs would be so much more satisfying.

I was invited to that talk because I have something to offer....my experience.

I would also add that your extremist examples do nothing to forward the debate. They simply perpetuate the terror. Most psychotics do not try to eat their babies....or cut off their own eyelids. Lets talk about the majotity of psychotics.

If our experts are not in agreement of anything concerning mental illness other than the classification system.. how can you or any layperson claim to know what this is.. especially with no experience? Our mental health system and medical community seems to be still in the dark ages as far as treatment and compassion concerning the mentally ill.

Unlike the 'professionals' I have no financial vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

I have said repeatedly in this thread that psychosis is very real. I question the validity of slapping a lifelong label on a person - telling them they are incurable - destroying family relations and career prospects...and the only treatment on offer being toxic chemicals. There is no counselling. There is no attempt to research the background circumstances that may have triggered the psychosis and rectify them - there is no attempt to sort out poor diet or life skills - there is no attempt to resolve isolation. There is just pills.

Psychiatry has no interest in curing patients not one jot - and the real sickness there is that they can be cured.

Psychosis is a general term to describe loss of touch with reality, and is mostly associated with schizophrenia. Only ~10% of suffers commit suicide.

The positive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions and thought disorders, whilst the negative symptoms include loss of apathy, inappropriate moods and apathy. Which one of those symptoms would you class as spiritual awakening?

Not all drugs to treat schizophrenia/psychosis are harmful to the patient. Whilst it can be said that typical anti-psychotics give a range of adverse effects - tardive dyskinesias (uncontrolled movements, kind of like parkinsons. One of the potential causes of scihzophrenia is to do with the dopaminergic system, similar to parkinsons), acute dystonia etc., atypical drugs on the other hand have far fewer side effects than the older generation. The nest generation of anti-psychotics, I presume will be safer still. Benzamides such as sulpride have very little side effects and a low order of acute toxicity.

About schizophrenia being reversible; if you look at an mri of a person suffering from schizophrenia, you will see that they have smaller cortices, but large gaping ventricles. The changes are not progressive, this indicates that the cause is developmental, not degenrative

The OP doesnt want answers. They dont want debate.
They dont want to learn. It all rhetoric. Its their
agenda or ego they serve.

I am the only person to have published (on the internet) a theory of Schizophrenia and The Cure.

Schizophrenia is simply a Lower state of consciousness in which the individual is
actively separating themselves from Reality. Psychosis is the more intense form of the condition. Schizophrenia is A LOSS OF INTUITION. The Schizophrenic has forgotten how to be at "one" with Reality.
The levels of consciousness:
Psychosis
Schizophrenia
Ordinary consciousness
Spiritual consciousness (the born again state,satsang,kundalini experiences,etc)
Enlightenment or Oneness with Reality or God

Its both amusing and sad watching you chase your tail. You can never understand Schizophrenia/Psychosis without understanding spiritual consciousness. The ONLY EXPLANATION for spiritual consciousness is that of Adi Da, given in The Knee of LIstening

I know this because I have lived it.I had schizophrenia and I was cured by reading and understanding the teaching of Adi Da.

Why do you resist the Truth? Why do you fear it?

reply to post by Griffo

Not all drugs to treat schizophrenia/psychosis are harmful to the patient. Whilst it can be said that typical anti-psychotics give a range of adverse effects - tardive dyskinesias (uncontrolled movements, kind of like parkinsons. One of the potential causes of scihzophrenia is to do with the dopaminergic system, similar to parkinsons), acute dystonia etc., atypical drugs on the other hand have far fewer side effects than the older generation. The nest generation of anti-psychotics, I presume will be safer still. Benzamides such as sulpride have very little side effects and a low order of acute toxicity.

About schizophrenia being reversible; if you look at an mri of a person suffering from schizophrenia, you will see that they have smaller cortices, but large gaping ventricles. The changes are not progressive, this indicates that the cause is developmental, not degenrative

I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I no longer suffer. I gave another example of another woman who had been hospitalised from childhood. All of the drugs are harmful to some extent or another....including the new generation of drugs. I was prescribed a cocktail of the stuff...including largactil, lithium, melliril, olanzopine and haldol. I lost my hair...almost completely, I lost my teeth, I couldn't speak, I couldn't think, I couldn't feel, I couldn't walk, I couldn't stand for any length of time and I could not cry or laugh or feel excited about life, I came out in boils, and I have also experience tardive dyskenesia....for that they procyclidene - that stuff causes hallucinations. Lithium, in particular, puts weight on the body in places where it wouldn't normally be...so I didn't even recognise myself when I looked in the mirror. I asked my psychiatrist what the side effects of arsenic were and he took my point.

I was helped by the Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain (now defunct since the death of its founder) who provided me with nutritional supplements which would ordinarily have cost £50/month. When I initially consulted my GP for same supplements he told me that they ONLY PRESCRIBE NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL.

I fly in the face of your hypothesis that the condition is degenerative and the tests you cite cannot determine if this is caused by the illness or by the prescribed drugs....and I know many others the same as me. The establishment denies our existence. You cite 'proof' that schizophrenia is a physical disorder. Psychiatry has been searching for that proof ever since the first anti-psychotics came on the market to justify the bio-medical model. It only another in a long line of theories I have heard. It too will be disproved.

One of my clients was a psychiatrist. He wrote a book early in the 1980's. Translated into 38 languages and with 2 revisions it is still used to train psychiatric nurses to this day. He says his book is a load of BULL. It was early in his career and he simply jumped on the bandwagon of popular thinking of the time....he freely admitted - to further his career. He now says 'it's the way people have been treated that causes the disturbance.' He gave an example of one of his patients who was kept under lock and key by her mother for all of her 16 years, only released when her mother died. Unable to cope with the 'normal' world or to socially interact normally (perfectly understandable to everyone I would hope - psychiatry failed to, and diagnosed her schizophrenic.

reply to post by RRokkyy


I would refer you to the post above.

I have far too much experience of this from varied perspectives not to hold my ground.

reply to post by RRokkyy

The ONLY EXPLANATION for spiritual consciousness is that of Adi Da, given in The Knee of LIstening

How's that for arrogance?

reply to post by christina-66


Here is the mri image that I talked about before, notice the differences. It reveals structural neuronal deficits





Also, drugs do work




This image shows the D2 receptor occupancy. The picture on the left shows a healthy normal human brain. The other 2 show a person who suffers from schizophrenia. The middle image shows the brain of someone given haloperidol (a typical/"classic" antipsychotic), whilst the far right image shows the brain of the schizophrenic who has taken clozapine (an atypcial antipsychotic) Can you notice the difference between the blood flow of the left an right images? Obviously there is still a difference between the two, but it is far greater than the difference between the middle and the right. With the next generation of anti psychotics, the two brains will be indistinguishable in blood flow.

There are also several theories that we currently have as to the origin of schizophrenia. I could go into further detail if you like?

reply to post by Griffo


With respect those could be any pictures, how do we know they are before after etc?

reply to post by andy1033


They're from my main pharmacology text book, and I'm sure you'd find them in pretty much any in deatil medical books

reply to post by Griffo


So still has no proof its real. Medical books also tell you probably that amazon people could not heal themselves.

There is alot medicine can do, but there is alot that they are so ignorant on. Like ron paul said, do doctors in usa have to sign some sort of document stating not to do harm, or something?

reply to post by andy1033


Yes it does, it has an area in the back known as a sources page, it's where the authors get their sources from.....

It's called the hypocratic oath; anyone who goes against it should not be a doctor. Please inform me on these so called ignorances... Or is this going to be another repeat of the idiocy that was your thread about the LHC/HAARP

reply to post by Griffo



Please do post further info. Also you must be aware of how much of a vested interest the pharmaceutical industry has in maintaining the status quo and continuing to educate new students in the bio-medical model. Are those pre-medicated schzophrenic brains? I'd find that very hard to believe given the first thing a patient receives is medication. If they are not (which I would strongly suspect) you have no way of determining if the difference is caused by the condition or the medication.

The social model, is more complex, more time consuming and less profitable - much less profitable.

reply to post by christina-66


There are three models as to why schizophrenia may present itself in a human:

The first is the dopaminergic system
-The theory is that compounds that work via the dopamine pathway (amphetamines/coc aine etc.) can induce psychosis
-The evidence behind this is the correlation between D2 receptor antagonist affinity and clinical anti psychotic efficacy.
-Structural deficits in the brain suggest a loss of control of dopaminergic function (this is backed up with the Parkinson-like effects common with sufferers of schizophrenia)

The 'glutamate theory'

-Dysfunction in glutamergic neurotransmission has also been suggested as a cause of schizophrenia based on:
-The psychomimitec actions of NMDA receptor channel blockers (e.g. PCP/ketamine)
-Reduced glutamate binding in post-mortem studies of schizophrenic patients

Seretonergic systems
-5HT has been proposed to play a role with some atypical anti psychotics selectively blocking 5HT2A receptors. '___' also has psychotomimetic properties.
-Serotonin modulates dopamine's actions, so this is not necessarily incompatible with the dopamine theory

That's fine - and every cause you listed is treatable by drugs. Here are some more accepted and current theories.

Causes of schizophrenia
It is difficult to identify the causes of schizophrenia, but research suggests that several physical, genetic, psychological and environmental factors interact and make people more likely to develop the condition. Current thinking is that some people may be prone to schizophrenia, but sometimes a stressful or emotional life event might trigger a psychotic episode. However, it is not known why some people develop symptoms while others do not.

There are some risk factors for schizophrenia that you cannot change. These include:

Genetics
Schizophrenia tends to run in families, but no individual gene is responsible. It is more likely that different combinations of genes might make people more vulnerable to the condition. However, having these genes does not necessarily mean that you will develop schizophrenia.

Evidence that the disorder is partly inherited comes from studies of identical twins brought up separately. They were compared with non-identical twins raised separately, as well as with the general public. For identical twins raised separately, if one twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has a one in two chance of developing it. In non-identical twins, who share only half of each other's genetic make-up, when one twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has a one in seven chance of developing the condition.

While this is higher than in the general population (where the chance is about one in a 100), it suggests that genes are not the only factor influencing the development of schizophrenia.

Brain development
Many studies of people with schizophrenia have shown that there are subtle differences in the structure of their brains or small changes in the distribution or number of brain cells. These changes are not seen in everyone with schizophrenia and they can occur in people who do not have a mental illness, but they suggest that schizophrenia may partly be a disorder of the brain.

Neurotransmitters
These are the chemicals that carry messages between brain cells. There is a connection between neurotransmitters and schizophrenia because drugs that alter the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain are known to relieve some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Research suggests that schizophrenia may be caused by a change in the level of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin. Some studies indicate that an imbalance between the two may be the basis of the problem. Others have found that a change in the body’s sensitivity to the neurotransmitters is part of the cause of schizophrenia.

Infection
There is some evidence from research that certain viral infections, including the polio virus and the flu virus, may play a role in the development of schizophrenia.

Pregnancy and birth complications
Although the effect of pregnancy and birth complications is very small, research has shown that the following conditions may make a person more likely to develop schizophrenia in later life:

bleeding during pregnancy, gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia
abnormal growth of a baby while in the womb, including low birth weight or reduced head circumference
exposure to a virus while in the womb
complications during birth, such as a lack of oxygen (asphyxia) and emergency caesarean section
Head injury
Traumatic head injury, such as the kind sustained in a fall or a traffic accident, may make people more likely to develop schizophrenia, but it is not known why this happens. Research has also suggested that head injuries during childhood could lead to the development of schizophrenia in people who are already prone to it.

Triggers
There are some known triggers for schizophrenia.

Stress
The main psychological triggers of schizophrenia are stressful life events, such as a bereavement, losing your job or home, a divorce or the end of a relationship, or physical, sexual, emotional or racial abuse. These kinds of experiences, though stressful, do not cause schizophrenia, but can trigger its development in someone who is already vulnerable to it.

Drug abuse
Drugs do not directly cause schizophrenia, but studies have shown that drug misuse increases the risk of developing schizophrenia or a similar illness. Certain drugs, particularly cannabis, coc aine, '___' or amphetamines, may trigger some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, especially in people who are susceptible. Using amphetamines or coc aine can lead to psychosis and can cause a relapse in people who are recovering from an earlier episode. Three major studies have shown that teenagers under 15 who use cannabis regularly, especially ‘skunk’ and other more potent forms of the drug, are up to four times more likely to develop schizophrenia by the age of 26.

SOURCE - NHS


They don't really know do they. They've got everything in there including the kitchen sink. NB. the section on brain development. When I said I heard theories that the schizophrenic had too much fluid in the brain they showed me images exactly like you have pointing out the slight difference in shape. They were wrong....and moved on. Know this - the current treatments amount to torture.