Buried News: Schizophrenic Brain Cells Created, Do Not Respond to Most Antipsychotic Meds

Skin cells taken from four individuals with schizophrenia have been turned into brain cells, or neurons, and grown in lab dishes, the first time a complex mental disorder has been examined using living brain cells.
www.livescience.com...

While this is fascinating and awesome enough itself, I found it interesting that this paragraph was buried near the end, and that I have seen no other mention of this in other news:

The team tested the ability of five antipsychotic drugs — clozapine, loxapine, olanzapine, risperidone and thioridazine — to improve neuronal connectivity in the schizophrenia brain cells. Only loxapine significantly increased brain-cell connections from all schizophrenia patients, the researchers write.

And the other meds, you know, the ones that don't work? They're incredibly commonly prescribed to schizophrenics. This means that there's a strong possibility we have hard evidence that millions of people are on meds they don't need, that cause horrible side-effects and addictions, cost billions of dollars, and in greater doses render the patient the victim of a chemical lobotomy.

The ones that don't work get taken as recreational drugs.

"One pill makes you larger
& one pill makes you small
& the ones that mother gives you
don't do anything at all" - White Rabbit, Jefferson Starship

Wow, this just makes me think that they could easily 'stumble' upon a zombie epidemic...they should stop messing with science ....lol. Unless i got this totally wrong .

reply to post by sepermeru


THIS IS NOT PROOF.

It is horribly un reasonable to judge the interaction of a prescription medication that works on a organismic level based on testing done with a cellular level..

We know they work if they decrease psychotic episodes in schizophrenics.

reply to post by AnitaCigarette

Far from it. Anti-psychotics, even the newer and cleaner ones have almost no recreational appeal. I suspect they put agents in there to make the side effects nearly intolerable so that they aren't abused recreationally and that is just wrong and cruel if in fact they do it on purpose.

reply to post by Miraj


Not if they decrease psychotic episodes by reducing functionality overall. Lobotomy would also decrease psychotic episodes, but we don't do it anymore, because it's bad for people anyway. You're right that it's premature to call it proof, so I'll take that back and say it very strongly indicates that these medications work through chemical lobotomy rather than improving the patient's actual ability to live life.

reply to post by sepermeru


If we knew the length of this study it would be more telling. Antipsychotics take weeks to start having an effect and then there's the period it takes to find the right medication and the right doseage. Many have had success with these drugs and neural imaging studies have shown that they do have an effect on neural processing.

As a diagnosed schizophrenic myself, I have to say that depending on the severity of the disorder, medication is very necessary. Anti-depressants are often prescribed alongside an anti-psychotic. Medication can also stop working after a while and another prescribed instead. It's a tiring exercise, and we all know that pharmaceuticals make big business, but in the case of a disorder like shizophrenia, medication is often the only viable option.

reply to post by sepermeru


A lobotomy is very different from the way modern antipsychotics work. A lobotomy lesions a small portion of the frontal cortex, while antipsychotics work by reducing dopamine levels. One of the leading theories as to the cause of schizophrenia is that dopamine collects in certain portions of the brain and antipsychotics reduce the amount of dopamine produced in these areas. This is why one of the side effects of these drugs is tardive dyskinesia. It is very similar to Parkinson's disease, which is produced by a lack of dopamine. As far as I know, schizophrenia is not attributed to neural connections. If it was, then psychotherapy would be an effective form of treatment, as the modern cognitive-behavioral approach is designed to promote neuroplasticity.

reply to post by sepermeru


A couple of the other ones mentioned treat parasites. Just sayin...

reply to post by sepermeru


Right but lobotomy is permanent and WAS wrong. Drugs can be reversed (usually) by not taking them. And so can anti-psychotics. Which just watch a person who stopped taking theirs, you will know it. I agree, the drugs can be extremely debilitating.. But what else are you going to do? Theres just not a lot to be done with our current understanding.But there has been noticeably a lot of new advances that might be able to create a drug which can help people without the side effects of anti-psychotics.

And honestly, I'm not entirely confident in our current mental health institutions.. I think the US (and probably the world) has to go a long long way in that regard..

reply to post by Ev0lveUp


Well I didn't say they were ineffective for every use. Unless you mean they're not antipsychotics either? I'm asking, I don't know -- thought the article said so, but I only recognized the major ones.

Originally posted by Miraj


Right but lobotomy is permanent and WAS wrong. Drugs can be reversed (usually) by not taking them. And so can anti-psychotics. Which just watch a person who stopped taking theirs, you will know it. I agree, the drugs can be extremely debilitating.. But what else are you going to do? Theres just not a lot to be done with our current understanding.But there has been noticeably a lot of new advances that might be able to create a drug which can help people without the side effects of anti-psychotics.

And honestly, I'm not entirely confident in our current mental health institutions.. I think the US (and probably the world) has to go a long long way in that regard..

The truth is that reversing these drugs is very difficult. They are extremely addictive, physically and mentally, and one of the first things one is told when one begins taking them is that one must never stop taking them abruptly. And because drugs are pushed to the exclusion of talk therapy -- which can be effective even with schizophrenia when it is caught early enough, which is more likely with talk therapy as well -- they are basically a life sentence.

I'm not against the use of drugs for treating mental illness, not at all. But the industry is completely out of control, and it is destroying human lives. It's so much more profitable to sit at a desk and write scrips all day than to do the real hard work that can lead to true improvement -- sometimes with the help of drugs, but in a way that can make them supplemental rather than central.

As you say, developments such as this are positive, because they mean the drugs might get better. And sure, it's hard to know what to do in many cases, with so few resources. But that's why the real problem is much deeper. It's an assembly-line approach to treating disorders of the brain which is itself a prime example of the systemic dehumanization that Western culture has come to require to function.

reply to post by sepermeru


Not at all. I just think the medical community should be more honest with the patients they're treating and inform them that there are actual reasons why things happen- since it's becoming more obvious with microbiology, instead of leaving it as a 'chemical imbalance' that takes the power out of the patient's hands and puts the money in the established industry's.

Even with the new results showing dementia and Alzheimer's are strongly suggestive of viral infections, how much are people told about natural anti-viral treatment?

A woman infected with a common parasite found in cats stands a great chance of having a child, (especially a son) with schizophrenia... this is common knowledge- but where is the big warning? There's not one. But there are many medications being developed to treat schizophrenia. Boggles the mind.

Originally posted by CodyOutlaw
As a diagnosed schizophrenic myself, I have to say that depending on the severity of the disorder, medication is very necessary. Anti-depressants are often prescribed alongside an anti-psychotic. Medication can also stop working after a while and another prescribed instead. It's a tiring exercise, and we all know that pharmaceuticals make big business, but in the case of a disorder like shizophrenia, medication is often the only viable option.

It is sometimes, but I think less often than is often believed to be the case. Though that is partly because most patients cannot afford daily talk therapy, which is what's most effective. Even then we are talking about the earlier stages, but the point is that the illness' progress can be halted if it's caught and treated then, but the current model means most people just end up advancing until the problem is obvious, at which point meds really are necessary. That said, I think the problem is more that meds are the only focus of treatment, not that they're used at all.

reply to post by sepermeru


Isn't it true that most insurance companies have decided to quit covering talk treatment and are moving towards brief visits that result in medication only? I believe I saw a documentary about that very thing-