Psychosis may be an immune disorder

[roller]

Psychiatry is a belief system for many psychiatrists. There are no clear explanations so they can see what they want to see.

this applies also to "regular medicine".

there is no autoimmune-disease.
there are no auto-antibodies.
there is no mcas.

 

[Hip]

When an organic illness is treated as if it were psychological, and the physiological cause is left uncorrected, there is a very real chance it will completely disable the patient, or even kill them.

I see what you are saying.

I think the problem is that sane people often find it very uncomfortable to deal with those who have significant mental health problems, so there is a natural tendency to then classify such people as "weird", and to try to avoid them as much as possible. And this perhaps is why in medicine, those with mental health problems may not get the best treatment.

In fact, this is where psychiatrist do deserve praise: they are often the only people who are comfortable in dealing with mental health patients.

However, it is unfortunate that psychiatry often tends to view mental health as something caused by psychological factors, and so tends to look for causes of mental health in psychosocial factors and a patient's life experiences.

 

[IreneF]

In the US, at least, psychiatry is mostly psychopharmacology.

 

[Hip]

In the US, at least, psychiatry is mostly psychopharmacology.

I imagine that is the case in the UK too, but my impression is that psychiatrists are still trying to hunt down the psychosocial factors and life experiences that they think lead to conditions like schizophrenia, autism, bipolar, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, etc.

Psychiatrists may hand out drugs that are helpful for these conditions, but that does not necessarily mean that in their own minds, they view the causes of these mental health conditions to be organic.


Of course there are one or two mental health conditions that can have a strong psychosocial and life experience component to their etiology: depression and PTSD are the best examples, I would say. However, I don't think psychiatrists should be extrapolating from depression to get the their (in my view very wrong) assumptions that conditions like schizophrenia are psychosocially-caused.

 

[anciendaze]

@Hip,

See what I said above about quotes from Gholson Lyon concerning depression. He does not believe this is a useful unified diagnosis when searching for underlying organic causes, as he is actively doing. Just as one example I know, severe depression is often associated with many heart problems, and correcting the physical problem can result in recovery from depression, but there are plenty of patients with serious heart problems who do not experience the same degree of depression. Can we say that depression is not caused by the heart? Can we say that it is?

What about the lungs? Antidepressants were originally discovered in trials of proposed treatments for TB. Can we say the depression is not the result of infectious disease?

You can also associate depression with liver disease. In fact every organ pathology affecting metabolism and energy or pain will have associated cases of depression.

Unless you know more about patient history that single label is almost meaningless.

 

[roller]

if anything, then imo its narcissim and psychopathy, which may have no underlying organic diseases, though probably something genetic.

and with these two psychiatry shows 100% fail (too).

...not that any of those would seek help in the first place... they are the happiest bunnies...
and just my guess, they are very physical healthy, too. odd...

 

[Hip]

See what I said above about quotes from Gholson Lyon concerning depression. He does not believe this is a useful unified diagnosis when searching for underlying organic causes, as he is actively doing.

That makes sense. There are different types of depression recognized anyway; this article lists 9 types of depression (click "view all" to see them).

But perhaps we need even more refined categories of depression, perhaps diagnosed with the aid of some type of brain scan, autoantibody blood tests, etc.

Just as one example I know, severe depression is often associated with many heart problems, and correcting the physical problem can result in recovery from depression, but there are plenty of patients with serious heart problems who do not experience the same degree of depression. Can we say that depression is not caused by the heart? Can we say that it is?

The ME/CFS-triggering virus I caught, likely an enterovirus, also rapidly triggered anxiety, anhedonia and depression symptoms in me, and in several other people who caught the same virus, as the virus was circulating in my social circle.

The same virus also triggered 3 heart attacks in 3 previously very healthy males, with one of these people going on to develop chronic viral myocarditis after their heart attack (enterovirus is a common cause of chronic viral myocarditis).

Having seen these events for myself, I would say that the link between heart problems and depression may well be due to an infectious pathogen which causes both.



Likewise the well known link between periodontal disease and heart disease: my virus also caused sudden onset periodontitis in myself and several other people who caught the virus. The heart disease–periodontitis association is usually assumed to be due to bacteria accumulating in the periodontal pockets migrating to the heart; however, my observations suggest an enterovirus might be the cause of both heart disease and periodontitis, thus explaining the observed association.

Incidentally, people with schizophrenia often have periodontitis, which indicates how schizophrenia is likely an organic disease (and again, may be due to a pathogen, with the pathogen perhaps triggering autoimmunity or some other immune dysfunction that leads to schizophrenia).

 

[anciendaze]

@Hip

A friend who is a medical doctor concerned with treating schizophrenia has been collecting data on immune abnormalities associating schizophrenia with infectious agents. While most of these stop well short of levels interesting infectious disease specialists there is a history of higher incidence of several antibodies in that population. This doesn't narrow the search for infectious agents much.

Examples of association include poliovirus, Borna virus or prenatal exposure to influenza. These are all RNA viruses. There is also an association with Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), a DNA virus. Cytomegalovirus (CMV), another herpes virus, is also on the list of suspects.

There are even the peculiar reports of some actual cures by treatment with the antibiotic minocycline immediately after onset of symptoms, which might suggest a bacterial cause, even by spirochetes like borrelia transmitted by ticks. We definitely have reports of full-blown schizophrenia in patients with syphilis, caused by the spirochete, treponena pallidum. This may even resolve on successful treatment with antibiotics. Your mention of periodontal disease brings to mind the common spirochete treponema denticola, which is mostly harmless, except when it gets where it isn't supposed to be, like in the brain.

So, we have either an RNA virus, a DNA virus or a spirochete to consider, right? What about the parasite toxoplasma gondii? Antibodies to this also turn up at unusual rates among patients, particularly "cat ladies".

About the only thing all these proposed pathogens have in common is that they are endocytic infectious agents -- actually entering cells. I think an immune defect exposed by an infectious agent would explain these findings, but I really don't think the overall category of schizophrenia is going to have any common cause. It is just too broad, and too loosely associated with specific organic factors.

 

[Hip]

We definitely have reports of full-blown schizophrenia in patients with syphilis, caused by the spirochete, treponena pallidum. This may even resolve on successful treatment with antibiotics.

Yes, I remember reading once that when antibiotics that treat the syphilis spirochete first became available, quite a few people who were institutionalized for schizophrenia / psychosis due to this spirochete were cured.

 

[anciendaze]

Yes, I remember reading once that when antibiotics that treat the syphilis spirochete first became available, quite a few people who were institutionalized for schizophrenia / psychosis due to this spirochete were cured.

This could have amounted to 25% of those in mental hospitals prior to the introduction of penicillin. Unfortunately, those recovered patients did not include those treated by the SS using mobile gas chambers, something that started before the holocaust really got moving.

(Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. British intelligence had reports from reliable agents about the SS emptying Polish mental hospitals this way by December 1939. The practice had been developed and tested earlier in Germany.)

I was thinking about this dark history while reading the analysis of the economic benefits of PACE. An economic analysis of that earlier episode would have shown a really large permanent reduction in medical costs. The real economic benefits of PACE came from denying patients effective treatment until they quit asking for help.

 

[Hip]

The real economic benefits of PACE came from denying patients effective treatment until they quit asking for help.

Yes, the Wessely school in the UK, and the creation of the CFS concept in the US, helped brush ME/CFS patients under the carpet, where they would not be seen, and would not cost much money.

 

[alex3619]

Psychiatrists may hand out drugs that are helpful for these conditions

Lets take depression as an example. Its many different things. We know antidepressants have a wide variation in effectiveness. For many its just placebo. For some its very very effective.

This is analogous to handing out aspirin for any and all pain, and not treating the cause. If the aspirin fails they might then move to other NSAIDs, and if those fail to opiates ... but at no point is the cause treated.

This drugs can often work, but with variable effect, and all that with side effects. However this approach is geared to manage the patients, then their symptoms, and least of all the causes.

 

[Woolie]

I think we have to be careful about assuming that something that is unpleasant to have - such as psychosis - necessarily means that "something went wrong" to cause it. People vary continuously on all sorts of temperamental traits. For example in the psychosis domain, you can end up with a touch of schizotypy and that can be a very valuable thing (that's when the person doesn't have schizophrenia, but does tend to see connections between things that other don't. People with this are often creative. Think David Bowie). But you could be unlucky and end up with the full blown psychosis (which, incidentally, a couple of David Bowie's close relatives had). Which is more distressing/incapacitating than it is helpful. Probably your genetic misfortune. But it doesn't mean necessarily that something went "wrong" to cause you to have it.

Autism is another nice example. Autism seems to me to be on the severe end of a continuum with normal experience. A little of this trait - still inside the normal range - makes you a good a rational thinker (although perhaps a little focussed on detail). A little more, and you've got asperger's, which might affect your social skills a bit, but you still have that fierce rational mind. Quite a few brilliant mathematicians and physicists in this group. A lot of this trait, then you've got autism, which I expect is more a burden than an asset. But again, there's often a familal thing here, where some family members will be a little on the spectrum (think bright physicists that aren't very socially skilled), and others more severely affected. And perhaps others not at all.

So I'm thinking, we might be too coloured by the values we place on these different mental styles, and when we see one that we think would be bad to have, we automatically start looking for a pathological culprit. When there might not even be one.

 

[Hip]

So I'm thinking, we might be too coloured by the values we place on these different mental styles, and when we see one that we think would be bad to have, we automatically start looking for a pathological culprit. When there might not even be one.

That view sounds not unlike the way Dr Brian Walitt describes fibromyalgia and ME/CFS: he considers these diseases to be within the normal spectrum of human experience, rather than being pathological conditions.

If one takes this view, one could argue that if you have very mild ME/CFS, the slightly fatigue-y, slightly brain foggy sort of person it will make you may be considered to be your character, rather than any underlying pathology.

That's one view you could take, but I would say there is still be some pathology going, on even in very mild ME/CFS, it's just that the pathology is so mild, the person can still live a relatively full and normal life, albeit with his character colored by this very mild ME/CFS.

If you speak to psychiatrists, in reality, that's how mental health labels are applied: it does not matter so much how much of a mental health "trait" like say autism you have; what counts is if you can function in society, if you can fit in somewhere. It's only when you cannot function or fit in that you start being considered to have some mental health pathology that needs to be cared for.


Another factor that determines whether a mental health "trait" you may have can be considered pathological or not is whether the trait is life enhancing, or whether the trait may cause you intense mental suffering. One documentary I was watching depicted a man who saw benign and heavenly angelic beings of light everywhere (this is a symptom of schizophrenia), even when he was have a few drinks in the local pub; however, for him this was a wonderful, life-enhancing experience. But other people with schizophrenia traits may be plagued by seeing horrible demons, hearing malevolent voices, etc, which cause much distress and suffering.

When a mental health trait is wonderful and life-enhancing, we are less likely to pathologize it; indeed, in the past, those who saw heavenly visions were often considered to be holy men and women. But when an individual really suffers from their mental health trait, it's hard to classify that as normal.



I agree that when a person has just a relatively small degree of some form of mental illness, be it psychosis/schizophrenia, autism, bipolar, OCD, or whatever, it can lead to what society or the individual themselves considers valuable traits — traits that produce great art, brilliant science or technology, or a shipshape business.

But those are the lucky ones, because other people with these mental illnesses may be plagued by great lifelong suffering, and be too dysfunctional to produce anything valuable. And in fact, even successful people (producing valuable work) with mental illness traits may have great lifelong suffering because of their mental condition; what they give to society may be great, but they themselves pay a high price in terms of their personal mental torment. Think of Vincent van Gogh.


So just because some people are able to cope, and even thrive, with their mental health traits, that does not mean these traits are a universal blessing, because the same traits can bring intense misery and/or dysfunction to others, and lead to no benefit. There are people who suffer bipolar, but are highly creative and produce things of value; but equally there plenty of people who suffer bipolar who do not have this compensatory creative output, and merely suffer intensely.

So to try to help those who do suffer intensely, we need to understand the biological causes of these mental health conditions. We need to be able to fix these conditions in cases where they cause immense suffering and/or dysfunction in life.

Whereas for those who are happy with their mental health traits, or who are willing to put up with them because of the valuable creative advantages they lead to, these people are free continue to live with their traits.

 

[PennyIA]

I think we have to be careful about assuming that something that is unpleasant to have - such as psychosis - necessarily means that "something went wrong" to cause it.

While I agree that there are 'traits' that if one has in excess it tends to represent psychosis and just having those 'traits' does not, in the end, mean that you are ill, or there is something wrong, or that there is a 'cause'.

However, blindly assuming that there is 'no cause' nor a reason to look for a cause is an issue in my mind.

After all, a century ago (or more or less) people almost always died of cancer and heart disease. Where would we be now if doctors and researchers didn't dig deeper.

My concern is that psychotherapy as a profession/life choice seems to not want to dig under the covers and find out if there might be a potential cause. By assuming that there cannot be a cause we cannot advance the treatment to the point of being able to try to prevent and/or truly cure a condition (instead they mostly try to mask the symptoms).

 

[Valentijn]

I agree that when a person has just a relatively small degree of some form of mental illness, be it psychosis/schizophrenia, autism, bipolar, OCD, or whatever, it can lead to what society or the individual themselves considers valuable traits — traits that produce great art, brilliant science or technology, or a shipshape business.

But those valuable traits exist much more commonly in the absence of the mental or neurological illness. I don't think it's necessarily correct to attribute them to the illness, and that it undermines the reality of the illness to try to portray it as a normal or even beneficial affliction.

As you pointed out, a similar line of argument is used by quacks to claim that "unexplained" illnesses such as Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS aren't really diseases at all - just a normal bit of fatigue or pain with dysfunction in coping with it. And I think that is building on a misattribution that is going both ways.

Someone who dislikes people seeing her house untidy might call herself "a bit OCD", while being completely indifferent about all the mess being shoved in a closet. That doesn't mean that mild OCD is a positive trait - it means that someone is inappropriately attributing their behavior for whatever reason. My general take on being "a bit" mentally or neurologically ill, but not diagnosable, is that it's a badly abused concept which largely lacks validity.

I'd also like to see data regarding how positive those diagnosible illnesses really are. I'm willing to bet it's a significant net loss of functionality and productivity. And I think that's part of the problem - worth is often perceived as being tied to productivity or ability, and that creates a strong incentive to try to downplay the obstacles of the illness and exaggerate the positives.

I found this especially odd in regards to autism, where there is a movement to not see people who have it as disabled, but rather as a desirable variation, to the extent that any attempt at finding a cure is opposed. To me this seems to completely ignore the substantial obstacles in functioning, especially in non-mild cases. Of course people with autism can have meaningful and happy lives, just as ME patients can ... but with a cure we'll still have happy and meaningful lives while being more functional as well.

If I had to choose between being healthy or keeping the "benefits" of extremely sensitive hearing from ME/CFS ... I know damned well which I'd choose

 

[Hip]

But those valuable traits exist much more commonly in the absence of the mental or neurological illness. I don't think it's necessarily correct to attribute them to the illness, and that it undermines the reality of the illness to try to portray it as a normal or even beneficial affliction.

I guess we won't know whether or not these traits are just milder versions of the full blown mental illness until such time in the future when we get a better understanding of the neurological underpinnings of mental illnesses, and when we can easily detect and diagnose mental illnesses using advanced brain scans and so forth.

Then we may be able to figure out whether someone who sees themselves as "a bit OCD" really does have a milder version of the same neurological characteristics found in full blown OCD, or whether their slight OCD-like traits in fact have nothing neurologically to do with the full blown condition.

Usually with both physical and mental illnesses, there is a continuum of severity, from the very mild to the very severe. So as we know severe mental illness certainly exists, it would not be unexpected to have mild and very mild versions of these same mental illnesses — so mild that they dovetail right into normally (whatever that is).

I found this especially odd in regards to autism, where there is a movement to not see people who have it as disabled, but rather as a desirable variation, to the extent that any attempt at finding a cure is opposed. To me this seems to completely ignore the substantial obstacles in functioning, especially in non-mild cases. Of course people with autism can have meaningful and happy lives, just as ME patients can ... but with a cure we'll still have happy and meaningful lives while being more functional as well.

I see that as a good thing, in principle anyway. From the point of view of self image and self esteem, it is better to view yourself as different to others but "gifted" or "special," rather than different to others and "disabled" or "strange". Self image is especially important I think for young people growing up.

If you are going to find yourself a place in society, I think you will probably stand a better chance of doing so if you have a good self image and self esteem. It may not make much difference to the severity of the mental illness you have, but I think it will make you feel better about yourself.