Word: schizophrenia
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...Mental illnesses are serious illnesses. When individuals suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, chronic depression, or from one of the plethora of other chronic diseases, their pain is real, and they need real help. An overemphasis on mild forms of depression and anxiety ties up resources that should be used for major mental illnesses. Some people feel blue, and some people are suicidal. When medicine starts to forget the distinction between the two, everyone loses. Healthy people begin to wonder if they truly are healthy, while the genuinely ill are trivialized...
...Mainstream psychiatry remains skeptical of HVN's approach. Dr. Cosmo Hallstrom, a fellow at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, says hallucinations are usually symptoms of illness, particularly schizophrenia. He says that people who need psychiatric treatment don't always know it, and worries that support groups like HVN could impede efforts to "combat the scourge of mental illness." Still, he adds that "more than one approach may be valid" and that the real danger may not be hearing voices, but hearing them without some form of support - psychiatric or otherwise...
...whether they can expect plenty - a clear evolutionary advantage," says Abel. "But it may be that in some settings, it has an adverse consequence because it restricts the growth of the fetus, and perhaps causes abnormal development of the brain, which makes it more susceptible to diseases, such as schizophrenia...
Though the current study looked only at schizophrenia risk, Abel and her collaborators at the University of Aarhus believe that maternal stress may have a similar effect on the risk of other conditions, among them depression and other mental disorders, along with social consequences such as the risk of criminal conviction or the likelihood of marriage, "things that tend to cluster in the deprived," says Abel. "We have not shown that this is specific to schizophrenia. We've just only looked at schizophrenia...
...other big congenital risk factor is genetics, first-degree family history being the most powerful risk factor for schizophrenia. And, in fact, the new study found that the added risk associated with maternal stress disappeared in children whose mothers already had a family history of mental illness - showing once again that the interplay of environment and genes is anything but straightforward...