August 23, 2011 • 42 mins
Up to 24 million people worldwide have schizophrenia. Despite the vast amounts of research, the disorder remains mysterious. In this episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the nature of schizophrenia, from the history of the disorder to the latest research.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always Charles W.
Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck Luck. Right, How are you good?
(00:26):
I'm great. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. People
are gonna be like, I mean times, is Bob Dylan
playing Atlanta? Have you ever seen David Bowie? It's good?
I have not. Um, Yes, you are, Chuck. I know
you're very excited. I am. I've seen him a few times,
but it's always good. Really yeah? Too short? Though he
buzz us through like fifteen songs. He's out of there?
(00:48):
Is he short? Oh? Well he's also short? But yea
is he really? I was just kidding. No, he's short.
I guess those um Bell bottomed long pants that he
wore in the sixties on his album Like Bell made
him look kind of tall. Um. Alright, So enough about
Bob Dylan for the second time. Not a big Dylan
(01:09):
fan myself. Um, let's talk about schizophrenia instead. OK. So
I was looking for an intro for this, and I
mean there's plenty of stuff, but it's all like pretty
you know, research heavy. Astra Zeneca was marketing serre quil
off label and just settled. Um, let's see what else
(01:29):
Jared Lofner is being medicated against as well. The guy
who shot Gabrielle Gifford's okay, really yes, he's he's been
diagnosed as schizophrenic. Um. Finally uh and then um, there
was a homeless man in Los Angeles who was beaten
to death by the police yesterday or today. Um, and
(01:53):
all of this is kind of I realized like there
wasn't any one thing that I was like, well, here's
the intro. But I realized like all of it together
gives a pretty good overview of you know, schizophrenia as
it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood, it's heavily prescribed, underfunded,
and um yeah, and there's a lot of people out
(02:16):
there who aren't necessarily getting help who need it. Yeah.
In fact, I got a stat if you want to
go ahead and go there. You got a bunch of
stats you said for this, right, I do. Um, if
you want to talk about people getting help and and
or needing help and not getting it. Uh, six percent
of six schizophrenics are homeless. Yeah, six percent are in
(02:39):
jail or prison, ten percent in nursing homes with a
family member, or independently living supervise housing. So and and
it makes sense, Chuck to that. These makes sense because
first of all, you have all of this crazy stuff
going on to you. That's your reality. So you're having
trouble dealing with reality as it stands. Um. It's Secondly,
(03:04):
a lot of times schizophrenia comes on um during times
when you learn how to hold down a job or
take care of yourself or do whatever. So you might
never learn how to do this because you're dealing with
your schizophrenia. Here's the shocking one. At any given moment,
there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living
(03:24):
on the streets than there are receiving care. They outweigh
that people that are actually getting help. That's that is
shocking but not surprising. Somehow agreed. Wow, So you said,
what was that last one? Severe psychiatric illnesses. That's an
umbrella term. Obviously schizophrenia falls in under that for sure,
(03:44):
But prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, it
was pretty much thought of as generalized illness, like the
mental illness was mental illness, and maybe there is a symptom.
Your symptoms were different, but really you're men to the
ill which was a huge step up from the spirit
possession that had you know, it had previously been ascribed
(04:07):
to or millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was.
It's a fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until
eight that um a German psychiatrist named Emil Crapelin classified
schizophrenia as a mental illness and uh he missed classified
it as a form of dementia early and early type
(04:30):
of dementia. And then in nineteen eleven a Swiss psychiatrist
named Yugen Bleuler came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh,
And he uh got that word from the Greek words
for split in mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception
that it is a split personality disorder. But what he
(04:51):
meant was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind
splits from reality, which today we still that's how you
still perceive um schizophrenia, but rather than split, we use
the word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah, and we
should go ahead and just uh, since that is a
common misconception. It is entirely different than split personality disorder,
which they call disassociative identity disorder. Now, and if you
(05:15):
know the movie the show The United States of Terra,
have you seen that? No, I know what you're talking
about though with Toni Collette, she is has split personality
disorder on that show. And that's the one that you
always seen in the movies where you have multiple personalities
and they don't know about each other and one dominates
the other. And uh, and then what all about Eve
was about? I never saw that Sybil civil Yeah for sure,
(05:39):
but it's not schizophrenia. They have nothing to do with
each other other than they're both types of mental illness.
And um, Hollywood is fascinated by them, that's right. Um
So yeah, well, and that's that's a pretty good example,
like of medicines is starting to get ahold of what
schizophrenia is, what mental illnesses you know in general, and
(06:01):
then the public at large still just being completely under
educated about it. Um, so let's educate people about it. Yeah.
I want to say too that this is like a
lot of conditions, um and disorders that developed later in life.
To me, that's this one of the scariest things that
can happen. Like your cruising along at eight years old
(06:27):
and you think, like you know, I'm all good, and
you can develop schizophrenia like a boom in a matter
of weeks. Sometimes. Yeah, it can either come on gradually
or very suddenly in an acute manner. Um And like
you said, later in life. With men, schizophrenia usually develops
um in the late teens or early twenties is when
(06:48):
it starts um. Or in women it's the mid twenties
or the early thirties. So yeah, by the time, by
the time I was thirty, I certainly didn't think I
was going to become mentally ill. No, you thought, I
know my demons, you can write them down in a list.
I can quit them anytime I want. And that's what
they are, their self imposed demons, right this this is
(07:09):
it wasn't something that was beyond my control that happened
to my mind. And yeah, that's how schizophrenia hit you.
Hit you later in life, and it can happen all
at once or gradually. And this is not to scare
the crap out of you. If you're in your teens
or twenties, because there's only about a one percent chance schizophrenia.
(07:31):
It depends if if you're part of the general population,
there's a one percent chance. But as we'll see that,
there are risk factors that increase your chances of having schizophrenia.
And no, we're not trying to scare you, but I
guess kind of the newest forms of treatment or newest
thoughts about treating schizophrenia is to make people aware of it,
(07:52):
uh so that they will be able to recognize it
early on. And apparently early treatment leads to a better
success rate. I think we'll talk about that to the board.
But chuck, um, there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia,
and they're positive and negative. And it's not like positive
symptom means you hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you
hallucinate like a hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like
(08:15):
an exaggeration of normal behavior. So like I see you,
I hear things, but I don't see you with horns,
and I don't hear Kermit here talking to me, right um,
So a positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom
is the absence of normal behavior, like you lack affect
(08:36):
or the ability to experience any emotion. Um, or you
you basically are just generally apathetic, right and so it
so those are that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes,
and uh, certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a
lot with a tension span and memory, um, lack of
(08:57):
memory an ability to like plan anything or organize anything. Right.
And then another form of negative I should say, is
called avolition. Um, it's basically I think Crappler, the guy
who first classified schizophrenia, call it the annihilation of the will,
where you're just so withdrawn you can't. You no longer
(09:17):
engage in gold directed behavior, from brushing your teeth to
paying your bills to doing anything. You're totally withdrawn. So
that's that's that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually
hear about, but apparently it's fairly common. So get diagnosed. Uh, Josh,
you have to um exhibit a certain number of these
(09:38):
symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right, yeah. Um,
if you have uh, is it schizophrenic form is like
a shorter it's schizophrenia, but it lasts less than six months. Yeah,
that's schizophrenic form. Good point. But if you according to
the d s M, and we should say like this
(10:00):
is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever,
but this is the d s M saying six months.
It may be you may have schizophrenia and you just
haven't reached the six months you know period yet, but
you're still schizophrenic. But to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist
or psychologist who's a member of the a p A,
you have to have X number of symptoms for six
(10:22):
months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that
because it's like the same as the cops when they
say you can't follow missing person's report unless they've been
gone for twenty four hours. And it's not like that,
but it's sort of like that. Now there's like a law,
I think in Michigan called Kaylee's Law or something that
they're introducing where if you're a parent and you don't
report your kid missing after twenty four hours is a felony.
(10:43):
What kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Casey Anthony made the kid go away allegedly not in general, Uh,
schizophrenia apparently, as how to pronounced, can take a few forms. Uh.
One you've probably heard about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which
is when you have the full on delusions and hallucinations.
(11:04):
And uh, then there's disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh,
your behavior is probably incoherent. It's also called hypophrenic. Really
and you you probably don't exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah. Well,
usually like there's a negative symptom coupled with um disorganized behavior,
so it's almost like two separate things. I think you
(11:27):
can be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that
means you move around and talk excessively. Um. Yeah, that
was a surprise to me. I always thought, you know,
catatonic state where you're just like that too. But it
also says they may become still an uncommunicative so he
can be one or the other. Yeah, but I guess
(11:48):
it has to do with motion or movement or lack
of it's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort of
the umbrella term for when you have a mix of
symptoms and they don't want to classify you as one
specific kind. And then residual is if you have a
history UM of schizophrenia but you have a long extended
period of time with no negative I'm sorry, with negative
(12:11):
but no positive symptoms, they'll classify as residual, which you know,
I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia in a way.
I don't think any form of schizophrenia is right. It
would that would be it would be horrible. This is
a horrible disease. That's like the curb your enthusiasm. When
(12:32):
Larry asked if someone had good Hodgkins from the Party
of Five episode is what he was referencing. When Charlie
got sick, he had quote unquote good Hodgkins and they
were like that, they were so offended. There's no good Hodgens.
He's like, yeah, but one's better than the other, right,
And they were just like, you're such a jerk. They
never seen anything like that. Yeah, pretty much. Uh. And
(12:54):
then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated version
of schizophrenia, and then in this one has to be
just horrible schizo effective disorder. It's any kind of schizophrenia
couple with the mood disorder like depression. All right, that's awful.
So um, we should probably say there's delusions and there's
(13:18):
hallucinations Uh, mixed in together often with schizophrenic symptoms, and
they're often confused. But a delusion is a false belief
and and hallucination is a false sensation like Hey, I'm
Jesus Christ. That would be a delusion. Or hey, there's
Jesus Christ on top of that subway car. That would
(13:40):
be a hallucination. Yeah, and you can extend that to
anything to be Jesus or a subway car. Um. But
the there's just studying hallucinations and delusions are really really
interesting in my opinion. Um. The most common hallucination is
auditory among schizophrenics, and the most common auditories hallucination is
(14:04):
our voices. Yeah, they hear voices that can come from
anywhere from this kermit the frog could start talking to me,
or it could come from thin air, or it could
come from the electrical outlet in the wall. Um and Uh.
The voices say. Usually it's like one word, a couple
(14:25):
of words. There's an implication of word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. Um.
On occasion, very rare occasions, will the voice like ramble
on coherently where the patient understands like long sentences. But
um that they also maybe commenting on what the person
is doing is very um common. Usually it's um not
(14:49):
a voice that they recognize, although that can happen as well.
Yeah right, Uh. And then sometimes there's more than one voice,
and even more disconcerting, lee the voices will argue about
the patient. Yeah, which that's wow. Well those I mean,
there's a guy on Martha that I see that, and
a lot of people that you see that are walking
(15:09):
down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably
a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid to
get sprintic, and they are yelling at the voice in
their head. That reminds me the stand up it I
saw when I was a kid in the eighties. Uh,
this guy was like this. This comedian said he was
walking down the street and he walked past this guy
was talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry,
(15:31):
and the comedian goes and I thought, man, that guy
is really crazy. He's talking to himself. And then I thought, wait,
who am I talking to? Yeah it's a good point. Yeah,
I talked to myself all day long. I have arguments
in my head. But of course it's not the same thing. No, Um, no,
you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing
(15:53):
at that moment and what's best for you or whether
you should hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Not making light
of that. Uh. And the reason that a percentage of
frightening percentage of schizophrenics kill themselves as a lot of
times because the voice in their head may command them
to do so. Right there there. There's such a thing
as um commanding hallucinations, which is sometimes they could be
(16:15):
suggestive like, um, maybe we should go outside for a while,
or they could be like go outside, you know, And
it's not always scary, like they just point out. Sometimes
it's uh, hey you need to shave again, and you'll
go shave again. Yeah. It can be innocuous, but it
can it can lead to violence, or it can urge violence.
(16:36):
Apparently the vast majority of people who suffer uh, dangerous
command hallucinations are able to suppress them. But it's a
struggle and you know this is going on in this
person's head. Yeah, and rarely, and I wondered about this
too before I got to that point in the article
that you sent me. Rarely, do you hear like, really
(16:57):
great things like you're doing great today and you should
go and smell it. You know, it's interesting that it
usually takes a dark turn and they don't know why. No,
they don't. Um. There's also uh hallucinations of touch, haptic hallucinations,
which sound pretty awful. Um, things are crawling on you,
(17:18):
things are inside of you trying to get out. Your
bowels are shriveling. Um, you're being jolted by electricity is
a very common one. And then delusions obviously or any
like any false belief. There's some that like you are
Jesus Christ. That's a delusion, right. Um. But there's there
was one subcategory that caught my attention that I wasn't
(17:42):
aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah, tell me
about that. Well. It's basically like every single thing that
goes on in life is full of meaning. Right. So,
like in this Brown University sheet I sent you, there's
a like a waiter leaving a crama on the table.
That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the
(18:03):
the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as
an insult or. Um. The street lights coming on all
of a sudden is a signal for everybody to swarm
on you and finally take you away or kill you
or whatever. Like everything in life has meaning and it's
making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind is
turning against you. It's pretty awful. Have we said it's awful? Yeah, okay, yes,
(18:27):
it is quite awful. Um, but people live with this. Yeah.
I mean we painted a dark picture because it is
a dark disorder. But the majority of people in fact
stet time. Uh, after ten years, if you want to know,
after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are
(18:51):
much improved and relatively independent and are improved but require
a pretty extensive support network. So that's seventy percent of
people after diagnosis after a decade are are dealing with
it fairly. Well, Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Are unimproved in ten percent unfortunately are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
(19:15):
ten percent at least of um schizophrenics commits suicide, which
is incredibly high because in the general population of the
United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide
to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who
are successful. They think it could be attempts could be
(19:36):
as high as people that try to kill themselves just uh.
I mean imagine sometimes the voices say to do it,
and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah, I was
wondering what the breakdown between those two is. Um. And
then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least in
(19:57):
the public mind, right D dangerous. Apparently studies have shown
I remember reading about this when we talked about latent inhibition,
UM that if you are typically violent when these uh,
when the symptoms set and you're like early twenties or whatever, um,
(20:17):
you're going to possibly be a violence schizophrenic. If you're
not a very violent person, you're it's just not part
of your personality before the symptoms set in, then you're
not going to be a violence schizophrenic unless you abuse
drugs or alcohol, which apparently vastly increases the chances that
you may be a violent schizophrenic. Yeah. And even then,
(20:38):
I think the violence is generally either self inflicted or
it takes place inside the home, like against your family,
which is not good. But the point is, if you're
walking down the street and sadly you see the homeless
man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need to be
afraid that he's about to, you know, attack you in
a violent manner. That's probably not gonna happen. Chuck. Let's
(21:02):
say you do want to talk to that schizophrenic homeless
man over there, but you don't want to make things
worse for him, right, but you don't want to ignore
him's another human being. Um. The National Institutes of Mental
Health have UM suggestions I guess for talking to schizophrenics
and specifically with their families who have to deal with
(21:24):
delusions and hallucinations all the time, specifically delusions. UM. Apparently
you don't you don't contest what they're saying. Yeah, you
don't want to say you're not Jesus Christ. What are
you talking about? Yeah, you don't say no, you say, Um,
I respect your right to believe different things, and I
(21:45):
hope you'll respect my right to believe different things. But
I I, you know, politely disagree. And what you also
don't want to do is agree and say I know, honey,
you are Jesus Christ. Right, You're okay, you're Jesus and
it's fine. Yes, A lot of people probably take that
tack in the family, you know, Well, yeah, first, I mean,
at the very least because it's just easier after a while,
it's like yes, yes, or you get so frustrated you're
(22:08):
like no, you're not and you want to shake the
person um. But yeah, apparently, And I wonder how hard
it is to say, well, I I respectfully disagree with you. Yeah,
I bet it's hard, you know. And if it if
it does go over as well as as it seems
like it that it suggested it should, you know, all right, Josh,
(22:28):
I think this was really interesting. The recovery in the
Third World part. Yeah, Apparently, the World Health Organization did
a study in the nineteen sixties and uh I found
that the recovery rate for schizophrenia and developing nations is
higher by a full third than it is in the
industrialized world. And then they did a follow up study
(22:49):
even to correct possible selection biases, and they confirmed the
original finding. And I thought that was really interesting. And
they there's a lot of hypotheses, but one of them
is that a there might not be a stigma like
in the industrialized world, and they're just more readily accepted.
And the other is that they might be able to
(23:10):
have a job that they can do successfully and here
in the West farming or digging, you know, digging the
trench for the farm or whatever. Here in the West,
we're very competitive. Yeah, it's hard to get a job
that schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete. And I mean the
rest of us are paranoid enough as it is about
losing our jobs. If you are clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then
(23:33):
it's probably going to be very difficult to keep your job, true,
or do it in a way that will help you
keep your job. That's very true. But Josh, there have
been some successful stories of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Well,
some some more successful and some. Sid Barrett was successful,
but I don't know if you call him a success story.
(23:54):
Ended up in a mental institution for the rest of
his life. Sid Barrett founding member of Pink Floyd Schizophrenic
and they believe that massive amounts of drugs that he
used made it worse, way worse. John he is he
is the crazy Diamond. Yeah, shine on you, Crazy Diamond.
I love that song. That's a good one. All four
parts of it, right, and they're like part I think
(24:15):
up the part four is it? Yeah? Yeah, John Nash, Yeah,
from the movie A Beautiful Mind. The Ron Howard film
with Russell Crowe as John Nash, the Nobel Winner figure
out that cable companies would do better if they cooperated
with one another. That's right, And that movie did a
lot for putting this on the map in a compassionate way,
(24:35):
you know. And Jack carollact, did you know that one?
That was debatable? Okay, he was in the Navy and
they discharged him honorably after I think like a little
less than a year and and the report they said
he had schizoid tendencies. But um, other people have said
that he faked that stuff to get out of the navy. Uh,
(24:56):
and just wanted to not take orders and drink him
off to death, which is what he did. And Pop
Benny's do you know how he died? No, he woke
up and was just like coughing blood and bleeding from
his mouth and basically was like, I gotta get the hospital.
Took him to the hospital and he was his liver
(25:17):
was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they
just were giving him transfusion one after the other and
he just basically bled to death Holy cow from drinking
holy cow. And he was drinking at the time. He
was drinking whiskey and like whiskey and malt liquor. When
he started, blood started coming out of his mouth. I
(25:39):
wonder how that taste? Would you shake us through that?
And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
was like whiskey with a beer back in it, garnish
with a drop of blood. So, kids, there's a lesson
for you there here. There's one more person who is
indisputably schizophrenic or was His name is Wesley Willis? Is
that he is a musician who had such songs as well. Really,
(26:03):
the only title I can say is rock and roll McDonald's.
I don't I've never heard of him. You you have
had to have heard of Wesley Willis. Okay, let me
play you a little Wesley Willis. Right here. McDonald's is
a place to rock. It is a restaurant where the
(26:26):
bi fool. It is a good place to listen to
the music. People flock here to get down to the rock.
Musing rock, Gay, Romado, Rocky rom mcda, Rogay, Roam mcdonaldos,
rock rumdo so chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, okay, and
(26:49):
um he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote about
it a lot. He talked about it in a lot
of his songs and um, he said he'd just be
going along, having a nice time riding the bush. I
believe he lived in Chicago and then all of a sudden,
his um, his hell demons would take him on one
of his torture hell rides, which meant he was going
(27:12):
on a little bit of an exacerbation of his schizophrenia symptoms.
But he's a great, great guy, great music, very prolific.
And uh, if you liked that, you should go watch
Daddy rock and Roll as a documentary. But yeah, it's
really good. I'll check that out. Yeah, Lionel Aldridge is
a last name on our list. And he was a
(27:33):
Green Bay packer and he was homeless unfortunately after he
was diagnosed for a while and then later was able
to climb out from that wreckage and go around and
talk about mental illness, and he was he was playing
in the sixties, the seventies. I think it was late
sixties or seventies. So think about it, man, that's a
(27:54):
big deal to go around and talk publicly about mental
illness at that time, and it still is now. But
I mean, like back then, that's hats off to him. Yeah,
he was the guy that I included in the presentation
that you did by yourself that you're like, he was
this guy. All right, I understand now, Yeah, it's all
coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh,
(28:19):
it seems like there are environmental factors and there are
genetic factors. Um. They have isolated what they believe are
some genes the d I, s C one, the disbanden,
the neuragoulin, and the G seven two genes, and they
think there might be up to a dozen more genes
that could impact this. Okay, So the basis of that
(28:43):
is that they can't just look at your genes and
say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. Right. It's possible
that it's because we just haven't isolated all the genes
and don't know the right combination yet. Or it's possible
that it's from other causes, one of which one of
the yours that's out there right now, is that it's
the result of an in utero exposure to either a
(29:06):
flu or the dread toxoplasmus. Remember toxoplasmuss that hijacks rats brains,
that's found in cat urine that's why if you have
a cat and you're pregnant, you don't be clean enough
that litter box, right, um. And they think that one
of the reasons, I guess, one of the evident pieces
of evidence that supports this is called the birth month effect,
and the birth month effect is, UM, if you were
(29:28):
born in winter months or early spring months, you are
at a higher risk for becoming schizophrenic later in life.
And they think that those are flu months. UM. And
another aspect of it is apparently the brains of schizophrenics
show inflamed white blood cells, which is a sign of
an infection. And they think that possibly all of us
are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that
(29:51):
lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like
early exposure between infection UM can trigger its release where
trigger it's activation, and it takes eighteen to twenty to
thirty years to come on. Now you see why people
that are pregnant are worried a lot. It's amazing that,
(30:12):
like we've gotten anywhere. Yeah, so what else? Uh? Well,
they did do have some new findings. I got this today,
um from the internets. They have a new South Wales
study from Thomas Wikert. He has identified the brain mechanism
that derails decision making and people. So basically the part
(30:34):
of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
stray Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
people neam all right, lights up when in response to
rewards and healthy people and it's linked to your decision making,
but completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they don't uh, they
don't know the difference between expected and unexpected rewards, and
(30:56):
so they don't have the opportunity to make a good
decision to again with and that you know, it's a
it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us any closer.
Well maybe it does, you never know. They say, with
proper funding that they predicted they could have a cure
for this. Well yeah, but they don't get proper funding.
(31:16):
But they're UM. They're looking into stem cells, right, they're
looking into UM figuring out if it is an infection
and if so liked adding that UM. And we've also
long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
helped develop anti psychotics or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
(31:40):
Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenel cyclading UM or
fencyclading PCP, the drug angel dust Um, produced such similar
symptoms to schizophrenia that they started investigating and found that
it had to do with UM the neurotransmitter glutamate, right right, right, Yes,
(32:04):
well it has to do with both. But the emphasis
before on anti psychotics was strictly dopamine and all it
all it did was keep dopamine in the synapse is
longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors. That's what antipsychotics do.
And then in the eighties, after the PCP stuff UM,
they figured out that there was glutamate was involved and
(32:25):
they came up with a typical antipsychotics, and these focus
somewhat on dopamine but more on things like glutamate and
its reuptake, and uh, these things have produced better results
with fewer side effects, so um, they're they're figuring out
how to treat it. The problem is that there's all
sorts of side effects even even with a typical UM antipsychotics,
(32:49):
like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness, muscle spasms. Yeah ALLUM.
Bulging eyes apparently is one UM, and I guess most
of the stuff can be treated by lowering the dosage,
but they're they're bothersome enough that a lot of people
just go off their meds and you know that doesn't
help ect. Electroc convulsive therapy is another thing that they
(33:10):
still do. It's not something irrelic from the fifties. It's
changed a lot and how they do it, and they're
not sure still how it exactly works. They stopped using
car batteries, but about a hundred thousand Americans each year
still receive e c T. So that is an option.
And obviously the group therapy and family therapy help just
(33:32):
the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes, so
we encourage you to seek helped as soon as possible. Yeah,
And apparently families can help in very little ways. They're
encouraged to UM set small goals. Apparently, if especially if
you UM have lost your drive or your will as
a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can
(33:54):
just be compounded by all the you know, like when
your life is disorganized, it seems to completely unwieldy, Like
where do I start right now? If if that's a
symptom of your schizophrenia, it's it's just that much worse.
So if you can help a schizophrenic get back on
track by setting small goals and building up their confidence again,
apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM
(34:19):
and then the like the one of the leading edges
of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the
this thing called the prodrome, which is the period between
the onset of symptoms where you think maybe I am
Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like your reality.
(34:41):
So it's this point where you're starting to have the ideas,
but they still seem bizarre or weird or why am
I having these ideas? So if you apparently seek out
treatment for schizophrenia when you start to have these ideas
UM in the prodrome, the success rate of treatment is
(35:03):
through the roof. Like Yes, this British doctor in the
late eighties set up shop in these two towns outside
of London and he's set to work finding every potential
early case of schizophrenia he could, and he started treating
people with therapy and low doses of anti psychotics, and
in four years those two towns had a tenth of
(35:25):
the prevalence of schizophrenia of the rest of the country. Yeah,
so apparently like this pro drome research, there's like clinics
that are opening up and like entire like departments in
universities are dedicated to this prodrome period where you can
be like, come, come back, come, this is reality. Yeah,
and they're successful or they have been so far. Well, Josh,
(35:46):
I got one more stat If you live in a
city of three million people, then over twenty one thousand
people in your city are suffering from schizophrenia. So well,
keep that in mind. Yes, don't make fun of people.
Don't obviously get scared or violent and in a reactive way.
(36:06):
I don't know that I'm gonna say, like you should
go over and talk to them, like you might want
to just be compassionate and uh and hopefully they're getting help,
you know what I'm saying. Go to schizophrenia dot com.
You can find all kinds of good information. And if
you hadn't already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out.
He was a great guy. Check out The Daddy or
Rock and Roll and um. Also, I would say, in
addition to how schizophrenia works, UM required reading for this
(36:30):
one is an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By
Rachel lviv. It was in the December two issue of
Harper's And I have a link, I'll I'll tweet it.
I'll tweet the link out with that. That sounds great.
If you want more about schizophrenia, Um, there's plenty of it.
There's an article and then some on the site. Just
type schizophrenia which again means split mind right into the
(36:54):
search bar at how stuff works dot com and that
brings up what check listener? Now, yes, Josh specific correction?
Oh wow, I forgot about those. Yeah, well, well we'll
correct ourselves on Facebook and stuff. But they mounted up,
so sure we want We'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh? Man,
(37:17):
I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people
sitting this in. Uh, the flash point of paper is
not fahrenheit for fifty one, I said books. The flash
point of books is not fahrenheit for fifty one. It
is fahrenheit eight fifty one celsius for fifty and Ray
Bradbury apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one
(37:38):
sounds a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently, what
was one no celsius for fifty is the flash point
or Fahrenheit eight as good as I think, Yeah, okay,
but I assume that as well. Man, I wish I
had his name. You know who you are. And it
was a very nice correction. Those are the ones we
(37:58):
like to read. Uh. Then we got a correction on
who was the first murderer, apparently, David says, and even
sent in a copy of one by Charles Mann. What
where what he's an email? No, not a not a
He sent a scan cop the page in four, he says.
(38:21):
Charles Mann says, although Billington was in fact hanged, at
least two other Europeans were executed before him. One was
convicted for the much more interesting offense of killing his
pregnant wife and eating her. So how about that, he said,
I was on page fifty five of Yeah, there it is.
(38:41):
That is crazy, okay, But still Billington is very noteworthy.
Figure obviously sees a whole chapter on him. And then
we got some uh. Oh. First of all, some people
wrote in about wildfires in Georgia, when I said, oh, Georgia,
and that wildfires South Georgia does and there's actually one
going on right now in the Okay, Finoki. So I
(39:01):
misspoke for sure, because I was just talking about the
North Georgia Mountains, which are very lush and green, but
Southworgia can get quite dry and there are wildfires in Georgia.
I did not know that that's true. And then finally
we got an email from an actual Hindu named Kush
k U s h and Kush says, you guys missed
(39:23):
a few things. Hinduism, typically, I'm sorry, technically only has
one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain, especially
in the non Hindus, but the general idea is there
is one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called
the brah Brahman, not the bro Ham, and every living
(39:44):
thing has a part of that in us called the Atoman.
The different gods are just different forms of the one Brahman. Also,
you didn't properly explain the laws of karma. The law
of karma has three parts in Hinduism. One, the performer
of an action will get the result to the result,
but the action will come right at the right time.
And three good actions bring good results, bad actions bring
(40:05):
bad results. And fourth, the gods are technically subject to karma.
If you also expand the definition of karma to include
the law of karma. But he says it was a
good podcast overall. You guys really hit it on the
head except for these few points. He did not hit
it on the head for that. No, I'll just for
that one part. And finally he pointed out and a
(40:25):
few other people pointed out that I was wrong in
correcting you with Jainism, and yeah, it's jain is m.
But I'm gonna play you something right now. Okay, okay,
that was from dictionary dot com. Well, then that voice
is obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Miriam Webster.
(40:48):
If it's the same voice, it doesn't count. Twice did
you hear that that's a different voice. Did that one
come through Matt? Okay? And then finally, this is Google
definitions And this is my favorite of all. Actually I
don't like where wow, So I don't know because I
had like three other people said three other robots, no,
(41:12):
three other real people said no, it's Jaine is Um.
And then I went on YouTube and people said Jaine
is Um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
it's both we're both right or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
it's genis Um, well, we love corrections so much that
I managed to forget that we or are corrected a lot,
or we used to read them. I never forget that
(41:32):
we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Go
through all three and fifty episodes, find everything you can
that's wrong with them, and then let us know. Okay, okay.
Or you can just correct the most recent ones whatever
we got wrong in this one, which I'm sure is substantial. Um.
You can go on Facebook if you want, You can
(41:54):
tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you
can send us a plain, old, fushioned email at stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by
(42:19):
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always Charles W.
Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck Luck. Right, How are you good?
(00:26):
I'm great. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. People
are gonna be like, I mean times, is Bob Dylan
playing Atlanta? Have you ever seen David Bowie? It's good?
I have not. Um, Yes, you are, Chuck. I know
you're very excited. I am. I've seen him a few times,
but it's always good. Really yeah? Too short? Though he
buzz us through like fifteen songs. He's out of there?
(00:48):
Is he short? Oh? Well he's also short? But yea
is he really? I was just kidding. No, he's short.
I guess those um Bell bottomed long pants that he
wore in the sixties on his album Like Bell made
him look kind of tall. Um. Alright, So enough about
Bob Dylan for the second time. Not a big Dylan
(01:09):
fan myself. Um, let's talk about schizophrenia instead. OK. So
I was looking for an intro for this, and I
mean there's plenty of stuff, but it's all like pretty
you know, research heavy. Astra Zeneca was marketing serre quil
off label and just settled. Um, let's see what else
(01:29):
Jared Lofner is being medicated against as well. The guy
who shot Gabrielle Gifford's okay, really yes, he's he's been
diagnosed as schizophrenic. Um. Finally uh and then um, there
was a homeless man in Los Angeles who was beaten
to death by the police yesterday or today. Um, and
(01:53):
all of this is kind of I realized like there
wasn't any one thing that I was like, well, here's
the intro. But I realized like all of it together
gives a pretty good overview of you know, schizophrenia as
it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood, it's heavily prescribed, underfunded,
and um yeah, and there's a lot of people out
(02:16):
there who aren't necessarily getting help who need it. Yeah.
In fact, I got a stat if you want to
go ahead and go there. You got a bunch of
stats you said for this, right, I do. Um, if
you want to talk about people getting help and and
or needing help and not getting it. Uh, six percent
of six schizophrenics are homeless. Yeah, six percent are in
(02:39):
jail or prison, ten percent in nursing homes with a
family member, or independently living supervise housing. So and and
it makes sense, Chuck to that. These makes sense because
first of all, you have all of this crazy stuff
going on to you. That's your reality. So you're having
trouble dealing with reality as it stands. Um. It's Secondly,
(03:04):
a lot of times schizophrenia comes on um during times
when you learn how to hold down a job or
take care of yourself or do whatever. So you might
never learn how to do this because you're dealing with
your schizophrenia. Here's the shocking one. At any given moment,
there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living
(03:24):
on the streets than there are receiving care. They outweigh
that people that are actually getting help. That's that is
shocking but not surprising. Somehow agreed. Wow, So you said,
what was that last one? Severe psychiatric illnesses. That's an
umbrella term. Obviously schizophrenia falls in under that for sure,
(03:44):
But prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, it
was pretty much thought of as generalized illness, like the
mental illness was mental illness, and maybe there is a symptom.
Your symptoms were different, but really you're men to the
ill which was a huge step up from the spirit
possession that had you know, it had previously been ascribed
(04:07):
to or millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was.
It's a fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until
eight that um a German psychiatrist named Emil Crapelin classified
schizophrenia as a mental illness and uh he missed classified
it as a form of dementia early and early type
(04:30):
of dementia. And then in nineteen eleven a Swiss psychiatrist
named Yugen Bleuler came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh,
And he uh got that word from the Greek words
for split in mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception
that it is a split personality disorder. But what he
(04:51):
meant was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind
splits from reality, which today we still that's how you
still perceive um schizophrenia, but rather than split, we use
the word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah, and we
should go ahead and just uh, since that is a
common misconception. It is entirely different than split personality disorder,
which they call disassociative identity disorder. Now, and if you
(05:15):
know the movie the show The United States of Terra,
have you seen that? No, I know what you're talking
about though with Toni Collette, she is has split personality
disorder on that show. And that's the one that you
always seen in the movies where you have multiple personalities
and they don't know about each other and one dominates
the other. And uh, and then what all about Eve
was about? I never saw that Sybil civil Yeah for sure,
(05:39):
but it's not schizophrenia. They have nothing to do with
each other other than they're both types of mental illness.
And um, Hollywood is fascinated by them, that's right. Um
So yeah, well, and that's that's a pretty good example,
like of medicines is starting to get ahold of what
schizophrenia is, what mental illnesses you know in general, and
(06:01):
then the public at large still just being completely under
educated about it. Um, so let's educate people about it. Yeah.
I want to say too that this is like a
lot of conditions, um and disorders that developed later in life.
To me, that's this one of the scariest things that
can happen. Like your cruising along at eight years old
(06:27):
and you think, like you know, I'm all good, and
you can develop schizophrenia like a boom in a matter
of weeks. Sometimes. Yeah, it can either come on gradually
or very suddenly in an acute manner. Um And like
you said, later in life. With men, schizophrenia usually develops
um in the late teens or early twenties is when
(06:48):
it starts um. Or in women it's the mid twenties
or the early thirties. So yeah, by the time, by
the time I was thirty, I certainly didn't think I
was going to become mentally ill. No, you thought, I
know my demons, you can write them down in a list.
I can quit them anytime I want. And that's what
they are, their self imposed demons, right this this is
(07:09):
it wasn't something that was beyond my control that happened
to my mind. And yeah, that's how schizophrenia hit you.
Hit you later in life, and it can happen all
at once or gradually. And this is not to scare
the crap out of you. If you're in your teens
or twenties, because there's only about a one percent chance schizophrenia.
(07:31):
It depends if if you're part of the general population,
there's a one percent chance. But as we'll see that,
there are risk factors that increase your chances of having schizophrenia.
And no, we're not trying to scare you, but I
guess kind of the newest forms of treatment or newest
thoughts about treating schizophrenia is to make people aware of it,
(07:52):
uh so that they will be able to recognize it
early on. And apparently early treatment leads to a better
success rate. I think we'll talk about that to the board.
But chuck, um, there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia,
and they're positive and negative. And it's not like positive
symptom means you hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you
hallucinate like a hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like
(08:15):
an exaggeration of normal behavior. So like I see you,
I hear things, but I don't see you with horns,
and I don't hear Kermit here talking to me, right um,
So a positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom
is the absence of normal behavior, like you lack affect
(08:36):
or the ability to experience any emotion. Um, or you
you basically are just generally apathetic, right and so it
so those are that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes,
and uh, certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a
lot with a tension span and memory, um, lack of
(08:57):
memory an ability to like plan anything or organize anything. Right.
And then another form of negative I should say, is
called avolition. Um, it's basically I think Crappler, the guy
who first classified schizophrenia, call it the annihilation of the will,
where you're just so withdrawn you can't. You no longer
(09:17):
engage in gold directed behavior, from brushing your teeth to
paying your bills to doing anything. You're totally withdrawn. So
that's that's that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually
hear about, but apparently it's fairly common. So get diagnosed. Uh, Josh,
you have to um exhibit a certain number of these
(09:38):
symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right, yeah. Um,
if you have uh, is it schizophrenic form is like
a shorter it's schizophrenia, but it lasts less than six months. Yeah,
that's schizophrenic form. Good point. But if you according to
the d s M, and we should say like this
(10:00):
is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever,
but this is the d s M saying six months.
It may be you may have schizophrenia and you just
haven't reached the six months you know period yet, but
you're still schizophrenic. But to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist
or psychologist who's a member of the a p A,
you have to have X number of symptoms for six
(10:22):
months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that
because it's like the same as the cops when they
say you can't follow missing person's report unless they've been
gone for twenty four hours. And it's not like that,
but it's sort of like that. Now there's like a law,
I think in Michigan called Kaylee's Law or something that
they're introducing where if you're a parent and you don't
report your kid missing after twenty four hours is a felony.
(10:43):
What kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Casey Anthony made the kid go away allegedly not in general, Uh,
schizophrenia apparently, as how to pronounced, can take a few forms. Uh.
One you've probably heard about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which
is when you have the full on delusions and hallucinations.
(11:04):
And uh, then there's disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh,
your behavior is probably incoherent. It's also called hypophrenic. Really
and you you probably don't exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah. Well,
usually like there's a negative symptom coupled with um disorganized behavior,
so it's almost like two separate things. I think you
(11:27):
can be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that
means you move around and talk excessively. Um. Yeah, that
was a surprise to me. I always thought, you know,
catatonic state where you're just like that too. But it
also says they may become still an uncommunicative so he
can be one or the other. Yeah, but I guess
(11:48):
it has to do with motion or movement or lack
of it's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort of
the umbrella term for when you have a mix of
symptoms and they don't want to classify you as one
specific kind. And then residual is if you have a
history UM of schizophrenia but you have a long extended
period of time with no negative I'm sorry, with negative
(12:11):
but no positive symptoms, they'll classify as residual, which you know,
I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia in a way.
I don't think any form of schizophrenia is right. It
would that would be it would be horrible. This is
a horrible disease. That's like the curb your enthusiasm. When
(12:32):
Larry asked if someone had good Hodgkins from the Party
of Five episode is what he was referencing. When Charlie
got sick, he had quote unquote good Hodgkins and they
were like that, they were so offended. There's no good Hodgens.
He's like, yeah, but one's better than the other, right,
And they were just like, you're such a jerk. They
never seen anything like that. Yeah, pretty much. Uh. And
(12:54):
then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated version
of schizophrenia, and then in this one has to be
just horrible schizo effective disorder. It's any kind of schizophrenia
couple with the mood disorder like depression. All right, that's awful.
So um, we should probably say there's delusions and there's
(13:18):
hallucinations Uh, mixed in together often with schizophrenic symptoms, and
they're often confused. But a delusion is a false belief
and and hallucination is a false sensation like Hey, I'm
Jesus Christ. That would be a delusion. Or hey, there's
Jesus Christ on top of that subway car. That would
(13:40):
be a hallucination. Yeah, and you can extend that to
anything to be Jesus or a subway car. Um. But
the there's just studying hallucinations and delusions are really really
interesting in my opinion. Um. The most common hallucination is
auditory among schizophrenics, and the most common auditories hallucination is
(14:04):
our voices. Yeah, they hear voices that can come from
anywhere from this kermit the frog could start talking to me,
or it could come from thin air, or it could
come from the electrical outlet in the wall. Um and Uh.
The voices say. Usually it's like one word, a couple
(14:25):
of words. There's an implication of word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. Um.
On occasion, very rare occasions, will the voice like ramble
on coherently where the patient understands like long sentences. But
um that they also maybe commenting on what the person
is doing is very um common. Usually it's um not
(14:49):
a voice that they recognize, although that can happen as well.
Yeah right, Uh. And then sometimes there's more than one voice,
and even more disconcerting, lee the voices will argue about
the patient. Yeah, which that's wow. Well those I mean,
there's a guy on Martha that I see that, and
a lot of people that you see that are walking
(15:09):
down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably
a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid to
get sprintic, and they are yelling at the voice in
their head. That reminds me the stand up it I
saw when I was a kid in the eighties. Uh,
this guy was like this. This comedian said he was
walking down the street and he walked past this guy
was talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry,
(15:31):
and the comedian goes and I thought, man, that guy
is really crazy. He's talking to himself. And then I thought, wait,
who am I talking to? Yeah it's a good point. Yeah,
I talked to myself all day long. I have arguments
in my head. But of course it's not the same thing. No, Um, no,
you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing
(15:53):
at that moment and what's best for you or whether
you should hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Not making light
of that. Uh. And the reason that a percentage of
frightening percentage of schizophrenics kill themselves as a lot of
times because the voice in their head may command them
to do so. Right there there. There's such a thing
as um commanding hallucinations, which is sometimes they could be
(16:15):
suggestive like, um, maybe we should go outside for a while,
or they could be like go outside, you know, And
it's not always scary, like they just point out. Sometimes
it's uh, hey you need to shave again, and you'll
go shave again. Yeah. It can be innocuous, but it
can it can lead to violence, or it can urge violence.
(16:36):
Apparently the vast majority of people who suffer uh, dangerous
command hallucinations are able to suppress them. But it's a
struggle and you know this is going on in this
person's head. Yeah, and rarely, and I wondered about this
too before I got to that point in the article
that you sent me. Rarely, do you hear like, really
(16:57):
great things like you're doing great today and you should
go and smell it. You know, it's interesting that it
usually takes a dark turn and they don't know why. No,
they don't. Um. There's also uh hallucinations of touch, haptic hallucinations,
which sound pretty awful. Um, things are crawling on you,
(17:18):
things are inside of you trying to get out. Your
bowels are shriveling. Um, you're being jolted by electricity is
a very common one. And then delusions obviously or any
like any false belief. There's some that like you are
Jesus Christ. That's a delusion, right. Um. But there's there
was one subcategory that caught my attention that I wasn't
(17:42):
aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah, tell me
about that. Well. It's basically like every single thing that
goes on in life is full of meaning. Right. So,
like in this Brown University sheet I sent you, there's
a like a waiter leaving a crama on the table.
That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the
(18:03):
the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as
an insult or. Um. The street lights coming on all
of a sudden is a signal for everybody to swarm
on you and finally take you away or kill you
or whatever. Like everything in life has meaning and it's
making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind is
turning against you. It's pretty awful. Have we said it's awful? Yeah, okay, yes,
(18:27):
it is quite awful. Um, but people live with this. Yeah.
I mean we painted a dark picture because it is
a dark disorder. But the majority of people in fact
stet time. Uh, after ten years, if you want to know,
after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are
(18:51):
much improved and relatively independent and are improved but require
a pretty extensive support network. So that's seventy percent of
people after diagnosis after a decade are are dealing with
it fairly. Well, Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Are unimproved in ten percent unfortunately are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
(19:15):
ten percent at least of um schizophrenics commits suicide, which
is incredibly high because in the general population of the
United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide
to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who
are successful. They think it could be attempts could be
(19:36):
as high as people that try to kill themselves just uh.
I mean imagine sometimes the voices say to do it,
and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah, I was
wondering what the breakdown between those two is. Um. And
then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least in
(19:57):
the public mind, right D dangerous. Apparently studies have shown
I remember reading about this when we talked about latent inhibition,
UM that if you are typically violent when these uh,
when the symptoms set and you're like early twenties or whatever, um,
(20:17):
you're going to possibly be a violence schizophrenic. If you're
not a very violent person, you're it's just not part
of your personality before the symptoms set in, then you're
not going to be a violence schizophrenic unless you abuse
drugs or alcohol, which apparently vastly increases the chances that
you may be a violent schizophrenic. Yeah. And even then,
(20:38):
I think the violence is generally either self inflicted or
it takes place inside the home, like against your family,
which is not good. But the point is, if you're
walking down the street and sadly you see the homeless
man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need to be
afraid that he's about to, you know, attack you in
a violent manner. That's probably not gonna happen. Chuck. Let's
(21:02):
say you do want to talk to that schizophrenic homeless
man over there, but you don't want to make things
worse for him, right, but you don't want to ignore
him's another human being. Um. The National Institutes of Mental
Health have UM suggestions I guess for talking to schizophrenics
and specifically with their families who have to deal with
(21:24):
delusions and hallucinations all the time, specifically delusions. UM. Apparently
you don't you don't contest what they're saying. Yeah, you
don't want to say you're not Jesus Christ. What are
you talking about? Yeah, you don't say no, you say, Um,
I respect your right to believe different things, and I
(21:45):
hope you'll respect my right to believe different things. But
I I, you know, politely disagree. And what you also
don't want to do is agree and say I know, honey,
you are Jesus Christ. Right, You're okay, you're Jesus and
it's fine. Yes, A lot of people probably take that
tack in the family, you know, Well, yeah, first, I mean,
at the very least because it's just easier after a while,
it's like yes, yes, or you get so frustrated you're
(22:08):
like no, you're not and you want to shake the
person um. But yeah, apparently, And I wonder how hard
it is to say, well, I I respectfully disagree with you. Yeah,
I bet it's hard, you know. And if it if
it does go over as well as as it seems
like it that it suggested it should, you know, all right, Josh,
(22:28):
I think this was really interesting. The recovery in the
Third World part. Yeah, Apparently, the World Health Organization did
a study in the nineteen sixties and uh I found
that the recovery rate for schizophrenia and developing nations is
higher by a full third than it is in the
industrialized world. And then they did a follow up study
(22:49):
even to correct possible selection biases, and they confirmed the
original finding. And I thought that was really interesting. And
they there's a lot of hypotheses, but one of them
is that a there might not be a stigma like
in the industrialized world, and they're just more readily accepted.
And the other is that they might be able to
(23:10):
have a job that they can do successfully and here
in the West farming or digging, you know, digging the
trench for the farm or whatever. Here in the West,
we're very competitive. Yeah, it's hard to get a job
that schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete. And I mean the
rest of us are paranoid enough as it is about
losing our jobs. If you are clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then
(23:33):
it's probably going to be very difficult to keep your job, true,
or do it in a way that will help you
keep your job. That's very true. But Josh, there have
been some successful stories of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Well,
some some more successful and some. Sid Barrett was successful,
but I don't know if you call him a success story.
(23:54):
Ended up in a mental institution for the rest of
his life. Sid Barrett founding member of Pink Floyd Schizophrenic
and they believe that massive amounts of drugs that he
used made it worse, way worse. John he is he
is the crazy Diamond. Yeah, shine on you, Crazy Diamond.
I love that song. That's a good one. All four
parts of it, right, and they're like part I think
(24:15):
up the part four is it? Yeah? Yeah, John Nash, Yeah,
from the movie A Beautiful Mind. The Ron Howard film
with Russell Crowe as John Nash, the Nobel Winner figure
out that cable companies would do better if they cooperated
with one another. That's right, And that movie did a
lot for putting this on the map in a compassionate way,
(24:35):
you know. And Jack carollact, did you know that one?
That was debatable? Okay, he was in the Navy and
they discharged him honorably after I think like a little
less than a year and and the report they said
he had schizoid tendencies. But um, other people have said
that he faked that stuff to get out of the navy. Uh,
(24:56):
and just wanted to not take orders and drink him
off to death, which is what he did. And Pop
Benny's do you know how he died? No, he woke
up and was just like coughing blood and bleeding from
his mouth and basically was like, I gotta get the hospital.
Took him to the hospital and he was his liver
(25:17):
was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they
just were giving him transfusion one after the other and
he just basically bled to death Holy cow from drinking
holy cow. And he was drinking at the time. He
was drinking whiskey and like whiskey and malt liquor. When
he started, blood started coming out of his mouth. I
(25:39):
wonder how that taste? Would you shake us through that?
And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
was like whiskey with a beer back in it, garnish
with a drop of blood. So, kids, there's a lesson
for you there here. There's one more person who is
indisputably schizophrenic or was His name is Wesley Willis? Is
that he is a musician who had such songs as well. Really,
(26:03):
the only title I can say is rock and roll McDonald's.
I don't I've never heard of him. You you have
had to have heard of Wesley Willis. Okay, let me
play you a little Wesley Willis. Right here. McDonald's is
a place to rock. It is a restaurant where the
(26:26):
bi fool. It is a good place to listen to
the music. People flock here to get down to the rock.
Musing rock, Gay, Romado, Rocky rom mcda, Rogay, Roam mcdonaldos,
rock rumdo so chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, okay, and
(26:49):
um he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote about
it a lot. He talked about it in a lot
of his songs and um, he said he'd just be
going along, having a nice time riding the bush. I
believe he lived in Chicago and then all of a sudden,
his um, his hell demons would take him on one
of his torture hell rides, which meant he was going
(27:12):
on a little bit of an exacerbation of his schizophrenia symptoms.
But he's a great, great guy, great music, very prolific.
And uh, if you liked that, you should go watch
Daddy rock and Roll as a documentary. But yeah, it's
really good. I'll check that out. Yeah, Lionel Aldridge is
a last name on our list. And he was a
(27:33):
Green Bay packer and he was homeless unfortunately after he
was diagnosed for a while and then later was able
to climb out from that wreckage and go around and
talk about mental illness, and he was he was playing
in the sixties, the seventies. I think it was late
sixties or seventies. So think about it, man, that's a
(27:54):
big deal to go around and talk publicly about mental
illness at that time, and it still is now. But
I mean, like back then, that's hats off to him. Yeah,
he was the guy that I included in the presentation
that you did by yourself that you're like, he was
this guy. All right, I understand now, Yeah, it's all
coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh,
(28:19):
it seems like there are environmental factors and there are
genetic factors. Um. They have isolated what they believe are
some genes the d I, s C one, the disbanden,
the neuragoulin, and the G seven two genes, and they
think there might be up to a dozen more genes
that could impact this. Okay, So the basis of that
(28:43):
is that they can't just look at your genes and
say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. Right. It's possible
that it's because we just haven't isolated all the genes
and don't know the right combination yet. Or it's possible
that it's from other causes, one of which one of
the yours that's out there right now, is that it's
the result of an in utero exposure to either a
(29:06):
flu or the dread toxoplasmus. Remember toxoplasmuss that hijacks rats brains,
that's found in cat urine that's why if you have
a cat and you're pregnant, you don't be clean enough
that litter box, right, um. And they think that one
of the reasons, I guess, one of the evident pieces
of evidence that supports this is called the birth month effect,
and the birth month effect is, UM, if you were
(29:28):
born in winter months or early spring months, you are
at a higher risk for becoming schizophrenic later in life.
And they think that those are flu months. UM. And
another aspect of it is apparently the brains of schizophrenics
show inflamed white blood cells, which is a sign of
an infection. And they think that possibly all of us
are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that
(29:51):
lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like
early exposure between infection UM can trigger its release where
trigger it's activation, and it takes eighteen to twenty to
thirty years to come on. Now you see why people
that are pregnant are worried a lot. It's amazing that,
(30:12):
like we've gotten anywhere. Yeah, so what else? Uh? Well,
they did do have some new findings. I got this today,
um from the internets. They have a new South Wales
study from Thomas Wikert. He has identified the brain mechanism
that derails decision making and people. So basically the part
(30:34):
of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
stray Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
people neam all right, lights up when in response to
rewards and healthy people and it's linked to your decision making,
but completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they don't uh, they
don't know the difference between expected and unexpected rewards, and
(30:56):
so they don't have the opportunity to make a good
decision to again with and that you know, it's a
it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us any closer.
Well maybe it does, you never know. They say, with
proper funding that they predicted they could have a cure
for this. Well yeah, but they don't get proper funding.
(31:16):
But they're UM. They're looking into stem cells, right, they're
looking into UM figuring out if it is an infection
and if so liked adding that UM. And we've also
long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
helped develop anti psychotics or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
(31:40):
Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenel cyclading UM or
fencyclading PCP, the drug angel dust Um, produced such similar
symptoms to schizophrenia that they started investigating and found that
it had to do with UM the neurotransmitter glutamate, right right, right, Yes,
(32:04):
well it has to do with both. But the emphasis
before on anti psychotics was strictly dopamine and all it
all it did was keep dopamine in the synapse is
longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors. That's what antipsychotics do.
And then in the eighties, after the PCP stuff UM,
they figured out that there was glutamate was involved and
(32:25):
they came up with a typical antipsychotics, and these focus
somewhat on dopamine but more on things like glutamate and
its reuptake, and uh, these things have produced better results
with fewer side effects, so um, they're they're figuring out
how to treat it. The problem is that there's all
sorts of side effects even even with a typical UM antipsychotics,
(32:49):
like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness, muscle spasms. Yeah ALLUM.
Bulging eyes apparently is one UM, and I guess most
of the stuff can be treated by lowering the dosage,
but they're they're bothersome enough that a lot of people
just go off their meds and you know that doesn't
help ect. Electroc convulsive therapy is another thing that they
(33:10):
still do. It's not something irrelic from the fifties. It's
changed a lot and how they do it, and they're
not sure still how it exactly works. They stopped using
car batteries, but about a hundred thousand Americans each year
still receive e c T. So that is an option.
And obviously the group therapy and family therapy help just
(33:32):
the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes, so
we encourage you to seek helped as soon as possible. Yeah,
And apparently families can help in very little ways. They're
encouraged to UM set small goals. Apparently, if especially if
you UM have lost your drive or your will as
a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can
(33:54):
just be compounded by all the you know, like when
your life is disorganized, it seems to completely unwieldy, Like
where do I start right now? If if that's a
symptom of your schizophrenia, it's it's just that much worse.
So if you can help a schizophrenic get back on
track by setting small goals and building up their confidence again,
apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM
(34:19):
and then the like the one of the leading edges
of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the
this thing called the prodrome, which is the period between
the onset of symptoms where you think maybe I am
Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like your reality.
(34:41):
So it's this point where you're starting to have the ideas,
but they still seem bizarre or weird or why am
I having these ideas? So if you apparently seek out
treatment for schizophrenia when you start to have these ideas
UM in the prodrome, the success rate of treatment is
(35:03):
through the roof. Like Yes, this British doctor in the
late eighties set up shop in these two towns outside
of London and he's set to work finding every potential
early case of schizophrenia he could, and he started treating
people with therapy and low doses of anti psychotics, and
in four years those two towns had a tenth of
(35:25):
the prevalence of schizophrenia of the rest of the country. Yeah,
so apparently like this pro drome research, there's like clinics
that are opening up and like entire like departments in
universities are dedicated to this prodrome period where you can
be like, come, come back, come, this is reality. Yeah,
and they're successful or they have been so far. Well, Josh,
(35:46):
I got one more stat If you live in a
city of three million people, then over twenty one thousand
people in your city are suffering from schizophrenia. So well,
keep that in mind. Yes, don't make fun of people.
Don't obviously get scared or violent and in a reactive way.
(36:06):
I don't know that I'm gonna say, like you should
go over and talk to them, like you might want
to just be compassionate and uh and hopefully they're getting help,
you know what I'm saying. Go to schizophrenia dot com.
You can find all kinds of good information. And if
you hadn't already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out.
He was a great guy. Check out The Daddy or
Rock and Roll and um. Also, I would say, in
addition to how schizophrenia works, UM required reading for this
(36:30):
one is an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By
Rachel lviv. It was in the December two issue of
Harper's And I have a link, I'll I'll tweet it.
I'll tweet the link out with that. That sounds great.
If you want more about schizophrenia, Um, there's plenty of it.
There's an article and then some on the site. Just
type schizophrenia which again means split mind right into the
(36:54):
search bar at how stuff works dot com and that
brings up what check listener? Now, yes, Josh specific correction?
Oh wow, I forgot about those. Yeah, well, well we'll
correct ourselves on Facebook and stuff. But they mounted up,
so sure we want We'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh? Man,
(37:17):
I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people
sitting this in. Uh, the flash point of paper is
not fahrenheit for fifty one, I said books. The flash
point of books is not fahrenheit for fifty one. It
is fahrenheit eight fifty one celsius for fifty and Ray
Bradbury apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one
(37:38):
sounds a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently, what
was one no celsius for fifty is the flash point
or Fahrenheit eight as good as I think, Yeah, okay,
but I assume that as well. Man, I wish I
had his name. You know who you are. And it
was a very nice correction. Those are the ones we
(37:58):
like to read. Uh. Then we got a correction on
who was the first murderer, apparently, David says, and even
sent in a copy of one by Charles Mann. What
where what he's an email? No, not a not a
He sent a scan cop the page in four, he says.
(38:21):
Charles Mann says, although Billington was in fact hanged, at
least two other Europeans were executed before him. One was
convicted for the much more interesting offense of killing his
pregnant wife and eating her. So how about that, he said,
I was on page fifty five of Yeah, there it is.
(38:41):
That is crazy, okay, But still Billington is very noteworthy.
Figure obviously sees a whole chapter on him. And then
we got some uh. Oh. First of all, some people
wrote in about wildfires in Georgia, when I said, oh, Georgia,
and that wildfires South Georgia does and there's actually one
going on right now in the Okay, Finoki. So I
(39:01):
misspoke for sure, because I was just talking about the
North Georgia Mountains, which are very lush and green, but
Southworgia can get quite dry and there are wildfires in Georgia.
I did not know that that's true. And then finally
we got an email from an actual Hindu named Kush
k U s h and Kush says, you guys missed
(39:23):
a few things. Hinduism, typically, I'm sorry, technically only has
one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain, especially
in the non Hindus, but the general idea is there
is one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called
the brah Brahman, not the bro Ham, and every living
(39:44):
thing has a part of that in us called the Atoman.
The different gods are just different forms of the one Brahman. Also,
you didn't properly explain the laws of karma. The law
of karma has three parts in Hinduism. One, the performer
of an action will get the result to the result,
but the action will come right at the right time.
And three good actions bring good results, bad actions bring
(40:05):
bad results. And fourth, the gods are technically subject to karma.
If you also expand the definition of karma to include
the law of karma. But he says it was a
good podcast overall. You guys really hit it on the
head except for these few points. He did not hit
it on the head for that. No, I'll just for
that one part. And finally he pointed out and a
(40:25):
few other people pointed out that I was wrong in
correcting you with Jainism, and yeah, it's jain is m.
But I'm gonna play you something right now. Okay, okay,
that was from dictionary dot com. Well, then that voice
is obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Miriam Webster.
(40:48):
If it's the same voice, it doesn't count. Twice did
you hear that that's a different voice. Did that one
come through Matt? Okay? And then finally, this is Google
definitions And this is my favorite of all. Actually I
don't like where wow, So I don't know because I
had like three other people said three other robots, no,
(41:12):
three other real people said no, it's Jaine is Um.
And then I went on YouTube and people said Jaine
is Um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
it's both we're both right or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
it's genis Um, well, we love corrections so much that
I managed to forget that we or are corrected a lot,
or we used to read them. I never forget that
(41:32):
we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Go
through all three and fifty episodes, find everything you can
that's wrong with them, and then let us know. Okay, okay.
Or you can just correct the most recent ones whatever
we got wrong in this one, which I'm sure is substantial. Um.
You can go on Facebook if you want, You can
(41:54):
tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you
can send us a plain, old, fushioned email at stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by
(42:19):
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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