January 12, 2019 • 43 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):
Hi everyone, It's Josh here and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on schizophrenia. UM.
First of all, please excuse the rampant use of the
word schizophrenic. We know better now, UM, and delight in
a clip of Wesley Willis's rock and roll McDonald's. If
(00:21):
you've never heard of Wesley Willis, co check him out, UM,
as I clearly want you to do throughout this episode.
And UM. Also note that there is a rare corrections
rather than listener mail correction segment that apparently just didn't
take off, probably because we would have just ended up
doing nothing but corrections for episodes at any rate. I
(00:41):
hope you enjoy this one. It's a good one. Welcome
to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck a
(01:03):
luck Right? How you doing? 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 buzzes through like fifteen songs.
(01:27):
He's out of there. 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
Bottoms made him look kind of tall. Yeah. Um, alright,
so enough about Bob Dylan for the second time. I'm
(01:48):
not a big Dylan fan myself. It Um, let's talk
about schizophrenia instead. Okay. 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 Sarah quil off label and just settled. Um,
let's see what else Jared Lofner as being medicated against
(02:13):
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,
(02:33):
and 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
(02:56):
of people out 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
(03:19):
in 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,
(03:44):
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. Okay, at any given moment,
there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living
(04:04):
on the streets than there are receiving care. Well, 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 that schizophrenia falls in under that for sure,
(04:24):
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 mentally ill, which
was a huge step up from the spirit possession that
had you know, it had previously been ascribed to or
(04:48):
millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was. It's a
fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until that. Um.
A German psychiatrist name Emil Crapelin classified schizophrenia as a
mental illness, and uh, he missed classified it as a
form of dementia early and early type of dementia. And
(05:11):
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 and mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception that
it is a split personality disorder. But what he meant
was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind splits
(05:35):
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 know the
(05:55):
movie the show United States of Terra, have you seen that? No,
I know what you're talking about though, with Tony let
she is has split personality disorder on that show. And
that's the one that you've 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
(06:16):
that sybil civil Yeah for sure, but it's not schizophrenia.
That they have done 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
(06:39):
mental illnesses you know, in general, and 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 ski areous things that can happen,
(07:02):
like your cruising along at years old 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
(07:27):
teens or early twenties is when 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,
(07:48):
this this is 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. It depends if if you're part
(08:13):
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 then I guess kind of the
newest forms of treatment or newest thoughts about treating schizophrenia
is to make people aware of it, uh so that
(08:33):
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 across 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 an exaggeration of
(08:56):
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 or the
(09:17):
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
attention span and memory. Um, lack of memory an ability
(09:38):
to like plan anything or organize anything. Right. And then
another form of negative I should say, is called evolition. Um.
It's basically I think crippler 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 engage in gold
directive behavior, from brushing your teeth to paying your bills
(10:02):
to doing anything. You just totally withdrawn. So that's that's
that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually hear about,
but apparently it's fairly common. Yeah, so get diagnosed. Uh, Josh,
you have to um, exhibit a certain number of these
symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right. Yeah, um,
(10:25):
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
is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever,
but this is the d s M saying six months,
(10:46):
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 a psychologist who's a member of the a p A,
you have to have X number of symptoms for six
months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that
because it's like the same as the cops when they say,
(11:06):
you can't find a 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. Really,
what kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Casey Anthony, Yeah, made the kid go away allegedly alleged.
(11:29):
Not In general. Uh, schizophrenia apparently, as how it's 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 and uh, then there's
disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh, your behavior is probably incoherent.
(11:51):
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 simp them coupled with um disorganized behavior, so
it's almost like two separate things. I think you can
be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that means
(12:14):
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's not a thing too. But
it also says they may become still an uncommunicat so
it can be one or the other. Yeah, but I
guess it has to do with motion or movement or
lack of. It's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort
(12:35):
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 but no positive symptoms, they'll classify you as residual,
(12:56):
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 Larry asked if that some one had Good Hodgkins
(13:17):
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, they were so offended. There
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 jerky never seen anything like that, Yeah, pretty much. Uh.
And then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated
(13:38):
version of schizophrenia, and then 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, so um,
(14:19):
we should probably say there's delusions and there's 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
(14:43):
top of that subway car, that would be a hallucination. Yeah,
and you can extend that to anything. It doesn't have
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
(15:06):
among schizophrenics, and the most common auditory hallucination is 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.
(15:29):
Usually it's like one word, a couple 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
(15:50):
is very um common. Yeah, Usually it's um, not 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, which that's wow, Well those I mean,
(16:11):
there's a guy on Martha that I see that and
a lot of people that you see that are walking
down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably
a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid schizophrenics,
and they are yelling at the voice in their head.
That reminds me of the stand up that 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
(16:33):
talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry,
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,
(16:55):
you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing
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 is a lot of
times because the voice in their head may command them
to do so. Right there, there, there's such a thing
(17:16):
as um commanding hallucinations. Which is sometimes they could be
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, right, and
you'll go shave again. Yeah, it can be innocuous, but
(17:37):
it can it can lead to violence, or it can
urge violence. 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
(17:58):
the article that you sent me early. Do you hear
like a really 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 hallucinations
(18:18):
of touch haptic hallucinations, which sound pretty awful. Um, things
are crawling on you, 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
(18:38):
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 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
(19:01):
a like a waiter leaving a chroma on the table.
That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the
the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as
an insult or Um. The street lights coming on all
of a sudden, it 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
(19:24):
it's making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind
is turning against you. It's pretty awful. We said, it's awful. Yeah, okay, yes,
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,
(19:49):
after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are
much improved and relatively independent. And percent are improved but
require a pretty extensive support network. So that's of people
after diagnosis after a decade, are are dealing with it
(20:11):
fairly well. Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Are unimproved. Ten percent, unfortunately, are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
ten percent at least of UM schizophrenics commit suicide, which
is incredibly high because in the general population of the
United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide
(20:36):
to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who
are successful. They think it could be attempts could be
as high as f 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.
(20:57):
And then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least
in the public mind, right, but you're 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 when you're like
(21:21):
early twenties or whatever. Um, you're going to possibly be
a violent 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 violence schizophrenic. Yeah,
(21:43):
and even then, 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. Right, that's probably not going
(22:05):
to happen, Chuck. Let's 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. He'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
(22:28):
who have to deal with 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 you're talking about. Yeah, you don't. Definitely
don't know. You say, um, I respect your right to
(22:49):
believe different things, and I 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. 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 it's just
easier after a while, it's like yes, yes, or you
(23:12):
get so frustrated you're 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
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, right,
(23:32):
you know, all right, Josh, 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
(23:54):
a follow up study even to correct possible selection biases,
and they confirmed the original all 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
(24:15):
might be able to 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 were very competitive. Yeah, it's hard
to get a job that a schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete, right,
And I mean, the rest of us are paranoid enough
as it is about losing our jobs. If you are
(24:36):
clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then 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
(24:58):
don't know if you call him a success story. Was
up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Yeah,
said 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,
(25:19):
and they're like part I think up to 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 to 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, you know.
(25:42):
And Jack Caro whact did you know that one? That
one's 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 and just wanted to not take orders and drink
(26:05):
himself 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 go the hospital.
Took him to the hospital and he was his liver
was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they
(26:26):
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 uh like whiskey and malt liquor.
When he started blood started coming out of his mouth.
I wonder how it tastes. Would you shake or stir that?
(26:47):
And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
was like whiskey with a beer back in a garness
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. Who's that?
He is a musician who had such songs as well. Really,
(27:08):
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 they
(27:31):
buy food, beat. It is a good place to listen
to the music. People flock here to get down to
the rock music. Rocky romcdono, Rocky ro mcdono, brocka romdono,
rocky roommate, donle so Chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, Okay,
(27:54):
And um, he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote
about it a lot, He talked about it a lot
of his songs. And um, he said he'd just be
going along, having a nice time riding the bus. 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
(28:17):
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 of 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
(28:38):
a 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
(28:59):
a 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. Okay that you're like, he
was this guy? Yeah, all right, I understand now. Yeah,
it's all coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh,
(29:45):
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
(30:10):
is that they can't just look at your genes and
say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. 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
theories that's out there right now is that it's the
result of an in utero exposure to either a flu
(30:33):
or the dread toxoplasmosis. Remember toxoplasmosis 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, well, 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
(30:54):
you were born in winter months or early spring months,
you are at a higher risk for mean schizophrenics 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
(31:14):
are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that
lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like
early exposure between infection um can trigger its release or
trigger its 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
(31:38):
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 which kert He has identified the brain
mechanism that derails decision making in people. So basically the
(32:00):
part of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
stry Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
people in the m 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
(32:20):
unexpected rewards, and so they don't have the opportunity to
make a good decision to begin 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.
(32:42):
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 like adding that UM. And we've also
long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
helped developed anti psychotics, or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
(33:06):
Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenyl cycladine UM or
fencycladin 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,
(33:29):
domine right, Yes, 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
(33:50):
glutamate was involved and they came up with a typical antipsychotics,
and these focus somewhat on dopamine, but more on things
like glutamate and it's re up to ache 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
(34:12):
even even with atypical UM antipsychotics, like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness,
muscle spasms, yeah allum. Bulging eyes apparently is one, 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
(34:33):
know that doesn't help ect. Electro Convulsive therapy is another
thing that they still do. It's not something a relic
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
(34:54):
is an option. And obviously the group therapy and family
therapy help just the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes,
so we encourage you to seek help 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
(35:16):
a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can
just be compounded by all the you know, like when
your life is disorganized, it seems just 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,
(35:39):
apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM
and then the like the one of the leading edges
of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the
this thing called the per drome, which is the period
between on set of symptoms where you think maybe I
(36:03):
am Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like
your reality. 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
(36:27):
of treatment is 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
(36:51):
a tenth of the prevalence of schizophrenia than 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 per drome
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, I got one more stat
(37:13):
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. I don't know that.
I'm gonna say, like, you should go over and talk
(37:35):
to them, like you might want to just be compassionate
and uh and hopefully they're getting help, you know what
I'm saying. Yes, 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 one is
(37:57):
an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By Rachel Lviv.
It was in the December issue of Harper's And I
have a link. I'll I'll tweet it. I'll tweet the
link out with that. It 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. That's right into the search
(38:20):
bar at how stuff works dot com and that brings
up what chuck listener? Now, yes, Josh specifically corrections. 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 us, we'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh, man,
(38:43):
I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people
sending this in. Uh, the flashpoint 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 four fifty and a Bradbury
apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one sounds
(39:04):
a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently what was one?
No celsius for fifty is the flashpoint or fahrenheight eight
sounds as good as four, 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 like
(39:24):
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 scanned copy of the page in he says.
(39:47):
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,
those on page fifty five. Yeah, there it is. That
(40:07):
is crazy, okay, But still Billington is a 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 Okefinoki. So I misspoke
(40:28):
for sure, because I was just talking about the North
Georgia mountains, which are very lush and green, but South
Georgia can get quite dry, and there are wildfires in Georgia.
I did not know that that is true. And then
finally we got an email from an actual Hindu named
kush k U s h and Kush says, you guys
(40:49):
missed a few things. Hinduism typically, I'm sorry, technically only
has one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain,
especially no non Hindus. But the general ideas there is
one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called the
brah Brahman, that not the Brohm, and every living thing
(41:10):
has a part of that in us called the Atman.
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
ofman action will get the result to the result of
the action will come right at the right time. And
three good actions bring good results, Bad actions bring bad results.
(41:33):
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 peop points. He did not hit it
on the head cover that No, well, just for that
one part. And finally he pointed out, and a few
other people pointed out that I was wrong in correcting
(41:54):
you with Jainism and ye's jaine is Um. Thank you,
but gonna play you something right now? Okay, okay, that
was from dictionary dot com. Well that that voice is
obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Mariam Webster. If
it's the same voice, it doesn't count twice did you
(42:18):
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 for this. Wow, So I don't know because I
had like three other people said no, many other robots, no,
three other real people said no, it's jain is um.
(42:40):
And then I went on YouTube and people said jain
is um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
it's both we're both right, yea, or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
it was 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 we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Agree,
(43:03):
Go through all 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
tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you
can send us a plain old fashion email at stuff
(43:26):
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home
page
Hi everyone, It's Josh here and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on schizophrenia. UM.
First of all, please excuse the rampant use of the
word schizophrenic. We know better now, UM, and delight in
a clip of Wesley Willis's rock and roll McDonald's. If
(00:21):
you've never heard of Wesley Willis, co check him out, UM,
as I clearly want you to do throughout this episode.
And UM. Also note that there is a rare corrections
rather than listener mail correction segment that apparently just didn't
take off, probably because we would have just ended up
doing nothing but corrections for episodes at any rate. I
(00:41):
hope you enjoy this one. It's a good one. Welcome
to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
as always Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck a
(01:03):
luck Right? How you doing? 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 buzzes through like fifteen songs.
(01:27):
He's out of there. 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
Bottoms made him look kind of tall. Yeah. Um, alright,
so enough about Bob Dylan for the second time. I'm
(01:48):
not a big Dylan fan myself. It Um, let's talk
about schizophrenia instead. Okay. 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 Sarah quil off label and just settled. Um,
let's see what else Jared Lofner as being medicated against
(02:13):
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,
(02:33):
and 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
(02:56):
of people out 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
(03:19):
in 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,
(03:44):
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. Okay, at any given moment,
there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living
(04:04):
on the streets than there are receiving care. Well, 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 that schizophrenia falls in under that for sure,
(04:24):
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 mentally ill, which
was a huge step up from the spirit possession that
had you know, it had previously been ascribed to or
(04:48):
millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was. It's a
fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until that. Um.
A German psychiatrist name Emil Crapelin classified schizophrenia as a
mental illness, and uh, he missed classified it as a
form of dementia early and early type of dementia. And
(05:11):
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 and mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception that
it is a split personality disorder. But what he meant
was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind splits
(05:35):
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 know the
(05:55):
movie the show United States of Terra, have you seen that? No,
I know what you're talking about though, with Tony let
she is has split personality disorder on that show. And
that's the one that you've 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
(06:16):
that sybil civil Yeah for sure, but it's not schizophrenia.
That they have done 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
(06:39):
mental illnesses you know, in general, and 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 ski areous things that can happen,
(07:02):
like your cruising along at years old 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
(07:27):
teens or early twenties is when 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,
(07:48):
this this is 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. It depends if if you're part
(08:13):
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 then I guess kind of the
newest forms of treatment or newest thoughts about treating schizophrenia
is to make people aware of it, uh so that
(08:33):
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 across 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 an exaggeration of
(08:56):
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 or the
(09:17):
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
attention span and memory. Um, lack of memory an ability
(09:38):
to like plan anything or organize anything. Right. And then
another form of negative I should say, is called evolition. Um.
It's basically I think crippler 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 engage in gold
directive behavior, from brushing your teeth to paying your bills
(10:02):
to doing anything. You just totally withdrawn. So that's that's
that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually hear about,
but apparently it's fairly common. Yeah, so get diagnosed. Uh, Josh,
you have to um, exhibit a certain number of these
symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right. Yeah, um,
(10:25):
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
is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever,
but this is the d s M saying six months,
(10:46):
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 a psychologist who's a member of the a p A,
you have to have X number of symptoms for six
months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that
because it's like the same as the cops when they say,
(11:06):
you can't find a 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. Really,
what kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Casey Anthony, Yeah, made the kid go away allegedly alleged.
(11:29):
Not In general. Uh, schizophrenia apparently, as how it's 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 and uh, then there's
disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh, your behavior is probably incoherent.
(11:51):
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 simp them coupled with um disorganized behavior, so
it's almost like two separate things. I think you can
be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that means
(12:14):
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's not a thing too. But
it also says they may become still an uncommunicat so
it can be one or the other. Yeah, but I
guess it has to do with motion or movement or
lack of. It's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort
(12:35):
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 but no positive symptoms, they'll classify you as residual,
(12:56):
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 Larry asked if that some one had Good Hodgkins
(13:17):
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, they were so offended. There
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 jerky never seen anything like that, Yeah, pretty much. Uh.
And then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated
(13:38):
version of schizophrenia, and then 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, so um,
(14:19):
we should probably say there's delusions and there's 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
(14:43):
top of that subway car, that would be a hallucination. Yeah,
and you can extend that to anything. It doesn't have
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
(15:06):
among schizophrenics, and the most common auditory hallucination is 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.
(15:29):
Usually it's like one word, a couple 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
(15:50):
is very um common. Yeah, Usually it's um, not 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, which that's wow, Well those I mean,
(16:11):
there's a guy on Martha that I see that and
a lot of people that you see that are walking
down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably
a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid schizophrenics,
and they are yelling at the voice in their head.
That reminds me of the stand up that 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
(16:33):
talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry,
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,
(16:55):
you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing
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 is a lot of
times because the voice in their head may command them
to do so. Right there, there, there's such a thing
(17:16):
as um commanding hallucinations. Which is sometimes they could be
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, right, and
you'll go shave again. Yeah, it can be innocuous, but
(17:37):
it can it can lead to violence, or it can
urge violence. 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
(17:58):
the article that you sent me early. Do you hear
like a really 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 hallucinations
(18:18):
of touch haptic hallucinations, which sound pretty awful. Um, things
are crawling on you, 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
(18:38):
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 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
(19:01):
a like a waiter leaving a chroma on the table.
That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the
the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as
an insult or Um. The street lights coming on all
of a sudden, it 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
(19:24):
it's making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind
is turning against you. It's pretty awful. We said, it's awful. Yeah, okay, yes,
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,
(19:49):
after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are
much improved and relatively independent. And percent are improved but
require a pretty extensive support network. So that's of people
after diagnosis after a decade, are are dealing with it
(20:11):
fairly well. Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Are unimproved. Ten percent, unfortunately, are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
ten percent at least of UM schizophrenics commit suicide, which
is incredibly high because in the general population of the
United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide
(20:36):
to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who
are successful. They think it could be attempts could be
as high as f 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.
(20:57):
And then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least
in the public mind, right, but you're 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 when you're like
(21:21):
early twenties or whatever. Um, you're going to possibly be
a violent 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 violence schizophrenic. Yeah,
(21:43):
and even then, 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. Right, that's probably not going
(22:05):
to happen, Chuck. Let's 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. He'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
(22:28):
who have to deal with 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 you're talking about. Yeah, you don't. Definitely
don't know. You say, um, I respect your right to
(22:49):
believe different things, and I 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. 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 it's just
easier after a while, it's like yes, yes, or you
(23:12):
get so frustrated you're 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
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, right,
(23:32):
you know, all right, Josh, 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
(23:54):
a follow up study even to correct possible selection biases,
and they confirmed the original all 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
(24:15):
might be able to 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 were very competitive. Yeah, it's hard
to get a job that a schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete, right,
And I mean, the rest of us are paranoid enough
as it is about losing our jobs. If you are
(24:36):
clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then 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
(24:58):
don't know if you call him a success story. Was
up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Yeah,
said 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,
(25:19):
and they're like part I think up to 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 to 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, you know.
(25:42):
And Jack Caro whact did you know that one? That
one's 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 and just wanted to not take orders and drink
(26:05):
himself 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 go the hospital.
Took him to the hospital and he was his liver
was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they
(26:26):
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 uh like whiskey and malt liquor.
When he started blood started coming out of his mouth.
I wonder how it tastes. Would you shake or stir that?
(26:47):
And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
was like whiskey with a beer back in a garness
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. Who's that?
He is a musician who had such songs as well. Really,
(27:08):
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 they
(27:31):
buy food, beat. It is a good place to listen
to the music. People flock here to get down to
the rock music. Rocky romcdono, Rocky ro mcdono, brocka romdono,
rocky roommate, donle so Chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, Okay,
(27:54):
And um, he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote
about it a lot, He talked about it a lot
of his songs. And um, he said he'd just be
going along, having a nice time riding the bus. 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
(28:17):
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 of 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
(28:38):
a 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
(28:59):
a 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. Okay that you're like, he
was this guy? Yeah, all right, I understand now. Yeah,
it's all coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh,
(29:45):
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
(30:10):
is that they can't just look at your genes and
say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. 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
theories that's out there right now is that it's the
result of an in utero exposure to either a flu
(30:33):
or the dread toxoplasmosis. Remember toxoplasmosis 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, well, 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
(30:54):
you were born in winter months or early spring months,
you are at a higher risk for mean schizophrenics 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
(31:14):
are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that
lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like
early exposure between infection um can trigger its release or
trigger its 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
(31:38):
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 which kert He has identified the brain
mechanism that derails decision making in people. So basically the
(32:00):
part of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
stry Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
people in the m 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
(32:20):
unexpected rewards, and so they don't have the opportunity to
make a good decision to begin 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.
(32:42):
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 like adding that UM. And we've also
long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
helped developed anti psychotics, or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
(33:06):
Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenyl cycladine UM or
fencycladin 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,
(33:29):
domine right, Yes, 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
(33:50):
glutamate was involved and they came up with a typical antipsychotics,
and these focus somewhat on dopamine, but more on things
like glutamate and it's re up to ache 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
(34:12):
even even with atypical UM antipsychotics, like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness,
muscle spasms, yeah allum. Bulging eyes apparently is one, 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
(34:33):
know that doesn't help ect. Electro Convulsive therapy is another
thing that they still do. It's not something a relic
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
(34:54):
is an option. And obviously the group therapy and family
therapy help just the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes,
so we encourage you to seek help 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
(35:16):
a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can
just be compounded by all the you know, like when
your life is disorganized, it seems just 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,
(35:39):
apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM
and then the like the one of the leading edges
of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the
this thing called the per drome, which is the period
between on set of symptoms where you think maybe I
(36:03):
am Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like
your reality. 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
(36:27):
of treatment is 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
(36:51):
a tenth of the prevalence of schizophrenia than 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 per drome
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, I got one more stat
(37:13):
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. I don't know that.
I'm gonna say, like, you should go over and talk
(37:35):
to them, like you might want to just be compassionate
and uh and hopefully they're getting help, you know what
I'm saying. Yes, 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 one is
(37:57):
an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By Rachel Lviv.
It was in the December issue of Harper's And I
have a link. I'll I'll tweet it. I'll tweet the
link out with that. It 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. That's right into the search
(38:20):
bar at how stuff works dot com and that brings
up what chuck listener? Now, yes, Josh specifically corrections. 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 us, we'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh, man,
(38:43):
I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people
sending this in. Uh, the flashpoint 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 four fifty and a Bradbury
apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one sounds
(39:04):
a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently what was one?
No celsius for fifty is the flashpoint or fahrenheight eight
sounds as good as four, 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 like
(39:24):
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 scanned copy of the page in he says.
(39:47):
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,
those on page fifty five. Yeah, there it is. That
(40:07):
is crazy, okay, But still Billington is a 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 Okefinoki. So I misspoke
(40:28):
for sure, because I was just talking about the North
Georgia mountains, which are very lush and green, but South
Georgia can get quite dry, and there are wildfires in Georgia.
I did not know that that is true. And then
finally we got an email from an actual Hindu named
kush k U s h and Kush says, you guys
(40:49):
missed a few things. Hinduism typically, I'm sorry, technically only
has one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain,
especially no non Hindus. But the general ideas there is
one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called the
brah Brahman, that not the Brohm, and every living thing
(41:10):
has a part of that in us called the Atman.
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
ofman action will get the result to the result of
the action will come right at the right time. And
three good actions bring good results, Bad actions bring bad results.
(41:33):
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 peop points. He did not hit it
on the head cover that No, well, just for that
one part. And finally he pointed out, and a few
other people pointed out that I was wrong in correcting
(41:54):
you with Jainism and ye's jaine is Um. Thank you,
but gonna play you something right now? Okay, okay, that
was from dictionary dot com. Well that that voice is
obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Mariam Webster. If
it's the same voice, it doesn't count twice did you
(42:18):
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 for this. Wow, So I don't know because I
had like three other people said no, many other robots, no,
three other real people said no, it's jain is um.
(42:40):
And then I went on YouTube and people said jain
is um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
it's both we're both right, yea, or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
it was 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 we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Agree,
(43:03):
Go through all 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
tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you
can send us a plain old fashion email at stuff
(43:26):
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home
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