EP 1,185B - FOOTPRINTS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

What causes schizophrenia? Is it a genetic glitch or are environmental factors at play? A combination of the two? Whatever the reason, what medication and course of action will give the patient the best chance at a normal life?

 Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. Despite the strides scientists have made in neurological research and doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remains misunderstood, almost complacently mythologized. Without a reason for the illness, patients feel even more alienated than they already do, families are left hopeless, and doctors struggle to provide effective care.

After an almost forty-year medical career dedicated to caring for those affected by schizophrenia, Dr. Steven Lesk became determined to find the answer to its existence. In Footprints of Schizophrenia, he presents a groundbreaking theory that weaves evolutionary evidence with neurological findings. His conclusions promise to forever change the lives of the mentally ill by generating much-needed cultural dialogue about this stigmatized illness, and ultimately by provoking new psychiatric and pharmacological research.

Dr. Lesk’s “primitive organization theory” has its basis in human evolution—from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens—and the specific changes to our brains after the emergence of language. We’ve existed in human-like form for six million years, but we’ve only had language for 50,000; as Dr. Lesk explains, within the vast span of evolutionary time that’s hardly any time at all. He posits that the twenty million people in the world who have schizophrenia don’t suppress the hormone dopamine, which is affected by language, in the way evolution has trained us, so their brains don’t process language well, leaving them to function as if they’re in a hallucinatory, delusional dream state.

In addition to focusing treatment efforts for schizophrenia, Dr. Lesk’s theory could affect what we can do to help people with other dopamine-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s chorea, Tourette’s, ADD, and more. Calling on such diverse fields as anthropology, language theory, neurochemistry, evolution, and even the second law of thermodynamics, Footprints of Schizophrenia offers hope to those with schizophrenia whose dopamine doesn’t flow in our new, adaptive way. It will usher in a new era of psychiatric understanding—one that the field and the public desperately need.