quote:
And while it's true that medications such as Haldol are not curative, in the sense that you don't take it for ten days and your schizophrenia is gone, they can be enormously effective. Insulin injections aren't a cure for diabetes, but they're an extremely effective treatment.
a) Schizophrenia is not a Haldol-deficiency disease. Non-schizzies are not walking around with a normal serum level of Haldol that schizophrenics lack unless they take their pills.
b) Haldol is extremely effective at disabling neurons. It isn't very specific; it goes after motor neurons, affective neurons; neurons in the spinal cord, neurons in the brain; etc.
c) With the exception of individuals brought in involuntarily, the only things meaningfully correlated with receiving a diagnosis as schizophrenic are prior psychiatric diagnoses as schizophrenic and exposure to psychiatric professionals. It's less funny if you think about it for awhile. If you come into contact with one in 'assessment mode', you are no more and no less likely to receive the schizzy label than the subway guy with the box cutter, up until he hauls off and slices someone up.
d) I'm schizophrenic. Since there is no criterion by which a diagnosis is ever ruled out or rescinded (such as "on the basis of blood test for the schz protein"), the disease consists of the diagnosis thereof. However, I like my mind as it is and fortunately have been able to avoid psychiatric professionals and their pharmaceuticals and shock machines. Unless I do something that constitutes a legally defined offense, my behavior is none of your damn business, and my biochemistry isn't under any circumstances. Put that needle down!
Original SDMB thread - Schizophrenia
See my next post on this same thread
See my previous post on this same thread