These are my ideas about the nature of schizophrenia, and of course it is a personal view. No-one really knows what causes it, maybe there can be a variety of possible causes just as one symptom - the car won't start - can have a number of explanations. I hope this piece will interest you.
Schizophrenia is one of the classifications used in diagnosing a mental illness. It often involves hallucinations (usually auditory) and delusions (irrational and firmly held beliefs). It is characterised by psychotic episodes usually lasting weeks or months and periods of remission. When the psychosis is over the sufferer often feels very deflated and may have persistence of the delusional thoughts. I have met many patients who say that the medication merely sobers you to the point where you can act normally and keep your unusual beliefs to yourself.
Schizophrenia, though certainly not meaning a split personality as popularly misconceived, may be understood in terms of a fractured or broken spirit. The delusions, mood swings and excess of psychic energy associated with the psychosis I conceive of as a breakdown in natural equilibrium and quite often the psychosis is the break of a deadlock within the patients understanding of the world or him/herself. Laing believed that the psychosis would naturally subside after a period of time leaving the schizophrenic quite often better off than before - in my understanding less frustrated.
I would disagree with Laing in his assertion that schizophrenia is caused by hypocrisy, more often it is the schizophrenic's possession of an uncompromising soul in a environment where true expression is not encouraged that causes breakdowns.
In my case I usually get very depressed before a breakdown, and experience what people have called the 'dark night of the soul'. However, nature abhors a vacuum, and is inclined to fill my mind with psychotic symptoms. Perhaps it is my obsession with philosophy which prevents me becoming 'wonderful and empty' as the Buddhists aim for.
The action of anti-psychotic medication I understand as a lowering of pressure, hopefully leading to a reestablishment of the normal equilibrium and not a withdrawn, low, introverted (in the Jungian sense) collapse. This is the great peril of medication and one that is not always obvious from the outside - loss of satisfaction and libido. Of course this can be one of the symptoms of schizophrenia and in my case is the state that usually precedes a breakdown, out of which I explode into a mania which I wish I could harness constructively. Apparently an increased dose of certain anti-psychotic drugs may enliven the patient, perhaps the drugs provide an alternative 'economy' of neurotransmitters in the brain and thus may take over and regulate the function of the neurotransmitters that are erratic.
Anti-psychotic medication reduces the neurotransmitter dopamine which is increased by the drug cocaine, and which is low in the sufferers of Parkinson's disease. Thus where cocaine makes the taker feel powerful and pleasurable, the medication may have the opposite effect and cause parkinsonian symptoms (trembling, stiffness etc.)
Delusions are characterised by their extremely subjective nature - the sufferer has no objective insight into them, and thus by their warping of the sufferer's belief system no insight into their illness (though this is not always the case). The world is made to fit the belief, rather than vice versa, and since the delusion is totally subjective the beliefs cannot be seen from the outside (just as you cannot see your own face through a telescope). The sufferer is absorbed into the perception. The delusions may realise the sufferer's identity by presenting him with a firm perception just as joining a cult seems to.
Schizophrenia causes much distress to those suffering from it and those around them. Hopefully medical (the empirical approach) and therapy based approaches will develop. By improving understanding both the clinical treatment and internal workings of schizophrenia we may develop treatments that can help people back on their feet.
In this article I have been referring to "schizophrenia" as if it was a definitely identifiable illness, but I am not that sure if it is really a good idea to gather such a broad range of symptoms into one category. So really the question may be asked - does "schizophrenia" really exist at all?
