Reading this article has got me thinking that I’m probably not as quick upstairs as I used to be. It could be the illness or it could be a result of over a decade on anti psychotics. What do you guys think?
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I’ve heard it before. This research result is a bit scary given that we have to be on antipsychotics the rest of our lives.
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Yeah but some people say schizophrenia itself causes more brain tissue loss than the antipsychotics. Either way… I’m not functioning 100% for sure.
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Yeah I heard that before. But they have seen the same type of brain damage in people with schizophrenia that have never taken antipsychotic medication.
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Unfortunately, antipsychotics seem to be the lesser of two evils. They don’t really seem to prevent schizophrenic neurodegeneration, only slow it. My pdoc says that, in theory, antipsychotics are only to be prescribed when prescribing them will cause less damage than not prescribing them, and that patients who do take them should only be taking the lowest effective dose. Hopefully, in time, treatments for a wide variety of neurodegenerative effects will improve.
There is no such thing.
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A study published today has confirmed a link between antipsychotic medication and a slight, but measureable, decrease in brain volume in patients with schizophrenia. For the first time, researchers have been able to examine whether this decrease is harmful for patients’ cognitive function and symptoms, and noted that over a nine year follow-up, this decrease did not appear to have any effect.
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Eh, the jury’s still out on that one. Some doctor’s believe it exists, others don’t. I’m not sure. I highly doubt it happens in all schizophrenics; in fact, some of us seem to have avoided having any cognitive symptoms at all. Others only have cognitive and negative symptoms when ill, and many have them constantly. Sounds to me like these symptoms have different causes in different people.
Either way, you can’t deny the genetic physiological, and symptomatic links between schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disorders. My personal theory is that schizophrenia disrupts the hormonal makeup of the body, resulting in disturbances in awareness, consciousness, logic, memory, mood, perception, reason, thinking, and understanding, as well as several physiological disturbances in chemical makeup (think elements, vitamins, neurotransmitters), immune system, and the overall ability to maintain homeostasis.
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(1)I think it depends on what one calls cognitive symptoms
(2)Were the cognitive symptoms present pre illness ,or after the onset of the illness?
(3) If present before did the illness make them worse?
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The NEC was founded by Patricia Deegan, a noted anti-psychiatry activist. I wouldn’t use them as an unbiased source.
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There are no unbiased sources on this. The debate became polarised long ago,
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That is an interesting theory and I concur based on my personal experience. It effects a wide range of the components which make us human.
I was taught in getting my degree in neuroscience based psychology, that the brain damage that can be seen in schizophrenia is seen in people who take antipsychotic medication and those who have never taken antipsychotic medication. I believe it’s the disease itself that causes brain tissue loss, medicine slows this.
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I feel like I was going downhill cognitively a lot faster before I was stabilized on meds. So that says something doesn’t it? What’s your personal experiences?