Lately all of the new drugs have been old drugs with new delivery systems. While it does help with compliance it gives me a feeling that new drugs are not the focus of research now. I did find it encouraging that one drug was an attempt to lessen the weight gain side effect of Zyprexa but it only would delay the inevitable rather than stop it. It appears with all the failures of testing the real new drugs that the research is aiming at the wrong targets now and needs to be studied more thoroughly next time. I also find it disheartening that I hear of alternatives to drugs one day and never hear of them again.
Even experimental tests to catch schizophrenia early like eye tests, and blood tests can be found in years old news stories and if it is updated you find out the company that was studying it went bankrupt or later tests proved it false. It is also disheartening that our life spans remain the same or worse than previous generations.
Of course significant problems exist with the lack of funding (I shudder when someone gives $100,000 for research and they consider it a big deal when most research is in the billions in other subjects) and frequent government cuts affect it.
I do find it good that many of us can live in the community now and am glad the drugs exist but find it unfortunate that many of us are are disability or welfare and that early intervention programs are exceptions to the norm.
I hear you brother.
Research is an investment as far as they are concerned, manufacturing a new medication, and one that only ‘manages’ the illness is far more profitable and safe than putting your money into a different aspect of it. It sucks but that’s how it is in a world where nothing but money controls you.
I agree. Although there are the exceptions. There are the novel drug candidates, like Evenamide, ITI 007, MIN 101, LU AF 35700, RP5063, SEP363856, and F17464. So it’s not like there is nothing new. There is still research and interest in glutamatergic drugs, although the most recent one failed it has been bought by another company which is trying to develop biomarkers for who would benefit from it.
It’s a bit discouraging there is not more research into, or availability of, qEEG for psychosis. That’s one few outside of research want to touch.
I think that there will be a biomarker test (blood or other) within 5 years, and in fact there are already some now, so that’s not a wild prediction. But it won’t be validated and accepted into clinical practice for a long while. Maybe 10 years. Part of the issue is most psychiatrists don’t think they need a test to diagnose schizophrenia. (Often it is glaringly obvious) so the real benefit would be early detection. But since there’s no real disease modifying treatment, there’s not much demand to get a test into clinical use. As soon as there is a proven treatment to delay, prevent, or mitigate disease progression in pre-psychotic patients, we’ll get that test.
Then there’s the moonshot stuff. The stem cell therapy, gene therapy. So far just in mice (and rats.)
And a few oddball projects like the UOW one to create an brain implant. Which I suppose isn’t that odd, but it’s not mainstream research.
But we still have so far to go with even just accessibility of current treatment. Early intervention, yes. Although probably early intervention is what psychosis care should look like for people with severe illness in all stages. That won’t happen because it’s too expensive and because half of us, at least, would say no, I don’t want it, I’m not psychotic.
here within a couple decades they are going to be able to emulate the brain via hardware and software.
It’s going to expose the ugly truth that schizophrenia is just as much about wiring as it is chemical triggering. All those who have too would rather place faith that it’s chemical and that these medications are appropriate.
Really though, a schizophrenic has needs. An abundance of needs regarding very personal help on very personal levels. Existential levels that most folk won’t openly cross even a normal operating neurotypicals.
The restriction of dopamine reduces excitability and impulsivity… it is merely a means of throwing loose reigns over the wild animal that no one understands or knows how to control, psychosis.
We are throwing stones into a pond and just watching how the ripples change the tides. While they are proven effective, they do not hold water as a an appropriate way to deal with the presence of psychosis in the human population. They are the best option we have available to us today, but in the next century there are bound to be drastically different means of handling this illness. They will be more comprehensive, therapeutic, and allow the sufferer to be respected, heard out, and painstakingly guided back to a normal focus. Even with their insanity included. It will sit outside the room of their existence at all times. Something they experienced and grew past… and when it does come back they will have adequate access to support structures that help them sort it out.
In one regard psychosis is horrendous, but from a more positive perspective it can be seen as doing something that might not happen otherwise. It is the force that drives people open… it takes one who is confused by what commonly confuses most all… and leaves that individual with no choice but to start spelling out the inner workings of their minds to others. People are so closeted and self-defensive it almost mandates that one has to be a psycho to spill their own beans… but if the beans stayed in the closet than we’d never see them and never thoroughly understand ourselves as human beings… beyond that volatile private level.
After that psychosis will be an easy thing to prevent using means of inclusive understanding… not the surface level of labeling and dismissal that is commonly seen today.
It won’t revamp culture or society as a whole, but in an ever growing number of pockets… understanding and placement can be found and encouraged… and the schizophrenic will have the needs mandated by their sensitivities satisfied, because it no longer costs as much for people to grant them concern.
This site is one of those pockets… you know… try and tell me it doesn’t work!
It’s not going to take a couple decades to prove that the brain’s wiring in sz is different, there’s at least dozens of studies on pubmed showing this.
We just don’t know what to do about it. With the exception of qEEG (maybe) and rTMS, and maybe tDCS, and cognitive training… Ok that’s actually a fair amount of things - but no meds rewire the brain as of yet.
There is that UOW project which has developed a material which can encourage brain growth. If stem cell therapy works in people, with or without gene therapy, that might help too.