New thinking on out-of-date thinking on schizophrenia

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The sound is broken on my laptop, @firemonkey. Could you please provide a short abstract of the video? Like 2 sentences long :slight_smile: Thanks in advance.

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This is the blurb that comes with the video.

"Schizophrenia’s Unyielding Mysteries

Gene studies were supposed to reveal the disorder’s roots. That didn’t happen. Now scientists are broadening the search…

Massive genetic studies, it was hoped, would help discover the underlying causes of schizophrenia, a pyschiatric disorder that produces a toll in the U.S. of $60 billion annually for patient care. Research toward achieving this goal began about 10 years ago.

The findings have not lived up to their original expectations. Studies have made clear that no single gene will lead to new treatments and that the tangled genetic landscape of schizophrenia is at best a series of faint hints of what causes the illness.

The way forward will require that the field act on a mix of clues that suggest that early-life influences—such as childhood trauma and prenatal factors—exacerbate the impact of genes in elevating the risk of a diagnosis.

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v316/n5/full/scientificamerican0517-54.html

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A newer estimate (2013?) says $130billion a year…

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Nothing new but the conversation is focus on how to cure the illness with finding the genetic root cause …!!

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I dont get how they can study what changes in brain once someone gets ill. They sort of see how brain is put together, but what does that say about the cascade of effects that takes place once someone gets full blown sz. They were living young with no sz, then bam, figure out what happens then in those early adult years that is the syndrome.

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Thanks for sharing this @firemonkey! I will listen to it tomorrow.

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They need to do brain imaging at the moment of psychosis. For a huge sample of people chosen for the acute nature of psychosis. Not everyone’s psychosis is acute, focusing on the people for whom it is will yield results.

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The problem with brain imaging is apart from showing structure it’s pretty useless.

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I think its called functional imaging.