[pachyderm]

Psychology Today commentary on a Charlie Rose program on the brain. It concludes:

"...although it remains possible that the underlying disease process also causes brain volume changes, we suggest that antipsychotic drug treatment may be responsible for some of the changes that are usually attributed to schizophrenia."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ally-ill-brain

I've read a lot of studies and personally I think they have no idea what there doing and it's all theoretical.I read something the other day that said the whole neuron synapses theories have now proven to be nothing more than best guess.

[Shoe]

Interesting article pachyderm. Thanks. A decrease in brain size got me thinking about this other article some one posted a while back.

http://www.topnews.in/health/schizop...volution-23798

[SpottedOwl]

This idea that anti-psychotics damage the brain might very well explain why people diagnosed with schizophrenia in developing countries have a higher recovery rate. I know part of the recovery has been linked to community support, but perhaps the other part is that their brains are not degrading due to drugs so they have a chance of recovering.

[SpottedOwl]

I just stumbled across another link that questions whether drugs are helpful for long-term recovery:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psychi...hitaker-samhsa

Second, our society of believes that all people diagnosed with schizophrenia need to be on medication all their lives. Yet, the NIMH has funded a long-term study of schizophrenia outcomes by a researcher named Martin Harrow, and in 2007 he reported that at the end of 15 years, the recovery rate for those off medication was 40%, versus 5% for those on medication. At the very least, Harrow's study shows that some people diagnosed with schizophrenia do better long-term off medication, but that is the type of information that is never conveyed to the public. The NIMH didn't publicize the results of Harrow's study, and certainly it hasn't publicized the astonishing deterioration in modern bipolar outcomes, even though it is recognized by experts in the field.