Oh, I agree absolutely! ANY potential causal agent with REAL evidence should be explored. Even if only 10% of sufferers have low folate, we can heal 10% of the population with a simple, cheap and safe intervention! We just have to stop expecting that EVERYONE will get better if their folate and betaine are increased. Let’s find the real cause in each case instead of assuming one solution will fix everything.

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Bottom line…
Studies have shown schizophrenia patients have low Folate and Betaine (serum and cerebral) and high homocysteine. Instead of concentrating on what’s causing it, why aren’t they doing studies using Betaine to lower homocysteine? It worked in mice.

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That all makes sense. There will never be one “cause” because it’s not one thing that is happening for the same reason. People need to think!

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Steve,
One paper says, “Nutritional factors can also play a role in this association. Low folate concentrations are associated with increased Homocysteine levels and schizophrenia. Low betaine plasma concentrations have also been demonstrated in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and can influence Homocysteine metabolism in these individuals”

Things that lower Folate, like marijuana can also be “factors”
“In Young Men, 15% of Schizophrenia Might Be Prevented If Cannabis Use Disorder Is Not Present”

Other papers say….
“both elevated plasma homocysteine levels and variation in the MTHFR 677C–>T gene are related to increased rates of schizophrenia and are risk factors for schizophrenia.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19564051/

One-carbon metabolism anomalies in young patients with psychotic disorders are highly prevalent, reaching almost half of the patients with FEP (first episode psychosis).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36816414/

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Good information, but it clearly suggests that “schizophrenia” is not caused by a particular genotype, but is a very complex phenomenon that includes many possible causal factors.

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Peter,
Muntjewerff meta-analysis implicated the MTHFR C677T polymorphism (which causes high homocysteine) as a genetic risk factor for schizophrenia and was recently corroborated in another meta-analysis by Nishi et al.

“A 5 μmol/l higher homocysteine level was associated with a 70% (95% confidence interval, CI: 27–129) higher risk of schizophrenia. The TT genotype was associated with a 36% (95% CI: 7–72) higher risk of schizophrenia compared to the CC genotype. The performed meta-analyses showed no evidence of publication bias or excessive influence attributable to any given study. In conclusion, our study provides evidence for an association of homocysteine with schizophrenia. The elevated risk of schizophrenia associated with the homozygous genotype of the MTHFR 677C>T polymorphism provides support for causality between a disturbed homocysteine metabolism and risk of schizophrenia.”

Homozygous C677T causes you not to be able to metabolize Folic Acid properly and you need Folic Acid to be able to recycle homocysteine.

If you want more info let me know.

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Man, it must be so good doing this research and getting all that data to number crunch with us being the lab rats. I hope it was a good “productive” career. It was only years of mockery, gaslighting and harrassment for a lot of us for you guys to be able to procure our details, measurements and data from hospitals and boost your careers (and there is no help after that when it happens and we don’t get a cent for it). Bravo.

You guys get awards, publish books, give speeches and drink wine at posh seminars doing this “research” while we become comments and blog posts, die in bitterness and pain. I don’t resent anyone’s success. We all want to be successful. But I do resent the success of a class of people who get their career boosts out of stigmatising others and then not even accepting it as a problem. God knows how many people in those datasets got screwed over after they were categorised as “schizophrenics”, “bipolars” or whatever. Even if you weren’t directly involved in it, you still used what comes out of it.

Julie Greene, a poster here, once told me (before her death) about MIA: “look who they allow to write on here” referencing all the doctors and mental health workers who get to write articles here. I didn’t understand her at first. I understand her now.

There was a psychologist who ended up here after getting categorised as “bipolar” himself and started facing problems with his own colleagues due to it. When I asked him about how many people he must have categorised that way he said something along the lines of “I had no power when it came to labelling or not labelling people with DSM categorisations! I just did it for insurance!” (something to that effect; I can’t find the article now). People’s mindsets change so much once they become the nails instead of the hammers. You don’t really want to forgive them when that happens. It’s nice to see them squirm the same way they made others do so.

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It’s real I think its caused from radio waves (J R T S) I think that’s what it’s called And some people are more subseptable then others And the data in the frequencies is unclear and jumble to the chosen or the susceptible like leftovers from different dimensions or lifetimes or even different universes who knows And maybe thefrequencies have been growing and traveling getting louder further in time in space reaching more and more . some kind of message from the Universe that there is worse out there and maybe we should have just took care of what we had and stayed out of space and stayed out of the oceans and stayed humble and stayed happy but we just go poking our nose where don’t belong I don’t know and I also don’t know what to tell my son who’s 34 years old and suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar who can’t get no help from anybody because he won’t admit that he has disorder so why don’t somebody poke their nose in that direction because it is a tough life for him and for the other people suffering from the disorder or communication because those jrts or whatever they are they’re out there and they’re sending radio frequencies black holes are getting bigger a new planets forming I mean hell I’m not no rocket scientist but

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We keep hearing this “we are now able to test for these defects”, yet not a single hospital I know of does this. Is there such a hospital that does that? What proportion of hospitals have these tests? 0.001% of them in the world? Don’t give me “they are unnecessary, expensive” etc. crap. All those are the same kind of excuses you hear with respect to neuroimaging in psychiatry.

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The other point is that all this “genetic stuff” is practically worthless in real life for 99% of the population. They aren’t going to sit in psych departments and modify people’s genes. It completely detracts from the ground level problems that people face.

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Thank you for your contribution here.

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Very interesting. I’m sorry to hear of your exposure to the vector of transmission and all that very possibly developed from that, Diaphonous Weeping. Our own dear daughter spent many hours playing in natural environments and with live “vectors of transmission” which I realized late in our reflections. She was also experiencing sleep apnea, social-emotional issues, bullying,a diet too high in carbs, and a classroom dominated by Common Core which made her miserable and did not suit her creative personality. Later, I discovered a few genetic traits we have, one of which is said to raise our risk for injury from inflammatory insults. Epigenetics. I realized that I was not sufficient to be my daughter’s protector, that I lacked the expertise to face the giants. I wanted to protect my children from such sickening devaluation that befell them. The dangers swamp families like a flood.

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It’s amazing how people are able to other someone by just using the term “why should a schizophrenic be allowed to do X” rather than simply saying that someone who is delusional or irrationally paranoid needs to be prevented from harming someone else. Naturally I or anyone else wouldn’t want someone who is delusional and thinks I’m Satan from coming after me with a weapon.

We need to fight till a day comes where making a statement like “why should a schizophrenic be allowed to do X” is seen in the same light and receives the same social condemnation as saying “why should a n*g*r be allowed to run free from the plantation”.

Also, consider, that sometimes the meds have such awful unwanted effects that people try to come off them in ways which are not appropriate because they have no other option. Going back to a psychiatrist or confiding in family might be too dangerous (coercion, control etc.). Those situations may make a person behave in an aggressive manner due to drug withdrawal putting other people in unnecessary danger. There definitely should be some way to help people in such situations but in such a way that they don’t have more psychiatry and more diagnoses thrust on them.

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And the only solution that is there for whom? Perhaps, for you and your family/friends. Others don’t want the “solutions” you guys throw at them. Places like MadinAmerica, SurvivingAntidepressants etc. came up precisely because of those “solutions” thrust onto people.

I am grateful for this place. It was a lot worse between 2000-2010 before this place became somewhat popular and the only thing you got in return for saying anything back to psychiatrists and their kapo-like patient supporters/families was getting called a scientologist or being mocked into oblivion.

I totally get that people suffer from a myriad of problems and need help in those vulnerable moments. Everyone does, and not just in the context of mental health, but other life problems too. But just because something is a solution for you, doesn’t mean it’s a solution for others.

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That doesn’t just apply to a “schizophrenic”. Obviously anyone who is being irrationally harmful to someone who has done no harm to them must be prevented from doing so.

Distrust and paranoia cannot be symptoms of the disease given that the “disease” itself is “diagnosed” on the basis of having such behaviours. It would be interesting to know why that person is paranoid. He could be irrationally paranoid (where someone is actually safe and still believes someone is out to get them) or paranoid for rational reasons like KateL puts it:

It’s not paranoia to believe that people want to see you locked up and force drugged in this society. I’m aware on a constant basis that someone might try to subject me to forced treatment or violate my rights in some way because of my “record”. That’s just reality.

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It is hard when you have to contend with someone, especially a family member, going through a mental health crisis (except in cases where family members have created that crisis with their own behaviour, which is true in some cases, and not true in others).

Again, if the psychiatric help around her benefitted her, more power to her and god bless her. There are a lot of factors that go into it.

But saying “support mental hospitals” because it has worked out for you is a stretch. What when the case is a woman being gaslighted and blackmailed by her husband using threats of psychiatric institutionalisation, degrading use of psychiatric terminology against her etc.? Do you think someone like that will see things the way you do and want to support psychiatric institutions? To her, such an institution would be more similar to a human slaughter house than what it is for you (a hospital for help).

Also, MadInAmerica closing psychiatric institutions is a massive stretch. This place barely has any power compared to psychiatry. MadinAmerica vs Psychiatry is like a rural police station in Bolivia trying to take on the US Army.

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Sure, most of us here would avoid them like areas infested with the bubonic plague as much as we can. Not just the doctors, probably even patients or family members of patients like yourself. Many times people such as yourself, who either find relief because a drug has reduced years of suffering, or they’ve been able to get rid of a problematic family member or get them in control come here outraged because it is hard to accept what has helped them in life has been pretty damaging to someone else. It’s been a pattern on this site for years.

But it is what it is. I can accept that you have found some solution to your problem in the hands of some psychiatrist if you can also accept that there is some serious harm going on, despite their best wishes. Most psychiatrists are not “evil” per se. But that doesn’t matter.

In any case, I think improvements in AI, patient coalition groups, collaborative websites etc. might give back some agency back to sufferers rather than psychiatrists. They already do in small ways.

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People rush to psychiatrists not necessarily because they want to go there, but because there is no other alternative in place and the way the whole thing operates already restricts them in many ways.

Smug comments about “they will rush to psychiatrists in times of need” or “why do you go to them if you don’t like them” are very myopic. In a desperate moment, a person does not know what to do, he may be pressurised by the people around them to visit the only known place of help they know, the mental health industry. The person may have ended up in a situation where the only people who understand him because of his pre-existing involvement with the profession in a time of crisis are either other psychiatrists or other patients who have far less power.

Doctors, nurses, patient supporters of psychiatry etc. who feel offended by what people on websites like MadInAmerica write often say things like “don’t like psychiatry, don’t go to them!”. Correspondingly, don’t like what we say? Don’t take psychiatry as a specialisation! Study cardiology or dentistry instead. No one will talk all this about you.

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Your brain is affected even if you get mugged on the street. Where else can you feel the terror of mugging? Are you going to go to a neurologist or a police station after that?

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My goodness! We can’t have that! That would take away the money psychiatry loves to spend on lobbying!

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