7 ms·

Wait, what? Does this means schizophrenia isn't caused by refrigerator moms, as psychiatry once claimed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theor

by lutusp 11y ago

Wait, what? Does this means schizophrenia isn't caused by refrigerator moms, as psychiatry once claimed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory)? And that endless therapy won't actually do any good, contrary to what psychiatrists and psychologists have held? I expect to watch neuroscience nibble away at the territory now held by psychology, until (as Lewis Carroll wrote about the Cheshire Cat) there's nothing left but the smile.

ptaipale 11y ago
Well, first of all, I don't think that psychiatry has for decades claimed that "schizophrenia is caused by refrigerator moms", even though the downfall of that claim may have been more due to political pressure than medical research. And secondly, whether therapy does any good is a completely different question from what is causing schizophrenia - although here we are talking about triggering it rather than causing it. I have a friend who came up with schizophrenia just when graduating from university, and it was indeed devastating. But the endless therapy helps him a bit.
austinjp 11y ago
More optimistically, psychologists might hope that genetically-based sub-grouping of patient cohorts might help to determine those who best respond to the various types of psychological interventions. Of course, genetic testing and gene therapy may obviate the need for psychotherapy in some circumstances, but that's many years away.
DanBC 11y ago
Yes, 70 years ago psychiatry had some odd ideas. It's frustrating that you only make these comments about psychiatry - you don't pop up in geography threads to say "Wait, what? Does this mean geographers don't still believe in fixed immovable continents?". Endless therapy is not recommended for anything, and certainly not for schizophrenia. There are recommended lifestyle interventions, but these are aimed to reduce or stop smoking, to control weight gain, to keep people out of hospital, or to help people gain and keep employment. A therapy might be involved if a person is hearing voices, but isn't particularly bothered by them. In that situation it doesn't make much sense to medicate away those voices (because the medication has severe side effects) so the person might get a "therapy" that helps them cope with voices, and learn when and how to seek help if the voices become too much.
- saurik 11y ago
  Fixed immovable continents is a theory that has reasonable prediction power: if you assume that, you can do lots of things without having results that are too inaccurate to be worth calculating. That is not true of the kinds of highly-specific theories that people seem to be more prone to come up with in some fields. The kinds of things that even fairly recent "science" in fields such as psychology and (sadly, all too often) medicine reads more like "the world is balanced on the back of a tortoise" or "there is an evil genie that makes things fall to the ground; his name is Fred and he wears a black cape" than "continents are fixed" or "physics is deterministic, particulate, and local".
  - Tiksi 11y ago
    Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed reasoning for it. And yes, young scientific fields quickly disprove themselves, that's kinda the point of science. Hard sciences like physics and chemistry also had some very very flawed theories in their youth, like aethers, alchemy, etc. but have had a few hundred years to get past that.
    - gus_massa 11y ago
      > Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed reasoning for it. I agree, but imagine this: You have a children with a bad illness. Then some moron comes and accuses you of being the cause of the illness. Let's hope he is right, otherwise he deserves to burn in hell for the eternity. (Or whatever infinite penalty is compatible with your beliefs.)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jxdjsks 11y ago
  Well. I think you might be getting a little bit too eager with your reductionist approach to mental illness. Sure there is a large genetic component to schizophrenia - I was terrified for years that I might have it because my mother did. I think it more likely that shizophrenia is a heterogenous illness - there are many pathways to the same disease state. It is quite a bold statement to say that none of these pathways are in any way effected by the environment in which we develop. Especially given what we know about the association between early traumatic experiences and various disease states. It may not fit nicely into your mental model of the world, but biology is extremely messy business. It appears that biological systems, although heirachical and modular are, unlike human engineering, highly interconnected across all the levels. Particularly: The health of the mind effects the health of the body and the health of the body effects the health of the mind. If you do not believe this you have not learnt enough, or like many, you have ideoligical issues with this reality.
pja 11y ago
It’s been standard practice to treat schizophrenia with anti-psychotic drugs as the first-line treatment for decades at this point in time. Do you have some weird grudge against psychologists?
marincounty 11y ago
He was down voted because he/she cherry picked one of their easy targets, or theories? It sounds like he/she has intimate knowledge of just how deep the hole Psychiatrists, and subsequent Therapy has fallen? Did he stereotype a entire profession--yes. If any profession has a lot of explaining, and hands on knees apologizing--it's Psychiatry, and Psychology. Sometimes the truth hurts. Hacker news should be that place where the truth is exposed? I'll stop, but if you don't question Psychiatry/Psychlogy after being fooled by the SSRI's, the addictive drugs, the endless office visits, and the horrid rates of therapy cures; you haven't been in the system, or you are very prone to placebo. The latest research on schizophrenia is this; patients whom are not on long term medications have a better quality of life. Yes, it's a judgement call on the doctor, but why do I have a feeling, since the residency doesn't attract the best, and brightest anymore--little nuggets like this latest research is not passed along to these vunerable patients? As Ricky would say to Lucy, "Psychiatry has a lot of explainin to doo?" As to Psychology, well at least they least can't prescribe.
- 46Bit 11y ago
  Psych does have a bad history (e.g. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01541182 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01541182) and maybe present. But the things you're raging against can help a lot. Therapy is horribly difficult and can fall short for all sorts of reasons, ones out of anyone's control. It's helped me tremendously day-to-day, but my ultimate problems are pretty intractable. > patients whom are not on long term medications have a better quality of life Perhaps that their quality of life isn't so impaired is why they're not on medication? Such a short anecdote can be interpreted as suggesting anything.

by lutusp 11y ago

ptaipale 11y ago

Well, first of all, I don't think that psychiatry has for decades claimed that "schizophrenia is caused by refrigerator moms", even though the downfall of that claim may have been more due to political pressure than medical research. And secondly, whether therapy does any good is a completely different question from what is causing schizophrenia - although here we are talking about triggering it rather than causing it. I have a friend who came up with schizophrenia just when graduating from university, and it was indeed devastating. But the endless therapy helps him a bit.

austinjp 11y ago

More optimistically, psychologists might hope that genetically-based sub-grouping of patient cohorts might help to determine those who best respond to the various types of psychological interventions. Of course, genetic testing and gene therapy may obviate the need for psychotherapy in some circumstances, but that's many years away.

DanBC 11y ago

Yes, 70 years ago psychiatry had some odd ideas. It's frustrating that you only make these comments about psychiatry - you don't pop up in geography threads to say "Wait, what? Does this mean geographers don't still believe in fixed immovable continents?". Endless therapy is not recommended for anything, and certainly not for schizophrenia. There are recommended lifestyle interventions, but these are aimed to reduce or stop smoking, to control weight gain, to keep people out of hospital, or to help people gain and keep employment. A therapy might be involved if a person is hearing voices, but isn't particularly bothered by them. In that situation it doesn't make much sense to medicate away those voices (because the medication has severe side effects) so the person might get a "therapy" that helps them cope with voices, and learn when and how to seek help if the voices become too much.

saurik 11y ago
Fixed immovable continents is a theory that has reasonable prediction power: if you assume that, you can do lots of things without having results that are too inaccurate to be worth calculating. That is not true of the kinds of highly-specific theories that people seem to be more prone to come up with in some fields. The kinds of things that even fairly recent "science" in fields such as psychology and (sadly, all too often) medicine reads more like "the world is balanced on the back of a tortoise" or "there is an evil genie that makes things fall to the ground; his name is Fred and he wears a black cape" than "continents are fixed" or "physics is deterministic, particulate, and local".
- Tiksi 11y ago
  Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed reasoning for it. And yes, young scientific fields quickly disprove themselves, that's kinda the point of science. Hard sciences like physics and chemistry also had some very very flawed theories in their youth, like aethers, alchemy, etc. but have had a few hundred years to get past that.
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    > Well to be fair, having parents be "warmer" to their children and engage with them more probably also has positive results, regardless of the flawed reasoning for it. I agree, but imagine this: You have a children with a bad illness. Then some moron comes and accuses you of being the cause of the illness. Let's hope he is right, otherwise he deserves to burn in hell for the eternity. (Or whatever infinite penalty is compatible with your beliefs.)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jxdjsks 11y ago
Well. I think you might be getting a little bit too eager with your reductionist approach to mental illness. Sure there is a large genetic component to schizophrenia - I was terrified for years that I might have it because my mother did. I think it more likely that shizophrenia is a heterogenous illness - there are many pathways to the same disease state. It is quite a bold statement to say that none of these pathways are in any way effected by the environment in which we develop. Especially given what we know about the association between early traumatic experiences and various disease states. It may not fit nicely into your mental model of the world, but biology is extremely messy business. It appears that biological systems, although heirachical and modular are, unlike human engineering, highly interconnected across all the levels. Particularly: The health of the mind effects the health of the body and the health of the body effects the health of the mind. If you do not believe this you have not learnt enough, or like many, you have ideoligical issues with this reality.

pja 11y ago

It’s been standard practice to treat schizophrenia with anti-psychotic drugs as the first-line treatment for decades at this point in time. Do you have some weird grudge against psychologists?

marincounty 11y ago

He was down voted because he/she cherry picked one of their easy targets, or theories? It sounds like he/she has intimate knowledge of just how deep the hole Psychiatrists, and subsequent Therapy has fallen? Did he stereotype a entire profession--yes. If any profession has a lot of explaining, and hands on knees apologizing--it's Psychiatry, and Psychology. Sometimes the truth hurts. Hacker news should be that place where the truth is exposed? I'll stop, but if you don't question Psychiatry/Psychlogy after being fooled by the SSRI's, the addictive drugs, the endless office visits, and the horrid rates of therapy cures; you haven't been in the system, or you are very prone to placebo. The latest research on schizophrenia is this; patients whom are not on long term medications have a better quality of life. Yes, it's a judgement call on the doctor, but why do I have a feeling, since the residency doesn't attract the best, and brightest anymore--little nuggets like this latest research is not passed along to these vunerable patients? As Ricky would say to Lucy, "Psychiatry has a lot of explainin to doo?" As to Psychology, well at least they least can't prescribe.

46Bit 11y ago
Psych does have a bad history (e.g. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01541182 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01541182) and maybe present. But the things you're raging against can help a lot. Therapy is horribly difficult and can fall short for all sorts of reasons, ones out of anyone's control. It's helped me tremendously day-to-day, but my ultimate problems are pretty intractable. > patients whom are not on long term medications have a better quality of life Perhaps that their quality of life isn't so impaired is why they're not on medication? Such a short anecdote can be interpreted as suggesting anything.