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How to Become a Schizophrenic

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This book is written by a man who had been diagnosed with and treated for schizophrenia. He experienced first hand the maze of interventions, the pressure to conform to treatment (or rather be compliant), and the dehumanizing effects of both the so-called mental illness and the system that addressed its treatment.

Modrow takes a detailed look at the evidence for the proposed causes of schizophrenia and delineates the weaknesses of the popularly accepted premise that it is a genetic, biologically caused disease. In particular, he aims a discerning eye on the details of the Twin and Adoption studies in which so much faith has been placed in proving the medical model. He looks at the findings of brain chemistry studies and medication effectiveness, finding the results wanting. Modrow also examines the economic factors that exert such a large influence on treatments.

The tone of the book at times is incensed, understandably so. The author delivers in thoroughness when he explores the many steps that brought psychiatry to its current state. His unique viewpoint and experience make his writing indispensable. The book serves as a good accompaniment to such titles as Breggin's "Toxic Psychiatry," Bentall's "Reconstructing Schizophrenia," Valenstein's "Blaming The Brain," Becker's "The Revolution in Psychiatry," and Szasz' "The Manufacture of Madness."

In RC Series Bundle: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge Classics) philosopher of science Karl Popper tells us that the difference between science and pseudosciences lies in the power of refutability of a hypothesis. Despite its academic, governmental and impressive financial backing in the private sector, psychiatry does not rest on a body of discoveries experimentally falsifiable or refutable. In fact, the central entity in psychiatry, the concept of mental illness--say "schizophrenia"--cannot be put forward as a falsifiable or refutable hypothesis.

Let us consider the claim that psychiatrists use the drugs called neuroleptics to restore the brain chemical imbalance of a schizophrenic. A Popperian would immediately ask the questions: (1) What is exactly a brain chemical imbalance? (2) How is this neurological condition recognized among those who you call schizophrenics and which lab tests are used to diagnose it? (3) Which evidence can you present to explain that the chemical imbalance of the so-called schizophrenic has been balanced--or has not been balanced--as a result of taking the neuroleptic?

Before these questions the psychiatrist answers in such a way that he who is unfamiliar with the logic of scientific discovery will have great difficulties in detecting a trick. For instance, Nancy Andreasen, a president of the American Psychiatry Association, has acknowledged that there have not been found biochemical imbalances in those diagnosed with a mental illness and that there is no laboratory test that determines who is mentally ill and who is not. That is to say, Andreasen is recognizing that her profession is incapable of responding to the second and third questions above. How, then, does Andreasen and her colleagues have convinced themselves that neuroleptics restore to balance the "chemically unbalanced" brains of schizophrenics? Furthermore, why does Andreasen have stated so confidently at the beginning of the section in Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome that addresses the question of what causes schizophrenia that the disorder "is not a disease that parents cause"?

Speaking in Popperian terms the answer is: by contriving a non-falsifiable or irrefutable hypothesis. In contrast to neurologists, who can demonstrate the physiopathology, histopathology or the presence of pathogen microorganisms, Andreasen and other psychiatrists recognize that they cannot demonstrate these biological markers (faulty genes or biochemical imbalances) that they postulate in the major disorders classified in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition (Text Revision), the DSM-IV. If they could do it, psychiatry as a specialty would have disappeared and its body of knowledge merged in neurological science. What psychiatrists do is to state that after almost a century of research in, for instance, schizophrenia, the medical etiology of the "disease" is still "unknown," and they claim the same of many others DSM-IV behaviors. As Thomas Szasz has observed, in real medical science physicians observe the pathological alterations in the organs, tissue and cells as well as the microbial invasions, and the naming of the disease comes only after that. Psychiatry inverts the sequence. First it baptizes a purported illness, be it schizophrenia or any other, and the existence of a biological marker is never discovered, though it is dogmatically postulated. A postulate is a proposition that is accepted without proof. Only by postulating that these disorders are basically genetic and that the environment merely plays a "triggering" role can psychiatrists justify to treat them by physical means. But if neuroses and psychoses are caused by parental abuse, to treat them with drugs, electroshock or lobotomy only "re-victimizes" the victim.

In the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed in the United States, but since the advent of neuroleptics only about two hundred chirurgical lobotomies are performed each year in the world. About 100,000 people are being electro-shocked every year in the United States alone, many against their will. North America consumes about 90 per cent of the world's Ritalin for American and Canadian children. Many parents, teachers, politicians, physicians and almost all psychiatrists believe in these "medical model" treatments for unwanted behaviors in children and teenagers.

On the other hand, the "trauma model" is an expression that appears in the writings of non-biological psychiatrists such as Colin Ross. Professionals who work in the model of trauma try to understand neurosis and even psychosis as an injury to the inner self inflicted by abusive parents during their childhood. The psyche of a child is very vulnerable to persistent abuse while in the process of ego formation. Although some books of the proponents of the old existential and "schizophrenogenic" mother are still in print, today the model is best explained in the case-stories writings of survivors of both, extremely abusive parenting and biological psychiatry, such as John Modrow. In this moving and yet scholarly autobiography, John Modrow maintains that an all-out emotional attack by his parents caused a psychotic crisis in his adolescence. His refutations of biopsychiatry tenets are clearer for the causal reader than the scholarly books by the professionals themselves.

Despite claims to the contrary, the trauma model of psychosis is still alive. In this century two academic books were released on the subject, but instead of mentioning them I'd recommend Modrow's fascinating approach to the same subject: the best available book to understand "schizophrenia".