Customer Reviews

What Really Causes Schizophrenia

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Psychologists, psychiatrists and GP's, here is a book that will cut your waiting list by 80%. Not just a book for those with schizophrenia but anyone with depression and anxiety will get the answers they have been seeking. Explores the history of treatment and the latest research in the causes of schizophrenia. Explains why Dr Abram Hoffer and Carl Pfeiffer are so strongly promoted by natural therapists working in the mental health field.
Dr Foster is one of the worlds most prolific researchers, his ground breaking works in public health deserve widespread readership by both the lay person and medical establishment.
An easy to read, well researched book, a must for parents, patients and health care professionals. You don't need to have schizophrenia to get this book.
Please also read - "Solved: the Riddle of Illness" by Langer and Sheer.

Foster, who advocates orthomolecular medicine, admits that schizophrenia is an "imprecise diagnosis." Yet he claims that researcher David Horrobin developed a diagnostic patch (skin) test that would allow family physicians, if they used it, to diagnose acute schizophrenia as accurately as a team of highly trained psychiatrists. How can something imprecise be accurately diagnosed? Highly trained psychiatrists can't even agree on what schizophrenia is, let alone diagnose it "accurately." Horrobin's test could only make sense if it were agreed that when the test is negative, the person isn't schizophrenic. Schizophrenia would then become defined as whatever it is the test detects. This redefinition of schizophrenia will of course never catch on, as it would undermine the role of the schizophrenia concept in justifying involuntary commitment and embarrass the psychiatric establishment.

Foster mentions the DSM nowhere in the book. He does list what he considers to be signs that a child will develop schizophrenia in later life, which sound like they were taken straight from Karl Brandt's desk: abnormal head size, asymmetrical or malformed ears, high steeped mouth, furrowed feet, webbed fingers, long third toe, a gap between the big toe and the next one -- in short, anything that might mar a person's beauty. To complete the horror, later in the book he discusses genetic screening. Perhaps Foster does not harbor eugenicist sympathies, and is unaware of the eugenicist origin of his views, although he mentions eugenics several times without denouncing it as the gravely immoral and despicable doctrine that it is.

Obviously Foster is not going to convince me that he knows the cause of something which I don't believe exists as a delineable condition. Yet there are a few things worth looking at in his book. So rather than reject the whole book off the bat, let's pretend that we all know and agree what schizophrenia is, and can readily identify it.

Dr. Foster is not an MD but a geographer, which by no means discredits him. That's why I'm mentioning it. It seems nowadays most physicians are too brainwashed to do much independent thinking. I'm quite willing to take a look at a geographer's opinion. It is all the more disappointing that he parrots the medical establishment a great deal: Schizophrenia is a hereditary condition; that's proved by studies such as on twins and the Genain quadruplets; insulin coma and electroshock are spectacularly effective, though unfortunately only for a short time; the brains of schizophrenics atrophy (not mentioning the drugs involved), etc. And like physicians, he explains away the presumed heredity not conforming to a Mendelian pattern by bringing "triggers" on stage. His disagreement with mainstream medicine seems to be only about those triggers.

Unsurprisingly for a geographer, many of Foster's triggers are geographic: soil deficient in selenium and calcium, chilly climate, industrialization and urbanization. The soil theory seems to me defective, because nowadays our diets are unlikely to be based on locally grown produce. Furthermore, in vast areas of inland Africa where we could expect this same deficiency, the incidence of schizophrenia is said to be lower, and recovery higher, as Foster himself states elsewhere in the book. Sunshine probably does protect against schizophrenia, not the way Foster means, but because homelessness is less of a problem in warm weather, and therefore less likely to be attributed to a mysterious disease.

Some of the other triggers Foster lists are copper, toxic waste, road salt, allergies to wheat and milk, the consumption of too much sugar, exposure to viruses during early gestation, a tick-borne spirochete, low oxygen levels in the air, the high level of hormonal activity in youth, histamine, insufficient exercise, traffic noise, and stress. These factors cause increased levels of adrenochrome, a metabolite of adrenalin, which in turn affects thyroid function, he asserts. I'm not competent to pass judgment on the biochemistry involved, and I'm sure I'm not doing justice to it here. I do believe that some of these "triggers" may be real conditions, and that physicians fail to recognize them. The people they affect are conveniently swept into the schizophrenia model, providing employment for psychiatrists and relieving somatic physicians of the duty to investigate further. Sidney Walker III has written in a similar vein.

Among the cures Foster suggests are the elimination of certain products from the diet and treatment with thyroid gland hormone. He also advocates reducing stress by providing those who need it with food, shelter, and employment, not to mention respect. I quite agree with him on the latter, provided people don't have to take psychiatric drugs to be eligible. There's nothing orthomolecular about food, shelter, employment, and respect.

Foster is right, of course, when he says that the dopamine theory which dominates today's psychiatry is wrong. He points out that the parkinsonism afflicting people on neuroleptics proves that they had no excess of dopamine to begin with. Further proof is in psychiatry's obvious inefficacy. He cites an ordinance legislated in King County, Washington, requiring the mental health system to submit annual reports demonstrating efficacy. In the year 2001 the system treated 7,831 patients with a budget of $90,000,000. That year, by its own admission, four (4!) people recovered, thus $22,500,000 per recovery.

Yet Foster cannot resist blowing the "mental health is underfunded" trumpet. If his recommendations really cure what we're pretending is schizophrenia, why do we need a mental health system at all, let alone more funding for it?

I am certain that many people who are in contact with the mental health system would be quite interested in giving Foster's methods a try. It will harm them a great deal less than psychiatry.

Copyright © MeTZelf

I read this book about four years ago. I was exploring many different ideas regarding mental illness at the time and have continued my search. I even met Dr. Fostor at a meeting in Toronto and heard him speak. The book is quite entertaining and thought provoking. I would have to say though that based on what I have learned since reading this book, Dr. Foster's question, "What Really Causes Schizophrenia," is probably not totally well informed. There are in fact many things that are known to cause symptoms or behaviors that look like schizophrenia; ie, hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder and speech disorder are among many findings that people suffering with this problem can exhibit. The biological psychiatry movement in mainstream medicine is extremely strong and gaining momentum. The scientific evidence is accumulating rapidly. Schizophrenia-like behavior is evidence of brain dysfunction which can occur on many levels. I would suggest reading a number of good books like "Secondary Schizophrenia" by Sachdev or "The Spectrum of Psychotic Disorders" by Fujii et al, to appreciate the concept of many etiologies. Possibly Carl Pfieffer was actually right when he postulated years ago that eventually we would find a large number of medical disorders that are the underlying causes of "The Schizophrenias." His legacy is unfortunately the concepts of "histopenia and histodelia," which are two made up words referring to too little or too much histamine. Then there is Dr. Hoffer, quoted in the book by Dr. Foster, also of orthomolecular fame, who felt that schizophrenia was caused by adrenachrome. Maybe it is in a few cases but in the majority of cases there is another underlying disorder. I enjoyed reading this book four years ago at the stage of discovery which I was in at the time. In my opinion though this book does not provide the answer to the question which it asks.

Very accessible to laymen, this explains the dangerous biochemical & genetic balance between human creativity, resistance to cancer, and schizophrenia. Also why the current medical establishment's obsession with brain dopamine is, typically, just barking up the wrong tree.

See also Dr. Foster's What Really Causes AIDS. First Rate!