Taking the Mystery out of Mental Illness

“I was terrified at the thought of mental illness!” recalls Irene. “Words like ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘depression’ just weren’t in my vocabulary. Mental illness bore a stigma. It meant ‘going crazy’ or being ‘put away’ in a mental ward! Some of my friends even thought I was demonized!”

MADNESS, insanity, lunacy. The very words evoke fear and images of padded cells and straitjackets. However, not everyone with a mental disorder is a raving maniac. Nor is everyone with an odd personality or an idiosyncrasy mentally ill.

Each mental disorder involves a cluster of specific symptoms. Manic-depression, for example, is an emotional seesaw, oscillating between exhilarating highs and devastating lows. In major depression, however, the patient often suffers “a severe, paralyzing, and unrelenting sadness.”a Anxiety disorders, such as phobias, may virtually paralyze victims with irrational fears.

In this and the following article, however, we will focus on a disease that embodies the very essence of mental illness.

Schizophrenia​—The Darkest Side of Mental Illness

While in the hospital, Irene had more instances of mistaken identity​—embracing doctors and nurses as long-lost relatives. She imagined that she could smell odors that were imperceptible to others. She became convinced that the hospital staff was out to kill her! “They had to strap me into my bed once,” she admits.

The diagnosis? Schizophrenia, a disease that will eventually afflict at least one out of every hundred people. Over a hundred thousand new cases a year are diagnosed in the United States alone.b

The schizophrenic does not have a split personality in the sense of a dual or multiple personality (a different and rare disorder) but has a damaged personality. Consider, for example, a young man named Jerry, described by his doctor as a ‘textbook case’ of schizophrenia. His eyes are vacant one moment and menacingly hostile the next. His speech is a disjointed mixture of fear (“People have called me here to electrocute me”) and delusion (“That picture’s got a headache”). Inner voices terrorize him. His is a brain running amok.

Schizophrenia produces a wide range of bizarre symptoms: hallucinations, inner voices, disordered thinking, irrational fears, and emotions that seem out of tune with reality. What causes it? A mere decade ago doctors accused parents of driving their children crazy. Now some feel that it is more the other way around. Parents suffer enormous stresses and strains when a child is schizophrenic.

So most doctors now say that parent-blaming was a mistake. Of course, the Bible urges parents not to exasperate their children. (Colossians 3:21) But even if they do, it seems unlikely that this alone will make their children schizophrenic. Factors quite beyond the control of parents are involved.

The Genetic Component

Nick and Herbert (pseudonyms) were identical twins. Separated at birth, Nick was reared by loving foster parents, Herbert by an apathetic grandmother. At an early age the seeds of insanity began to blossom in both. Nick set fires and stole. Herbert, too, had an affinity for fire​—and for torturing dogs. Full-blown schizophrenia followed and both ended up in mental hospitals.

Coincidence? Or do genes carry schizophrenia? There are 14 known sets of separately raised twins in which one twin developed schizophrenia. Nine of the siblings also developed the malady. Evidently the genes play a role in schizophrenia. Curiously, though, when two schizophrenics marry, there is only a 46-percent chance that their children will also develop schizophrenia. “If schizophrenia were actually the result of a dominant gene, 75% of the children should develop schizophrenia,” according to the book Schizophrenia: The Epigenetic Puzzle.

More than genes must be involved. The authors of Mind, Mood, and Medicine surmise: “It is well known that psychological experience​—for example, battle stress—​can profoundly affect the chemical, hormonal, and physiological functioning of the body. In psychiatric illnesses, a psychological experience can frequently be identified as the precipitating factor in a vulnerable person.” And where might the genes fit in? Continue Drs. Wender and Klein: “Our overall view is that genetic factors may make an individual vulnerable to certain forms of psychological experience.” So while schizophrenia itself may not be inheritable, the predisposition to it may very well be.

Abnormal Brains

Schizophrenia Bulletin presents yet another piece of the puzzle: “The evidence presented suggests that the brains of schizophrenic patients frequently contain abnormalities.”

Dr. Arnold Scheibel claims that in the section of the brain called the hippocampus, nerve cells in normal patients are aligned “almost like little soldiers.” But in the brains of some schizophrenic patients “the nerve cells and their processes are completely awry.” This, he believes, could account for the hallucinations and delusions of the schizophrenic. Other schizophrenics have been found to have enlarged brain cavities. Most intriguing of all is the discovery that the brains of the mentally ill may contain biochemical defects! (See the following article.)

To date, though, no single brain abnormality or biochemical defect has been found to be common to all schizophrenics. Doctors thus believe that schizophrenia may well be “many disorders, with a multitude of different causes.” (Schizophrenia: Is There an Answer?) A slow-acting virus, vitamin deficiencies, metabolic disturbances, food allergies​—these are just a few of the factors claimed to be involved in schizophrenia.

But though the exact cause and mechanism of the disease elude medical science, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey says: “Schizophrenia is a brain disease, now definitely known to be such. It is a real scientific and biological entity as clearly as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer are scientific and biological entities.” There is also evidence that depressive disorders are similarly linked to biology.

Mental illness has thus lost its aura of mystery​—and its stigma. The possibility of treating it has become a tangible reality.

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 5]

A number of factors may be involved in the onset of mental illness

Genetics?

Environment?

Brain abnormalities?

Chemical defects?

Diet?