Another Beautiful Mind

When Eleanor Longden began hearing things, she soon found herself drugged, sectioned and labelled schizophrenic. Then a psychiatrist taught her how to talk back

Eleanor Longden, 25, started hearing voices when she was a teenager. But, contrary to the usual perception of inner voices, Longden says hers weren't destructive: "It was rather mundane, simply giving me a narration of some of the day-to-day things I was doing. In many ways, the voice was companionate because it was reminding me that I was carrying on with my responsibilities despite feeling so sad inside. There was something constructive about it."

People like Longden who admit to hearing inner voices can generally expect two outcomes: a diagnosis of insanity, and potent medication. But a group of psychiatrists and psychologists believe it's time we reconsidered labels such as schizophrenia and the drugs used as treatment. In fact, they believe we should get people to listen to, and actually engage with, the voices inside their heads.

The network has a growing professional following, Dillon says. "We get a lot of referrals from psychiatrists nowadays, although there's still a long way to go."

Talking heads

* Studies have found that between four and 10 per cent of Britons hear voices.

* Between 70 and 90 cent of people who hear voices do so following traumatic events.

* Voices can be male, female, without gender, child, adult, human or non-human.

* People may hear one voice or many. Some people report hearing hundreds, although in almost all reported cases, one dominates above the others.

* Voices can be experienced in the head, in the ears, outside the head, in some other part of the body, or in the environment.

* Voices often reflect important aspects of the hearer's emotional state - emotions that are often unexpressed by the hearer.

* The "hearing voices movement" has spread across the world. There are groups in countries as far afield as Australia, Finland, Japan and Palestine.

* Well-known voice hearers include Plato, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Byron, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Isaac Newton and Winston Churchill.

More Here.

Genetic Link to Schizophrenia

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, an estimated 51 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia. Although 80 percent of schizophrenia cases appear to be inherited, the specific genetic components underlying individuals' susceptibility and pathology are largely unknown. Gene mutations governing a key brain enzyme make people susceptible to schizophrenia and may be targeted in future treatments for the psychiatric illness, according to MIT and Japanese researchers. More at the Villa

Awareness: schizophrenia

Awareness writes about Schizophrenia, and tells us about how "During a psychotic episode, the world as we know it disappears. What is tangibly real morphs into a disconnected tangle of interfering voices, distorted mixed messages and acted upon delusions which all seem believably real to the individual struggling with schizophrenia". More at Awareness: schizophrenia

Schizophrenia and Developing Nations

The healing power of strong social ties for scizophrenia patients. Read the article at Cornell Info 2004 here and the Washington Post article here.

Schizophrenia and Sainthood

It seems that schizoid tendencies are revered in Christianity. You couldn’t be a Saint unless you demonstrate what are now known to be several symptoms of Schizophrenia. Full article here at
Dangerous Intersections.

Arthur Conan Doyle and Kenneth Grahame. Schizophrenics?

http://heritage.scotsman.com/news.cfm?id=262782007

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/159/6/1068

madcap files

his coming home. is it a sign?
he's the one that madcap freed
if i could meet him, ask him how
maybe i'd know madcap, i little more

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1931111,0008.htm

Creativity and Schizotypy

A possible cause for the endurance and continued growth of Schizophrenia in spite of it being a genetically based disease.
(My upcoming paper)

Although diseases like Schizophrenia can be a hugely debilitating mental disorder, which has been proved to have a genetic basis, it has been present in the human race for a long time and instead of slowly dying out, as would be expected of a disease with a genetic basis, it is still believed to be growing at a remarkably fast rate, currently affecting roughly 1% of the worlds population.

'Schizotypy' is an embryonic form of Schizophrenia, in which the affected person possesses some of the symptoms of the Schizophrenic Spectrum, like a tendency to non conformity and unusual experiences, they do not display certain other traits like introversion, affective disorders, an inability to find pleasure in everyday situations, or avolition. As a result of this they lead fairly normal lives, although they share some mental tendencies with Schizophrenic personalities. Recent studies by have found that these individuals have a tendency to greater creativity, which in turn has been shown to lead to greater mating success. This would explain why we continue to have Schizophrenia in society, because a milder variant, which could then occur amongst close relatives of affected individuals, will lead to greater mating success.

Other articles:

Schizotypy, creativity and mating success in humans - Daniel Nettle, Helen Clegg (Full article, PDF)

The creative process: A phenomenological and psychometric investigation of artistic creativity - Christopher Barnaby Nelson (Full article PDF)

Creativity and mental illness: Prevalence rates in writers and their first degree relatives - Nancy C Andreasen (Full article PDF)

Natural selection and schizophrenia - Roger J Sullivan, John S Allen (Abstract)


Pic: Syd Barrett