[HN Gopher] Schizophrenia Is the Price We Pay for Minds Poised N...
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       Schizophrenia Is the Price We Pay for Minds Poised Near the Edge of
       a Cliff
        
       Author : Anon84
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2025-06-28 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.psychiatrymargins.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.psychiatrymargins.com)
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | Why does no-one dare say "schizotypy?"
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy
        
         | crawfordcomeaux wrote:
         | It's dangerous to existing systems for people to become aware
         | they're capable of creating/conjuring/channeling useful new
         | voices in the mind to help learn different things. People get
         | burned at the stake for that.
        
           | bad_haircut72 wrote:
           | I've never ever had any symptoms of schizophrenia but the
           | idea of trying to consciously encourage myself hearing voices
           | is terrifying, Im sure I could send myself truly insane with
           | probably not much effort.
        
             | PaulHoule wrote:
             | My belief about is that the core of schizotypy and
             | schizophrenia is
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_disorder
             | 
             | as did Eugen Bleuler. I have a friend who is schizophrenic
             | whose speech hardly makes sense and she is always calling
             | people on the phone and carrying on nonsensical
             | conversations. Somehow the general public is hung up on
             | 'hearing voices' but I have never once heard a voice but
             | under stress I (schizotypal) did once spend about six
             | months under the influence of a 'system of delusions' yet
             | stayed mostly functional, kept working, and managed to
             | avoid getting in serious trouble.
             | 
             | I think it is quite ordinary also for people to have a
             | dialogue with an 'invisible friend' or believe that they
             | 'talk to God' when they pray, the auditory hallucinations
             | of schizophrenia seem to be something like you have a
             | thought that you don't think is your thought but somebody
             | else talking, notably schizophrenics often believe that
             | somebody is putting thoughts into them or taking thoughts
             | out of them, see
             | 
             | https://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php
        
               | DiscourseFan wrote:
               | It's like gang-stalking--its not that there's something
               | being introduced, but rather that the subject sees
               | relations that are not objective relations (like, for
               | instance, the relation between temperature, pressure, and
               | state change). Typically, however (and I can't imagine a
               | case where this _didn 't_ happen), the relations are
               | _social_ in character--and since social relations are
               | subjective to the extent that all the social world is not
               | expressly a fact, it can be difficult to differentiate
               | between an illusion and a reality: people imagine their
               | partners are cheating on them, whether or not its true.
               | And there are many things we do not know about the social
               | world around us; but, statistically speaking, nobody has
               | ever actually been gang-stalked.
        
             | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
             | > the idea of trying to consciously encourage myself
             | hearing voices is terrifying,
             | 
             | This is not unreasonable.
             | 
             | It could be _less awful_ if the voices were positive and
             | not harsh and negative. Schizophrenics outside the US were
             | found to have a more benign relationship with their voices.
             | The striking difference was that while many of the African
             | and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive
             | experiences         with their voices, not one American
             | did. Rather, the U.S. subjects         were more likely to
             | report experiences as violent and hateful - and
             | evidence of a sick condition.
             | 
             | ref: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-
             | culture-luh...
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Dangerous to the autism-industrial complex and as well as the
           | addictive stimulant industry.
        
             | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
             | > addictive stimulant industry.
             | 
             | Whom I thank every day for repairing my retention
             | processes, just enough that lessons become learning.
        
             | amanaplanacanal wrote:
             | Is this supposed to be some kind of diss for adhd stimulant
             | therapy?
        
               | PaulHoule wrote:
               | Gotta a friend who's 52 and has all his teeth rot out 10
               | years ago. He goes to Wegmans every month and comes back
               | with a pill bottle the size of a small trashcan. He says
               | he could get nothing done without out but I don't see him
               | getting anything done. Wouldn't be surprised if will fall
               | and break his hip 20 years early.
               | 
               | I've seen plenty of those pills get diverted with
               | outcomes like somebody stays up for 4 days and gets
               | hospitalized so, yeah, I want to diss ADHD medication. It
               | is clear it helps in the short term, not so clear if it
               | helps in the long term.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | How scientific.
        
         | gfody wrote:
         | many people hear voices and experience symptoms of
         | schizophrenia while managing to keep their cool and thrive
         | amongst the nerts. hearing-voices.org is a support network for
         | such people
        
       | JamesBarney wrote:
       | If genes that increase schizophrenic risk increases cognitive
       | abilities you should find people who have high polygenic scores
       | for schizophrenia without having schizophrenia test well on these
       | cognitive abilities. I'm not aware of any of data that shows this
       | in a convincing matter. I think I've seen a few small studies but
       | nothing that replicated this on a large scale. And most of the
       | studies show they score worse on cognitive abilities.
       | 
       | The only conclusions I've come to are one of the following.
       | 
       | 1. They improve cognitive abilities in some way we aren't good at
       | measuring. 2. There is something about our modern environment
       | that is more likely to trigger schizophrenia which has more
       | recently increased the fitness penalty these genes confer.
        
       | jonahbard wrote:
       | I wonder if Autism would be even simpler to explain with a cliff-
       | edged fitness function. Because there seems to be a high
       | correlation between extremely intelligent people and people on
       | the spectrum. Maybe the group of genes rewarded for high
       | intelligence/creativity/quantitative ability also, by accidental
       | design, inhibits social capacity.
        
         | hyperhello wrote:
         | Is it possible that every non-typical presentation simply tells
         | others in society to give them space enough to develop the
         | intellect?
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Maybe it does when you are an adult but it can make childhood
           | a disaster.
        
       | cjbgkagh wrote:
       | I think people should study the RCCX gene cluster and link to
       | giftedness more, I have TNXB SNPs which results in hEDS, but C4
       | SNPs have a similar effect and is likely to result in
       | Schizophrenia. There are some cross over symptoms such as
       | dopamine dysregulation and flat affect. I think dysautonomia and
       | auto-immune plays a big part. Our lifestyles are very different
       | than they used to be and this could be exacerbating auto-immune
       | issues and as we get better at treating auto-immune conditions I
       | expect we'll get better at treating Schizophrenia.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | Is there some puzzling chronic condition that isn't on this
         | list?
         | 
         | https://me-pedia.org/wiki/RCCX_Genetic_Module_Theory
        
           | cjbgkagh wrote:
           | Of course there are. I'm guessing you're insinuating two
           | things, it's highly improbable that individuals can have this
           | many simultaneous issues, and it's impossible for medical
           | researchers to miss such an anomaly. The Ehlers Danlos subset
           | is shorter but still covers a huge amount of issues
           | (https://ohtwist.com/about-eds/comorbidities).
           | 
           | Well there is a reason why doctors kept telling me I am a
           | hypochondriac, but I do have a whole zoo of conditions
           | simultaneously, and this is a pretty common state for people
           | with hEDS and I'm on the extreme end of it. So while milder
           | versions of it are ~2% of the population the extreme versions
           | of it are < 1/20K.
           | 
           | And yeah, medical researchers are in fact in the aggregate
           | really bad at their jobs. Look how long it took to convince
           | surgeons to wash their hands. But a lot of the genetic stuff
           | relies on Linear Regression for GWAS which assumes
           | independents of SNPs, otherwise you get multicollinearity
           | problems, this is not a safe assumption and they've confused
           | their results as confirming their assumptions. Instead of
           | listing everything they get wrong a much shorter list is what
           | they get right, Dr Jessica Eccles (https://x.com/BendyBrain)
           | does great research into Long Covid and Generalized Joint
           | Hypermobility which should put to be the theory that GJH is
           | benign - still good luck trying to talk a doctor out of that
           | train of thought.
           | 
           | If you find someone who has hEDS the odds are they have a
           | very large number of those things and most of them don't even
           | know the names of most of the conditions, just one or two
           | that bother them the most. The RCCX / hEDS list is a distinct
           | subset of all possible things, the list of all medical
           | maladies is far longer. It becomes highly improbable that a
           | set of people have the same set of maladies - doctors tend to
           | chalk this up to social contagion but that doesn't bear out.
           | Genetic and behavioral diffusions show up very distinctly.
           | 
           | It's confirmable with WGS which I've done and I've encouraged
           | many others to do and it turns out that you can indeed
           | predict with a great deal or reliability if someone has TNXB
           | / CYP21A2 SNPs. Unfortunately it's harder to find people who
           | have C4 since they're likely to have schizophrenia and I've
           | lost contact with them.
        
       | suzzer99 wrote:
       | I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is
       | schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact
       | with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's
       | definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman
       | show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or
       | family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it.
       | 
       | We don't know her full family medical history because her dad was
       | adopted. I do know that she was "microdosing" and macro-dosing
       | hallucinogens for years. Mostly acid and shrooms as far as I
       | know. She followed the band Phish around with a group of friends.
       | I can't imagine most of those shows were sober.
       | 
       | We've also seen a few incidents of paranoia when she was under
       | the influence of drugs/alcohol going back decades. So it feels
       | like this was always there in some form, but maybe the estrogen
       | was holding it back before menopause hit. I read an article about
       | women who get schizophrenia after menopause that suggested this
       | could be the case.
       | 
       | Anyway, whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling
       | the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could
       | be a downside. We don't know that all of her hallucinogen use
       | over the years contributed to this. But it's certainly a
       | possibility.
        
         | winrid wrote:
         | If you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia it's
         | starting to seem like drugs that seem harmless like marijuana
         | (specifically THC?) can definitely bring it out. At least,
         | that's what seemed to happen to my mother and another friend.
        
           | amanaplanacanal wrote:
           | I also suspect people with schizophrenia that haven't yet
           | started showing symptoms are more likely to take drugs.
        
           | tony69 wrote:
           | In Europe this (some rec drugs bring out latent
           | schizophrenia) is taught in med school as a "known fact"
           | (source: psychiatrist friend) so it's well beyond "starting
           | to seem"
        
       | Throwaway42754 wrote:
       | I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from
       | marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I
       | naively took too much.
       | 
       | For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme
       | overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly
       | an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical
       | treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by
       | on a low dose olanzapine, but for many people they simply don't
       | work at all.
       | 
       | Even though I'm doing well enough to function normally and hold
       | down a good, well paying job, it's impossible to find a partner.
       | If I were to have kids, I would have to go through one of the
       | embryo prescreening services. I am strongly in support of these
       | screening services - the disease is truly horrible.
       | 
       | There has been little progress on treatments for schizophrenia,
       | the mechanism of action of these drugs has remained the same for
       | decades. The side effects are almost as bad as the disease, which
       | is why so many schizophrenic stop taking them. The only novel
       | medication recently released is Cobenfy, which I have not tried
       | yet.
       | 
       | Personally I am holding out hope that schizophrenia has some
       | basis as an autoimmune disease. There was a cancer patient who
       | had a bone marrow transplant and ended up being cured:
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophre...
        
         | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
         | I have family with that.
         | 
         | The most striking thing, is the _absolute certainty_ of the
         | thinking. They feel as if their thinking is crystal-clear, and
         | that they are the only one that  "sees the patterns."
         | 
         | Currently, they're doing well. I know of others, that are not
         | so fortunate.
         | 
         | It seems that pot is about the _worst_ thing that a
         | schizoaffective /schizophrenic person can use. They are better
         | off chewing tabs of acid. I've not used it in about 45 years,
         | and I've heard that today's pot is a heck of a lot stronger
         | than what I remember.
        
       | damion6 wrote:
       | Schizophrenia is genetic. So you're born with it. This makes zero
       | sense. Maybe you mean shizo-effective which usually has to do
       | with traumas.
        
         | 11217mackem wrote:
         | Nobody is born with schizophrenia.
        
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