In Defense of the Medical Model for Mental Diseases

I have been battling with antipsychiatry people for years. These people have ignored two centuries of scientific data. Jung proposed a toxin X as causing schizophrenia. His psychological theories could not explain some of the data, including the hereditary taint.

Siberian Work
Siberian workers (Novitskii et al) studied the red blood cells in schizophrenia using the elelctron microscope. The cells were prehemolytic. Rather than being the biconcave disks that they were supposed to be, some of them were spherical. What this means is that they were swelling up.

This confirms previous Russian and American reports of hemolysis in an assay caused by a toxic factor in the blood plasma of schizophrenics.

What all of this appears to mean is that an unknown toxin is causing the cell to overeat some macronutrients. The cells are swelling up and bursting!
Schizophrenia
The Russians have different classifications of schizophrenia then we do in the US. They divide the disease into acute schizophrenia and chronic schizophrenia. We divide schizophrenia into catatonic, paranoid, hebephrenic, etc.

Glazov reported abnormal metabolism of leukocytes in schizophrenia. The activity of oxidative enzymes was decreased.
Gosheva studied the morphological features of leukocytes in schizophrenia. Vacuolization, granular decomposition of the cytoplasm, pyknosis, and nuclear lysis were seen.
Riegelhaupt (1956)
This British worker found an abnormal "glyoxylic acid reaction" in the "urine from schizophrenic and other psychotic patients". he felt that this reflected an error in tryptophan metabolism. Either tryptophan was in excess or a metabolite of it was in excess.

Sacks (1959)

Sacks found brain glucose consumption was low in mental disease, but the brain was burning something else. Further study revealed that amino acids were diluting at pyruvate. The brain was burning amino acids instead of glucose. The brain oxygen consumption was normal. In my opinion, this finding was worthy of a Nobel prize, but Sacks never got one.

Detroit Work

The Detroit work was consistent with the work of Sacks. Also the Detroit work was consistent with British work by Riegelhaupt.

There appears to be excessive tryptophan metabolism in schizophrenia.
Conclusions

But what does all of this mean? There is plenty of data, but does it make sense? First of all, the view of Thomas Szasz are a myth. Schizophrenia is organic. Second there is a serious disturbance of energy metabolism. Amino acids appear to be flooding the brain cells. My own theory is that a diet very low in tryptophan should be tried as a therapy.

Unfortunately other organic treatments have been problematic (see #3). They can affect your heart adversely as well as cause other problems.
References

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