Organic Treatments in Psychiatry

There are a wide variety of treatments in psychiatry, and this topic would require a book to be comprehensive. Therefore I will just give a sampling. The most common treatments are drugs.

Risperidone

This treatment is very popular, but also very problematic. Ref. 1 gives one side effect, but there are many. All are adverse. Involuntary movements such as shaking, rocking, etc. are sometimes seen. This is an all-too-common side effect of psychiatric drugs. Weight gain is also seen. Diabetes can be a side effect, unfortunately. It is an atypical "antipsychotic" used to treat schizophrenia.

Neuroleptics

Ref. 2 presents information about neuroleptics. It blames brain atrophy on these drugs.

Cannabis

Ref. 3 claims that cannabis use is a risk factor for schizophrenia. Amazingly there are people that advocate this as an alternative medicine! Since a lot of money can be made off of cannabis, this could be a factor in their theories.

Antiviral Drugs

These drugs were tried on schizophrenics and they failed. Nevertheless the famous Dr. E. Fuller Torrey has advocated for the viral theory (4). I disagree with Torrey.

Schizophrenia

The late Linus Pauling advocated "orthomolecular" treatment of schizophrenia. This was rejected by the APA (American Psychiatric Association), which is heavily funded by drug company advertizing in their journal. However, Pauling was supported by Hoffer (5, 6).

Diets

A diet was suggested by the late Adelle Davis, who modified the Harris diet. The theory is that the glucose metabolism is abnormal, supposedly resembling hypoglycemia. This was then adopted by Carlton Fredericks, Wendel & Beebe, and other orthomolecular scientists. There is strong evidence in favor of this theory (7).

Bipolar Disorder

Similar theories have been proposed for bipolar disorder (8, 9). Kato, the author of Refs. 8 & 9, is from the Laboratory for Molecular Dynamics of Mental Disorders, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama, Japan.

Major Depression

The mitochondria theory has also been proposed for major depression (10).

"Mitochondria provide most of the energy for brain cells by the process of oxidative phosphorylation. Mitochondrial abnormalities and deficiencies in oxidative phosphorylation have been reported in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder (BD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) in transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic studies." (10)

Ref. 10 is from the Public Library of Science. It is available free full text on the Internet at Pubmed Central, which is a huge database. This is an open-access article, meaning that it can be quoted extensively provided the citation is given.

"Psychiatric symptoms have been documented in subjects with mitochondrial disease." (10)

Conclusions

More information on orthomolecular treatments is available at Ref. 11. More information about psychiatric drugs is given at Ref. 12. Unfortunately we have just scratched the surface of the terrible side effects in this article. I have only presented the tip of the iceberg.

On the positive side, Ref. 13 gives more information about diets, which may be the best approach. These diets are designed to correct the chemical imbalances in the brain.

References

1. South Med J. 2009 Dec;102(12):1266-8. Priapism and risperidone. Koirala S, Penagaluri P, Smith C, Lippmann S.

2. [Important to scrutinize alarming findings about neuroleptics and brain atrophy]. Cullberg J. Lakartidningen. 2009 Oct 14-20;106(42):2704. Swedish.

3. Moore T.H., et al. Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review. Lancet. 2007;370:319-328. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61162-3.

4. Yolken R.H., Torrey E.F. Are some cases of psychosis caused by microbial agents? A review of the evidence. Mol. Psychiatry. 2008;13:470-479.

5. Nutrition and Schizophrenia. Abram Hoffer. Can Fam Physician. 1975 April; 21(4): 78-82.

6. Nutrition and Schizophrenia: The Debate Continues. A. Hoffer. Can Fam Physician. 1975 September; 21(9): 15, 17.

7. Chang Gung Med J. 2009 Jul-Aug;32(4):370-9. Mitochondrial dysfunction and psychiatric disorders. Jou SH, Chiu NY, Liu CS.

8. CNS Drugs. 2007;21(1):1-11. Mitochondrial dysfunction as the molecular basis of bipolar disorder: therapeutic implications. Kato T.

9. Cell Calcium. 2008 Jul;44(1):92-102. Epub 2008 Jan 4. Role of mitochondrial DNA in calcium signaling abnormality in bipolar disorder. Kato T.

10. PLoS One. 2009;4(3):e4913. Epub 2009 Mar 17. Mitochondrial variants in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. Rollins B, Martin MV, Sequeira PA, Moon EA, Morgan LZ, Watson SJ, Schatzberg A, Akil H, Myers RM, Jones EG, Wallace DC, Bunney WE, Vawter MP.

11. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml

12. www.worstpills.org

13. www.associatedcontent.com/article/2532025/nutrition_and_psychiatry.html