Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck Luck. Right, How are you good?
Speaker 1: I'm great. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. People
Speaker 1: are gonna be like, I mean times, is Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: playing Atlanta? Have you ever seen David Bowie? It's good?
Speaker 1: I have not. Um, Yes, you are, Chuck. I know
Speaker 1: you're very excited. I am. I've seen him a few times,
Speaker 1: but it's always good. Really yeah? Too short? Though he
Speaker 1: buzz us through like fifteen songs. He's out of there?
Speaker 1: Is he short? Oh? Well he's also short? But yea
Speaker 1: is he really? I was just kidding. No, he's short.
Speaker 1: I guess those um Bell bottomed long pants that he
Speaker 1: wore in the sixties on his album Like Bell made
Speaker 1: him look kind of tall. Um. Alright, So enough about
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan for the second time. Not a big Dylan
Speaker 1: fan myself. Um, let's talk about schizophrenia instead. OK. So
Speaker 1: I was looking for an intro for this, and I
Speaker 1: mean there's plenty of stuff, but it's all like pretty
Speaker 1: you know, research heavy. Astra Zeneca was marketing serre quil
Speaker 1: off label and just settled. Um, let's see what else
Speaker 1: Jared Lofner is being medicated against as well. The guy
Speaker 1: who shot Gabrielle Gifford's okay, really yes, he's he's been
Speaker 1: diagnosed as schizophrenic. Um. Finally uh and then um, there
Speaker 1: was a homeless man in Los Angeles who was beaten
Speaker 1: to death by the police yesterday or today. Um, and
Speaker 1: all of this is kind of I realized like there
Speaker 1: wasn't any one thing that I was like, well, here's
Speaker 1: the intro. But I realized like all of it together
Speaker 1: gives a pretty good overview of you know, schizophrenia as
Speaker 1: it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood, it's heavily prescribed, underfunded,
Speaker 1: and um yeah, and there's a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there who aren't necessarily getting help who need it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, I got a stat if you want to
Speaker 1: go ahead and go there. You got a bunch of
Speaker 1: stats you said for this, right, I do. Um, if
Speaker 1: you want to talk about people getting help and and
Speaker 1: or needing help and not getting it. Uh, six percent
Speaker 1: of six schizophrenics are homeless. Yeah, six percent are in
Speaker 1: jail or prison, ten percent in nursing homes with a
Speaker 1: family member, or independently living supervise housing. So and and
Speaker 1: it makes sense, Chuck to that. These makes sense because
Speaker 1: first of all, you have all of this crazy stuff
Speaker 1: going on to you. That's your reality. So you're having
Speaker 1: trouble dealing with reality as it stands. Um. It's Secondly,
Speaker 1: a lot of times schizophrenia comes on um during times
Speaker 1: when you learn how to hold down a job or
Speaker 1: take care of yourself or do whatever. So you might
Speaker 1: never learn how to do this because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: your schizophrenia. Here's the shocking one. At any given moment,
Speaker 1: there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living
Speaker 1: on the streets than there are receiving care. They outweigh
Speaker 1: that people that are actually getting help. That's that is
Speaker 1: shocking but not surprising. Somehow agreed. Wow, So you said,
Speaker 1: what was that last one? Severe psychiatric illnesses. That's an
Speaker 1: umbrella term. Obviously schizophrenia falls in under that for sure,
Speaker 1: But prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, it
Speaker 1: was pretty much thought of as generalized illness, like the
Speaker 1: mental illness was mental illness, and maybe there is a symptom.
Speaker 1: Your symptoms were different, but really you're men to the
Speaker 1: ill which was a huge step up from the spirit
Speaker 1: possession that had you know, it had previously been ascribed
Speaker 1: to or millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was.
Speaker 1: It's a fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: eight that um a German psychiatrist named Emil Crapelin classified
Speaker 1: schizophrenia as a mental illness and uh he missed classified
Speaker 1: it as a form of dementia early and early type
Speaker 1: of dementia. And then in nineteen eleven a Swiss psychiatrist
Speaker 1: named Yugen Bleuler came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh,
Speaker 1: And he uh got that word from the Greek words
Speaker 1: for split in mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception
Speaker 1: that it is a split personality disorder. But what he
Speaker 1: meant was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind
Speaker 1: splits from reality, which today we still that's how you
Speaker 1: still perceive um schizophrenia, but rather than split, we use
Speaker 1: the word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: should go ahead and just uh, since that is a
Speaker 1: common misconception. It is entirely different than split personality disorder,
Speaker 1: which they call disassociative identity disorder. Now, and if you
Speaker 1: know the movie the show The United States of Terra,
Speaker 1: have you seen that? No, I know what you're talking
Speaker 1: about though with Toni Collette, she is has split personality
Speaker 1: disorder on that show. And that's the one that you
Speaker 1: always seen in the movies where you have multiple personalities
Speaker 1: and they don't know about each other and one dominates
Speaker 1: the other. And uh, and then what all about Eve
Speaker 1: was about? I never saw that Sybil civil Yeah for sure,
Speaker 1: but it's not schizophrenia. They have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: each other other than they're both types of mental illness.
Speaker 1: And um, Hollywood is fascinated by them, that's right. Um
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, and that's that's a pretty good example,
Speaker 1: like of medicines is starting to get ahold of what
Speaker 1: schizophrenia is, what mental illnesses you know in general, and
Speaker 1: then the public at large still just being completely under
Speaker 1: educated about it. Um, so let's educate people about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to say too that this is like a
Speaker 1: lot of conditions, um and disorders that developed later in life.
Speaker 1: To me, that's this one of the scariest things that
Speaker 1: can happen. Like your cruising along at eight years old
Speaker 1: and you think, like you know, I'm all good, and
Speaker 1: you can develop schizophrenia like a boom in a matter
Speaker 1: of weeks. Sometimes. Yeah, it can either come on gradually
Speaker 1: or very suddenly in an acute manner. Um And like
Speaker 1: you said, later in life. With men, schizophrenia usually develops
Speaker 1: um in the late teens or early twenties is when
Speaker 1: it starts um. Or in women it's the mid twenties
Speaker 1: or the early thirties. So yeah, by the time, by
Speaker 1: the time I was thirty, I certainly didn't think I
Speaker 1: was going to become mentally ill. No, you thought, I
Speaker 1: know my demons, you can write them down in a list.
Speaker 1: I can quit them anytime I want. And that's what
Speaker 1: they are, their self imposed demons, right this this is
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that was beyond my control that happened
Speaker 1: to my mind. And yeah, that's how schizophrenia hit you.
Speaker 1: Hit you later in life, and it can happen all
Speaker 1: at once or gradually. And this is not to scare
Speaker 1: the crap out of you. If you're in your teens
Speaker 1: or twenties, because there's only about a one percent chance schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: It depends if if you're part of the general population,
Speaker 1: there's a one percent chance. But as we'll see that,
Speaker 1: there are risk factors that increase your chances of having schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: And no, we're not trying to scare you, but I
Speaker 1: guess kind of the newest forms of treatment or newest
Speaker 1: thoughts about treating schizophrenia is to make people aware of it,
Speaker 1: uh so that they will be able to recognize it
Speaker 1: early on. And apparently early treatment leads to a better
Speaker 1: success rate. I think we'll talk about that to the board.
Speaker 1: But chuck, um, there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: and they're positive and negative. And it's not like positive
Speaker 1: symptom means you hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you
Speaker 1: hallucinate like a hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like
Speaker 1: an exaggeration of normal behavior. So like I see you,
Speaker 1: I hear things, but I don't see you with horns,
Speaker 1: and I don't hear Kermit here talking to me, right um,
Speaker 1: So a positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom
Speaker 1: is the absence of normal behavior, like you lack affect
Speaker 1: or the ability to experience any emotion. Um, or you
Speaker 1: you basically are just generally apathetic, right and so it
Speaker 1: so those are that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a
Speaker 1: lot with a tension span and memory, um, lack of
Speaker 1: memory an ability to like plan anything or organize anything. Right.
Speaker 1: And then another form of negative I should say, is
Speaker 1: called avolition. Um, it's basically I think Crappler, the guy
Speaker 1: who first classified schizophrenia, call it the annihilation of the will,
Speaker 1: where you're just so withdrawn you can't. You no longer
Speaker 1: engage in gold directed behavior, from brushing your teeth to
Speaker 1: paying your bills to doing anything. You're totally withdrawn. So
Speaker 1: that's that's that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually
Speaker 1: hear about, but apparently it's fairly common. So get diagnosed. Uh, Josh,
Speaker 1: you have to um exhibit a certain number of these
Speaker 1: symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right, yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: if you have uh, is it schizophrenic form is like
Speaker 1: a shorter it's schizophrenia, but it lasts less than six months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's schizophrenic form. Good point. But if you according to
Speaker 1: the d s M, and we should say like this
Speaker 1: is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever,
Speaker 1: but this is the d s M saying six months.
Speaker 1: It may be you may have schizophrenia and you just
Speaker 1: haven't reached the six months you know period yet, but
Speaker 1: you're still schizophrenic. But to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: or psychologist who's a member of the a p A,
Speaker 1: you have to have X number of symptoms for six
Speaker 1: months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that
Speaker 1: because it's like the same as the cops when they
Speaker 1: say you can't follow missing person's report unless they've been
Speaker 1: gone for twenty four hours. And it's not like that,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of like that. Now there's like a law,
Speaker 1: I think in Michigan called Kaylee's Law or something that
Speaker 1: they're introducing where if you're a parent and you don't
Speaker 1: report your kid missing after twenty four hours is a felony.
Speaker 1: What kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Speaker 1: Casey Anthony made the kid go away allegedly not in general, Uh,
Speaker 1: schizophrenia apparently, as how to pronounced, can take a few forms. Uh.
Speaker 1: One you've probably heard about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which
Speaker 1: is when you have the full on delusions and hallucinations.
Speaker 1: And uh, then there's disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh,
Speaker 1: your behavior is probably incoherent. It's also called hypophrenic. Really
Speaker 1: and you you probably don't exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: usually like there's a negative symptom coupled with um disorganized behavior,
Speaker 1: so it's almost like two separate things. I think you
Speaker 1: can be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that
Speaker 1: means you move around and talk excessively. Um. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a surprise to me. I always thought, you know,
Speaker 1: catatonic state where you're just like that too. But it
Speaker 1: also says they may become still an uncommunicative so he
Speaker 1: can be one or the other. Yeah, but I guess
Speaker 1: it has to do with motion or movement or lack
Speaker 1: of it's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort of
Speaker 1: the umbrella term for when you have a mix of
Speaker 1: symptoms and they don't want to classify you as one
Speaker 1: specific kind. And then residual is if you have a
Speaker 1: history UM of schizophrenia but you have a long extended
Speaker 1: period of time with no negative I'm sorry, with negative
Speaker 1: but no positive symptoms, they'll classify as residual, which you know,
Speaker 1: I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia in a way.
Speaker 1: I don't think any form of schizophrenia is right. It
Speaker 1: would that would be it would be horrible. This is
Speaker 1: a horrible disease. That's like the curb your enthusiasm. When
Speaker 1: Larry asked if someone had good Hodgkins from the Party
Speaker 1: of Five episode is what he was referencing. When Charlie
Speaker 1: got sick, he had quote unquote good Hodgkins and they
Speaker 1: were like that, they were so offended. There's no good Hodgens.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, but one's better than the other, right,
Speaker 1: And they were just like, you're such a jerk. They
Speaker 1: never seen anything like that. Yeah, pretty much. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated version
Speaker 1: of schizophrenia, and then in this one has to be
Speaker 1: just horrible schizo effective disorder. It's any kind of schizophrenia
Speaker 1: couple with the mood disorder like depression. All right, that's awful.
Speaker 1: So um, we should probably say there's delusions and there's
Speaker 1: hallucinations Uh, mixed in together often with schizophrenic symptoms, and
Speaker 1: they're often confused. But a delusion is a false belief
Speaker 1: and and hallucination is a false sensation like Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. That would be a delusion. Or hey, there's
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ on top of that subway car. That would
Speaker 1: be a hallucination. Yeah, and you can extend that to
Speaker 1: anything to be Jesus or a subway car. Um. But
Speaker 1: the there's just studying hallucinations and delusions are really really
Speaker 1: interesting in my opinion. Um. The most common hallucination is
Speaker 1: auditory among schizophrenics, and the most common auditories hallucination is
Speaker 1: our voices. Yeah, they hear voices that can come from
Speaker 1: anywhere from this kermit the frog could start talking to me,
Speaker 1: or it could come from thin air, or it could
Speaker 1: come from the electrical outlet in the wall. Um and Uh.
Speaker 1: The voices say. Usually it's like one word, a couple
Speaker 1: of words. There's an implication of word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. Um.
Speaker 1: On occasion, very rare occasions, will the voice like ramble
Speaker 1: on coherently where the patient understands like long sentences. But
Speaker 1: um that they also maybe commenting on what the person
Speaker 1: is doing is very um common. Usually it's um not
Speaker 1: a voice that they recognize, although that can happen as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Uh. And then sometimes there's more than one voice,
Speaker 1: and even more disconcerting, lee the voices will argue about
Speaker 1: the patient. Yeah, which that's wow. Well those I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a guy on Martha that I see that, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people that you see that are walking
Speaker 1: down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably
Speaker 1: a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid to
Speaker 1: get sprintic, and they are yelling at the voice in
Speaker 1: their head. That reminds me the stand up it I
Speaker 1: saw when I was a kid in the eighties. Uh,
Speaker 1: this guy was like this. This comedian said he was
Speaker 1: walking down the street and he walked past this guy
Speaker 1: was talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry,
Speaker 1: and the comedian goes and I thought, man, that guy
Speaker 1: is really crazy. He's talking to himself. And then I thought, wait,
Speaker 1: who am I talking to? Yeah it's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked to myself all day long. I have arguments
Speaker 1: in my head. But of course it's not the same thing. No, Um, no,
Speaker 1: you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing
Speaker 1: at that moment and what's best for you or whether
Speaker 1: you should hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Not making light
Speaker 1: of that. Uh. And the reason that a percentage of
Speaker 1: frightening percentage of schizophrenics kill themselves as a lot of
Speaker 1: times because the voice in their head may command them
Speaker 1: to do so. Right there there. There's such a thing
Speaker 1: as um commanding hallucinations, which is sometimes they could be
Speaker 1: suggestive like, um, maybe we should go outside for a while,
Speaker 1: or they could be like go outside, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's not always scary, like they just point out. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's uh, hey you need to shave again, and you'll
Speaker 1: go shave again. Yeah. It can be innocuous, but it
Speaker 1: can it can lead to violence, or it can urge violence.
Speaker 1: Apparently the vast majority of people who suffer uh, dangerous
Speaker 1: command hallucinations are able to suppress them. But it's a
Speaker 1: struggle and you know this is going on in this
Speaker 1: person's head. Yeah, and rarely, and I wondered about this
Speaker 1: too before I got to that point in the article
Speaker 1: that you sent me. Rarely, do you hear like, really
Speaker 1: great things like you're doing great today and you should
Speaker 1: go and smell it. You know, it's interesting that it
Speaker 1: usually takes a dark turn and they don't know why. No,
Speaker 1: they don't. Um. There's also uh hallucinations of touch, haptic hallucinations,
Speaker 1: which sound pretty awful. Um, things are crawling on you,
Speaker 1: things are inside of you trying to get out. Your
Speaker 1: bowels are shriveling. Um, you're being jolted by electricity is
Speaker 1: a very common one. And then delusions obviously or any
Speaker 1: like any false belief. There's some that like you are
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. That's a delusion, right. Um. But there's there
Speaker 1: was one subcategory that caught my attention that I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah, tell me
Speaker 1: about that. Well. It's basically like every single thing that
Speaker 1: goes on in life is full of meaning. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like in this Brown University sheet I sent you, there's
Speaker 1: a like a waiter leaving a crama on the table.
Speaker 1: That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the
Speaker 1: the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as
Speaker 1: an insult or. Um. The street lights coming on all
Speaker 1: of a sudden is a signal for everybody to swarm
Speaker 1: on you and finally take you away or kill you
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like everything in life has meaning and it's
Speaker 1: making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind is
Speaker 1: turning against you. It's pretty awful. Have we said it's awful? Yeah, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: it is quite awful. Um, but people live with this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we painted a dark picture because it is
Speaker 1: a dark disorder. But the majority of people in fact
Speaker 1: stet time. Uh, after ten years, if you want to know,
Speaker 1: after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are
Speaker 1: much improved and relatively independent and are improved but require
Speaker 1: a pretty extensive support network. So that's seventy percent of
Speaker 1: people after diagnosis after a decade are are dealing with
Speaker 1: it fairly. Well, Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Speaker 1: Are unimproved in ten percent unfortunately are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: ten percent at least of um schizophrenics commits suicide, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly high because in the general population of the
Speaker 1: United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide
Speaker 1: to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who
Speaker 1: are successful. They think it could be attempts could be
Speaker 1: as high as people that try to kill themselves just uh.
Speaker 1: I mean imagine sometimes the voices say to do it,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: wondering what the breakdown between those two is. Um. And
Speaker 1: then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least in
Speaker 1: the public mind, right D dangerous. Apparently studies have shown
Speaker 1: I remember reading about this when we talked about latent inhibition,
Speaker 1: UM that if you are typically violent when these uh,
Speaker 1: when the symptoms set and you're like early twenties or whatever, um,
Speaker 1: you're going to possibly be a violence schizophrenic. If you're
Speaker 1: not a very violent person, you're it's just not part
Speaker 1: of your personality before the symptoms set in, then you're
Speaker 1: not going to be a violence schizophrenic unless you abuse
Speaker 1: drugs or alcohol, which apparently vastly increases the chances that
Speaker 1: you may be a violent schizophrenic. Yeah. And even then,
Speaker 1: I think the violence is generally either self inflicted or
Speaker 1: it takes place inside the home, like against your family,
Speaker 1: which is not good. But the point is, if you're
Speaker 1: walking down the street and sadly you see the homeless
Speaker 1: man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need to be
Speaker 1: afraid that he's about to, you know, attack you in
Speaker 1: a violent manner. That's probably not gonna happen. Chuck. Let's
Speaker 1: say you do want to talk to that schizophrenic homeless
Speaker 1: man over there, but you don't want to make things
Speaker 1: worse for him, right, but you don't want to ignore
Speaker 1: him's another human being. Um. The National Institutes of Mental
Speaker 1: Health have UM suggestions I guess for talking to schizophrenics
Speaker 1: and specifically with their families who have to deal with
Speaker 1: delusions and hallucinations all the time, specifically delusions. UM. Apparently
Speaker 1: you don't you don't contest what they're saying. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't want to say you're not Jesus Christ. What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Yeah, you don't say no, you say, Um,
Speaker 1: I respect your right to believe different things, and I
Speaker 1: hope you'll respect my right to believe different things. But
Speaker 1: I I, you know, politely disagree. And what you also
Speaker 1: don't want to do is agree and say I know, honey,
Speaker 1: you are Jesus Christ. Right, You're okay, you're Jesus and
Speaker 1: it's fine. Yes, A lot of people probably take that
Speaker 1: tack in the family, you know, Well, yeah, first, I mean,
Speaker 1: at the very least because it's just easier after a while,
Speaker 1: it's like yes, yes, or you get so frustrated you're
Speaker 1: like no, you're not and you want to shake the
Speaker 1: person um. But yeah, apparently, And I wonder how hard
Speaker 1: it is to say, well, I I respectfully disagree with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet it's hard, you know. And if it if
Speaker 1: it does go over as well as as it seems
Speaker 1: like it that it suggested it should, you know, all right, Josh,
Speaker 1: I think this was really interesting. The recovery in the
Speaker 1: Third World part. Yeah, Apparently, the World Health Organization did
Speaker 1: a study in the nineteen sixties and uh I found
Speaker 1: that the recovery rate for schizophrenia and developing nations is
Speaker 1: higher by a full third than it is in the
Speaker 1: industrialized world. And then they did a follow up study
Speaker 1: even to correct possible selection biases, and they confirmed the
Speaker 1: original finding. And I thought that was really interesting. And
Speaker 1: they there's a lot of hypotheses, but one of them
Speaker 1: is that a there might not be a stigma like
Speaker 1: in the industrialized world, and they're just more readily accepted.
Speaker 1: And the other is that they might be able to
Speaker 1: have a job that they can do successfully and here
Speaker 1: in the West farming or digging, you know, digging the
Speaker 1: trench for the farm or whatever. Here in the West,
Speaker 1: we're very competitive. Yeah, it's hard to get a job
Speaker 1: that schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete. And I mean the
Speaker 1: rest of us are paranoid enough as it is about
Speaker 1: losing our jobs. If you are clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be very difficult to keep your job, true,
Speaker 1: or do it in a way that will help you
Speaker 1: keep your job. That's very true. But Josh, there have
Speaker 1: been some successful stories of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Well,
Speaker 1: some some more successful and some. Sid Barrett was successful,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if you call him a success story.
Speaker 1: Ended up in a mental institution for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. Sid Barrett founding member of Pink Floyd Schizophrenic
Speaker 1: and they believe that massive amounts of drugs that he
Speaker 1: used made it worse, way worse. John he is he
Speaker 1: is the crazy Diamond. Yeah, shine on you, Crazy Diamond.
Speaker 1: I love that song. That's a good one. All four
Speaker 1: parts of it, right, and they're like part I think
Speaker 1: up the part four is it? Yeah? Yeah, John Nash, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the movie A Beautiful Mind. The Ron Howard film
Speaker 1: with Russell Crowe as John Nash, the Nobel Winner figure
Speaker 1: out that cable companies would do better if they cooperated
Speaker 1: with one another. That's right, And that movie did a
Speaker 1: lot for putting this on the map in a compassionate way,
Speaker 1: you know. And Jack carollact, did you know that one?
Speaker 1: That was debatable? Okay, he was in the Navy and
Speaker 1: they discharged him honorably after I think like a little
Speaker 1: less than a year and and the report they said
Speaker 1: he had schizoid tendencies. But um, other people have said
Speaker 1: that he faked that stuff to get out of the navy. Uh,
Speaker 1: and just wanted to not take orders and drink him
Speaker 1: off to death, which is what he did. And Pop
Speaker 1: Benny's do you know how he died? No, he woke
Speaker 1: up and was just like coughing blood and bleeding from
Speaker 1: his mouth and basically was like, I gotta get the hospital.
Speaker 1: Took him to the hospital and he was his liver
Speaker 1: was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they
Speaker 1: just were giving him transfusion one after the other and
Speaker 1: he just basically bled to death Holy cow from drinking
Speaker 1: holy cow. And he was drinking at the time. He
Speaker 1: was drinking whiskey and like whiskey and malt liquor. When
Speaker 1: he started, blood started coming out of his mouth. I
Speaker 1: wonder how that taste? Would you shake us through that?
Speaker 1: And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
Speaker 1: was like whiskey with a beer back in it, garnish
Speaker 1: with a drop of blood. So, kids, there's a lesson
Speaker 1: for you there here. There's one more person who is
Speaker 1: indisputably schizophrenic or was His name is Wesley Willis? Is
Speaker 1: that he is a musician who had such songs as well. Really,
Speaker 1: the only title I can say is rock and roll McDonald's.
Speaker 1: I don't I've never heard of him. You you have
Speaker 1: had to have heard of Wesley Willis. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: play you a little Wesley Willis. Right here. McDonald's is
Speaker 1: a place to rock. It is a restaurant where the
Speaker 1: bi fool. It is a good place to listen to
Speaker 1: the music. People flock here to get down to the rock.
Speaker 1: Musing rock, Gay, Romado, Rocky rom mcda, Rogay, Roam mcdonaldos,
Speaker 1: rock rumdo so chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, okay, and
Speaker 1: um he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote about
Speaker 1: it a lot. He talked about it in a lot
Speaker 1: of his songs and um, he said he'd just be
Speaker 1: going along, having a nice time riding the bush. I
Speaker 1: believe he lived in Chicago and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: his um, his hell demons would take him on one
Speaker 1: of his torture hell rides, which meant he was going
Speaker 1: on a little bit of an exacerbation of his schizophrenia symptoms.
Speaker 1: But he's a great, great guy, great music, very prolific.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you liked that, you should go watch
Speaker 1: Daddy rock and Roll as a documentary. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really good. I'll check that out. Yeah, Lionel Aldridge is
Speaker 1: a last name on our list. And he was a
Speaker 1: Green Bay packer and he was homeless unfortunately after he
Speaker 1: was diagnosed for a while and then later was able
Speaker 1: to climb out from that wreckage and go around and
Speaker 1: talk about mental illness, and he was he was playing
Speaker 1: in the sixties, the seventies. I think it was late
Speaker 1: sixties or seventies. So think about it, man, that's a
Speaker 1: big deal to go around and talk publicly about mental
Speaker 1: illness at that time, and it still is now. But
Speaker 1: I mean, like back then, that's hats off to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the guy that I included in the presentation
Speaker 1: that you did by yourself that you're like, he was
Speaker 1: this guy. All right, I understand now, Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like there are environmental factors and there are
Speaker 1: genetic factors. Um. They have isolated what they believe are
Speaker 1: some genes the d I, s C one, the disbanden,
Speaker 1: the neuragoulin, and the G seven two genes, and they
Speaker 1: think there might be up to a dozen more genes
Speaker 1: that could impact this. Okay, So the basis of that
Speaker 1: is that they can't just look at your genes and
Speaker 1: say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. Right. It's possible
Speaker 1: that it's because we just haven't isolated all the genes
Speaker 1: and don't know the right combination yet. Or it's possible
Speaker 1: that it's from other causes, one of which one of
Speaker 1: the yours that's out there right now, is that it's
Speaker 1: the result of an in utero exposure to either a
Speaker 1: flu or the dread toxoplasmus. Remember toxoplasmuss that hijacks rats brains,
Speaker 1: that's found in cat urine that's why if you have
Speaker 1: a cat and you're pregnant, you don't be clean enough
Speaker 1: that litter box, right, um. And they think that one
Speaker 1: of the reasons, I guess, one of the evident pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence that supports this is called the birth month effect,
Speaker 1: and the birth month effect is, UM, if you were
Speaker 1: born in winter months or early spring months, you are
Speaker 1: at a higher risk for becoming schizophrenic later in life.
Speaker 1: And they think that those are flu months. UM. And
Speaker 1: another aspect of it is apparently the brains of schizophrenics
Speaker 1: show inflamed white blood cells, which is a sign of
Speaker 1: an infection. And they think that possibly all of us
Speaker 1: are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that
Speaker 1: lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like
Speaker 1: early exposure between infection UM can trigger its release where
Speaker 1: trigger it's activation, and it takes eighteen to twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty years to come on. Now you see why people
Speaker 1: that are pregnant are worried a lot. It's amazing that,
Speaker 1: like we've gotten anywhere. Yeah, so what else? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: they did do have some new findings. I got this today,
Speaker 1: um from the internets. They have a new South Wales
Speaker 1: study from Thomas Wikert. He has identified the brain mechanism
Speaker 1: that derails decision making and people. So basically the part
Speaker 1: of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: stray Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
Speaker 1: people neam all right, lights up when in response to
Speaker 1: rewards and healthy people and it's linked to your decision making,
Speaker 1: but completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they don't uh, they
Speaker 1: don't know the difference between expected and unexpected rewards, and
Speaker 1: so they don't have the opportunity to make a good
Speaker 1: decision to again with and that you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us any closer.
Speaker 1: Well maybe it does, you never know. They say, with
Speaker 1: proper funding that they predicted they could have a cure
Speaker 1: for this. Well yeah, but they don't get proper funding.
Speaker 1: But they're UM. They're looking into stem cells, right, they're
Speaker 1: looking into UM figuring out if it is an infection
Speaker 1: and if so liked adding that UM. And we've also
Speaker 1: long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
Speaker 1: helped develop anti psychotics or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
Speaker 1: Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenel cyclading UM or
Speaker 1: fencyclading PCP, the drug angel dust Um, produced such similar
Speaker 1: symptoms to schizophrenia that they started investigating and found that
Speaker 1: it had to do with UM the neurotransmitter glutamate, right right, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: well it has to do with both. But the emphasis
Speaker 1: before on anti psychotics was strictly dopamine and all it
Speaker 1: all it did was keep dopamine in the synapse is
Speaker 1: longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors. That's what antipsychotics do.
Speaker 1: And then in the eighties, after the PCP stuff UM,
Speaker 1: they figured out that there was glutamate was involved and
Speaker 1: they came up with a typical antipsychotics, and these focus
Speaker 1: somewhat on dopamine but more on things like glutamate and
Speaker 1: its reuptake, and uh, these things have produced better results
Speaker 1: with fewer side effects, so um, they're they're figuring out
Speaker 1: how to treat it. The problem is that there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of side effects even even with a typical UM antipsychotics,
Speaker 1: like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness, muscle spasms. Yeah ALLUM.
Speaker 1: Bulging eyes apparently is one UM, and I guess most
Speaker 1: of the stuff can be treated by lowering the dosage,
Speaker 1: but they're they're bothersome enough that a lot of people
Speaker 1: just go off their meds and you know that doesn't
Speaker 1: help ect. Electroc convulsive therapy is another thing that they
Speaker 1: still do. It's not something irrelic from the fifties. It's
Speaker 1: changed a lot and how they do it, and they're
Speaker 1: not sure still how it exactly works. They stopped using
Speaker 1: car batteries, but about a hundred thousand Americans each year
Speaker 1: still receive e c T. So that is an option.
Speaker 1: And obviously the group therapy and family therapy help just
Speaker 1: the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we encourage you to seek helped as soon as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently families can help in very little ways. They're
Speaker 1: encouraged to UM set small goals. Apparently, if especially if
Speaker 1: you UM have lost your drive or your will as
Speaker 1: a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can
Speaker 1: just be compounded by all the you know, like when
Speaker 1: your life is disorganized, it seems to completely unwieldy, Like
Speaker 1: where do I start right now? If if that's a
Speaker 1: symptom of your schizophrenia, it's it's just that much worse.
Speaker 1: So if you can help a schizophrenic get back on
Speaker 1: track by setting small goals and building up their confidence again,
Speaker 1: apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM
Speaker 1: and then the like the one of the leading edges
Speaker 1: of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the
Speaker 1: this thing called the prodrome, which is the period between
Speaker 1: the onset of symptoms where you think maybe I am
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like your reality.
Speaker 1: So it's this point where you're starting to have the ideas,
Speaker 1: but they still seem bizarre or weird or why am
Speaker 1: I having these ideas? So if you apparently seek out
Speaker 1: treatment for schizophrenia when you start to have these ideas
Speaker 1: UM in the prodrome, the success rate of treatment is
Speaker 1: through the roof. Like Yes, this British doctor in the
Speaker 1: late eighties set up shop in these two towns outside
Speaker 1: of London and he's set to work finding every potential
Speaker 1: early case of schizophrenia he could, and he started treating
Speaker 1: people with therapy and low doses of anti psychotics, and
Speaker 1: in four years those two towns had a tenth of
Speaker 1: the prevalence of schizophrenia of the rest of the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so apparently like this pro drome research, there's like clinics
Speaker 1: that are opening up and like entire like departments in
Speaker 1: universities are dedicated to this prodrome period where you can
Speaker 1: be like, come, come back, come, this is reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're successful or they have been so far. Well, Josh,
Speaker 1: I got one more stat If you live in a
Speaker 1: city of three million people, then over twenty one thousand
Speaker 1: people in your city are suffering from schizophrenia. So well,
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. Yes, don't make fun of people.
Speaker 1: Don't obviously get scared or violent and in a reactive way.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm gonna say, like you should
Speaker 1: go over and talk to them, like you might want
Speaker 1: to just be compassionate and uh and hopefully they're getting help,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Go to schizophrenia dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find all kinds of good information. And if
Speaker 1: you hadn't already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out.
Speaker 1: He was a great guy. Check out The Daddy or
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll and um. Also, I would say, in
Speaker 1: addition to how schizophrenia works, UM required reading for this
Speaker 1: one is an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By
Speaker 1: Rachel lviv. It was in the December two issue of
Speaker 1: Harper's And I have a link, I'll I'll tweet it.
Speaker 1: I'll tweet the link out with that. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: If you want more about schizophrenia, Um, there's plenty of it.
Speaker 1: There's an article and then some on the site. Just
Speaker 1: type schizophrenia which again means split mind right into the
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com and that
Speaker 1: brings up what check listener? Now, yes, Josh specific correction?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I forgot about those. Yeah, well, well we'll
Speaker 1: correct ourselves on Facebook and stuff. But they mounted up,
Speaker 1: so sure we want We'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people
Speaker 1: sitting this in. Uh, the flash point of paper is
Speaker 1: not fahrenheit for fifty one, I said books. The flash
Speaker 1: point of books is not fahrenheit for fifty one. It
Speaker 1: is fahrenheit eight fifty one celsius for fifty and Ray
Speaker 1: Bradbury apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one
Speaker 1: sounds a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently, what
Speaker 1: was one no celsius for fifty is the flash point
Speaker 1: or Fahrenheit eight as good as I think, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but I assume that as well. Man, I wish I
Speaker 1: had his name. You know who you are. And it
Speaker 1: was a very nice correction. Those are the ones we
Speaker 1: like to read. Uh. Then we got a correction on
Speaker 1: who was the first murderer, apparently, David says, and even
Speaker 1: sent in a copy of one by Charles Mann. What
Speaker 1: where what he's an email? No, not a not a
Speaker 1: He sent a scan cop the page in four, he says.
Speaker 1: Charles Mann says, although Billington was in fact hanged, at
Speaker 1: least two other Europeans were executed before him. One was
Speaker 1: convicted for the much more interesting offense of killing his
Speaker 1: pregnant wife and eating her. So how about that, he said,
Speaker 1: I was on page fifty five of Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1: That is crazy, okay, But still Billington is very noteworthy.
Speaker 1: Figure obviously sees a whole chapter on him. And then
Speaker 1: we got some uh. Oh. First of all, some people
Speaker 1: wrote in about wildfires in Georgia, when I said, oh, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and that wildfires South Georgia does and there's actually one
Speaker 1: going on right now in the Okay, Finoki. So I
Speaker 1: misspoke for sure, because I was just talking about the
Speaker 1: North Georgia Mountains, which are very lush and green, but
Speaker 1: Southworgia can get quite dry and there are wildfires in Georgia.
Speaker 1: I did not know that that's true. And then finally
Speaker 1: we got an email from an actual Hindu named Kush
Speaker 1: k U s h and Kush says, you guys missed
Speaker 1: a few things. Hinduism, typically, I'm sorry, technically only has
Speaker 1: one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain, especially
Speaker 1: in the non Hindus, but the general idea is there
Speaker 1: is one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called
Speaker 1: the brah Brahman, not the bro Ham, and every living
Speaker 1: thing has a part of that in us called the Atoman.
Speaker 1: The different gods are just different forms of the one Brahman. Also,
Speaker 1: you didn't properly explain the laws of karma. The law
Speaker 1: of karma has three parts in Hinduism. One, the performer
Speaker 1: of an action will get the result to the result,
Speaker 1: but the action will come right at the right time.
Speaker 1: And three good actions bring good results, bad actions bring
Speaker 1: bad results. And fourth, the gods are technically subject to karma.
Speaker 1: If you also expand the definition of karma to include
Speaker 1: the law of karma. But he says it was a
Speaker 1: good podcast overall. You guys really hit it on the
Speaker 1: head except for these few points. He did not hit
Speaker 1: it on the head for that. No, I'll just for
Speaker 1: that one part. And finally he pointed out and a
Speaker 1: few other people pointed out that I was wrong in
Speaker 1: correcting you with Jainism, and yeah, it's jain is m.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna play you something right now. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that was from dictionary dot com. Well, then that voice
Speaker 1: is obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Miriam Webster.
Speaker 1: If it's the same voice, it doesn't count. Twice did
Speaker 1: you hear that that's a different voice. Did that one
Speaker 1: come through Matt? Okay? And then finally, this is Google
Speaker 1: definitions And this is my favorite of all. Actually I
Speaker 1: don't like where wow, So I don't know because I
Speaker 1: had like three other people said three other robots, no,
Speaker 1: three other real people said no, it's Jaine is Um.
Speaker 1: And then I went on YouTube and people said Jaine
Speaker 1: is Um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
Speaker 1: it's both we're both right or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's genis Um, well, we love corrections so much that
Speaker 1: I managed to forget that we or are corrected a lot,
Speaker 1: or we used to read them. I never forget that
Speaker 1: we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Go
Speaker 1: through all three and fifty episodes, find everything you can
Speaker 1: that's wrong with them, and then let us know. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Or you can just correct the most recent ones whatever
Speaker 1: we got wrong in this one, which I'm sure is substantial. Um.
Speaker 1: You can go on Facebook if you want, You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you
Speaker 1: can send us a plain, old, fushioned email at stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by
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