Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Josh here and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on schizophrenia. UM.
Speaker 1: First of all, please excuse the rampant use of the
Speaker 1: word schizophrenic. We know better now, UM, and delight in
Speaker 1: a clip of Wesley Willis's rock and roll McDonald's. If
Speaker 1: you've never heard of Wesley Willis, co check him out, UM,
Speaker 1: as I clearly want you to do throughout this episode.
Speaker 1: And UM. Also note that there is a rare corrections
Speaker 1: rather than listener mail correction segment that apparently just didn't
Speaker 1: take off, probably because we would have just ended up
Speaker 1: doing nothing but corrections for episodes at any rate. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy this one. It's a good one. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
Speaker 1: as always Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck a
Speaker 1: luck Right? How you doing? I'm great. I'm going to
Speaker 1: see Bob Dylan tonight. People are gonna be like, I
Speaker 1: mean times, is Bob Dylan playing Atlanta? Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen David Bowie? It's good I have not. Um, Yes,
Speaker 1: you are, Chuck. I know you're very excited. I am.
Speaker 1: I've seen him a few times, but it's always good.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, too short though he buzzes through like fifteen songs.
Speaker 1: He's out of there. Is he short? Oh? Well, he's
Speaker 1: also short? But yea is he really? I was just kidding. No,
Speaker 1: he's short. I guess those um Bell bottomed long pants
Speaker 1: that he wore in the sixties on his album Like
Speaker 1: Bottoms made him look kind of tall. Yeah. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so enough about Bob Dylan for the second time. I'm
Speaker 1: not a big Dylan fan myself. It Um, let's talk
Speaker 1: about schizophrenia instead. Okay. So I was looking for an
Speaker 1: intro for this, and I mean there's plenty of stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's all like pretty, you know, research heavy Astra
Speaker 1: Zeneca was marketing Sarah quil off label and just settled. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see what else Jared Lofner as being medicated against
Speaker 1: as well. The guy who shot Gabrielle Gifford's Okay, really, yes,
Speaker 1: he's he's been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Um. Finally uh and
Speaker 1: then um, there was a homeless man in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: who was beaten to death by the police yesterday or today. Um,
Speaker 1: and all of this is kind of I realized like
Speaker 1: there wasn't any one thing that I was like, well,
Speaker 1: here's the intro. But I realized like all of it
Speaker 1: together gives a pretty good overview of you know, schizophrenia
Speaker 1: as it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood, it's
Speaker 1: heavily prescribed, underfunded, and um. Yeah, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who aren't necessarily getting help who
Speaker 1: need it. Yeah. In fact, I got a stat if
Speaker 1: you want to go ahead and go there. You got
Speaker 1: a bunch of stats you said for this, right I do. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about people getting help and
Speaker 1: and or needing help and not getting it. Uh, six
Speaker 1: percent of six schizophrenics are homeless. Yeah, six percent are
Speaker 1: in jail or prison, ten percent in nursing homes with
Speaker 1: a family member or independently living supervise housing. So and
Speaker 1: and it makes sense, Chuck to that these makes sense
Speaker 1: because first of all, you have all of this crazy
Speaker 1: stuff going on to you. That's your reality. So you're
Speaker 1: having 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. Okay, 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. Well, they
Speaker 1: outweigh that people that are actually getting help. That's that
Speaker 1: is 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 that 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 mentally ill, which
Speaker 1: was a huge step up from the spirit possession that
Speaker 1: had you know, it had previously been ascribed to or
Speaker 1: millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was. It's a
Speaker 1: fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until that. Um.
Speaker 1: A German psychiatrist name Emil Crapelin classified schizophrenia as a
Speaker 1: mental illness, and uh, he missed classified it as a
Speaker 1: form of dementia early and early type of dementia. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen eleven a Swiss psychiatrist named Yugen Bleuler
Speaker 1: came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh, and
Speaker 1: he uh got that word from the Greek words for
Speaker 1: split and mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception that
Speaker 1: it is a split personality disorder. But what he meant
Speaker 1: was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind splits
Speaker 1: from reality, which today we still that's how you still
Speaker 1: perceive um schizophrenia, but rather than split, we use the
Speaker 1: word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah, and we should
Speaker 1: go ahead and just uh, since that is a common misconception,
Speaker 1: it is entirely different than split personality disorder, which they
Speaker 1: call disassociative identity disorder. Now, and if you know the
Speaker 1: movie the show United States of Terra, have you seen that? No,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about though, with Tony let
Speaker 1: she is has split personality disorder on that show. And
Speaker 1: that's the one that you've always seen in the movies
Speaker 1: where you have multiple personalities and they don't know about
Speaker 1: each other, and one dominates the other. And uh, and
Speaker 1: then what all about Eve was about? I never saw
Speaker 1: that sybil civil Yeah for sure, but it's not schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: That they have done nothing to do with each other
Speaker 1: other than they're both types of mental illness, and um,
Speaker 1: Hollywood is fascinated by them, that's right. Um. So yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a pretty good example, like of medicines
Speaker 1: is starting to get ahold of what schizophrenia is, what
Speaker 1: mental illnesses you know, in general, and then the public
Speaker 1: at large still just being completely under educated about it. Um,
Speaker 1: so let's educate people about it. Yeah. I want to
Speaker 1: say too that this is like a lot of conditions
Speaker 1: UM and disorders that developed later in life. To me,
Speaker 1: that's this one of the ski areous things that can happen,
Speaker 1: like your cruising along at years old and you think,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm all good, and you can develop
Speaker 1: schizophrenia like a boom in a matter of weeks. Sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can either come on gradually or very suddenly in
Speaker 1: an acute manner. Um And like you said, later in
Speaker 1: life with men, schizophrenia usually develops UM in the late
Speaker 1: teens or early twenties is when it starts UM or
Speaker 1: in women, it's the mid twenties or the early thirties.
Speaker 1: So yeah, by the time, by the time I was thirty,
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't think I was going to become mentally ill. No,
Speaker 1: you thought, I know my demons. You can write them
Speaker 1: down in a list. I can quit them anytime I want.
Speaker 1: And that's what they are, their self imposed demons, right,
Speaker 1: this this is it wasn't something that was beyond my
Speaker 1: control that happened to my mind. And yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: schizophrenia hit you hit you later in life, and it
Speaker 1: can happen all at once or gradually. And this is
Speaker 1: not to scare the crap out of you if you're
Speaker 1: in your teens or twenties, because there's only about a
Speaker 1: one percent chance schizophrenia. It depends if if you're part
Speaker 1: of the general population, there's a one percent chance. But
Speaker 1: as we'll see that there are risk factors that increase
Speaker 1: your chances of having schizophrenia. And no, we're not trying
Speaker 1: to scare you. But then I guess kind of the
Speaker 1: newest forms of treatment or newest thoughts about treating schizophrenia
Speaker 1: is to make people aware of it, uh so that
Speaker 1: they will be able to recognize it early on, and
Speaker 1: apparently early treatment leads to a better success rate. I
Speaker 1: think we'll talk about that across the board. But chuck, um,
Speaker 1: there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia and they're positive
Speaker 1: and negative. And it's not like positive symptom means you
Speaker 1: hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you hallucinate like a
Speaker 1: hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like an exaggeration of
Speaker 1: normal behavior. So like I see you, I hear things,
Speaker 1: but I don't see you with horns, and I don't
Speaker 1: hear Kermit here talking to me. Right, Um, So a
Speaker 1: positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom is the
Speaker 1: absence of normal behavior, like you lack affect or the
Speaker 1: ability to experience any emotion um or you you basically
Speaker 1: are just generally apathetic, right and so it so those
Speaker 1: are that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes, and uh,
Speaker 1: certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a lot with
Speaker 1: attention span and memory. Um, lack of memory an ability
Speaker 1: to like plan anything or organize anything. Right. And then
Speaker 1: another form of negative I should say, is called evolition. Um.
Speaker 1: It's basically I think crippler the guy who first classified schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: call it the annihilation of the will, where you're just
Speaker 1: so withdrawn you can't. You no longer engage in gold
Speaker 1: directive behavior, from brushing your teeth to paying your bills
Speaker 1: to doing anything. You just totally withdrawn. So that's that's
Speaker 1: that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually hear about,
Speaker 1: but apparently it's fairly common. Yeah, 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 a 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 say,
Speaker 1: you can't find a 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. Really,
Speaker 1: what kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that
Speaker 1: Casey Anthony, Yeah, made the kid go away allegedly alleged.
Speaker 1: Not In general. Uh, schizophrenia apparently, as how it's pronounced,
Speaker 1: can take a few forms. Uh. One you've probably heard
Speaker 1: about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which is when you have
Speaker 1: the full on delusions and hallucinations and uh, then there's
Speaker 1: disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh, your behavior is probably incoherent.
Speaker 1: It's also called hypophrenic. Really and you you probably don't
Speaker 1: exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah. Well, usually like there's
Speaker 1: a negative simp them coupled with um disorganized behavior, so
Speaker 1: it's almost like two separate things. I think you can
Speaker 1: be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that means
Speaker 1: you move around and talk excessively. Um. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a surprise to me. I always thought, you know, catatonic
Speaker 1: state where you're just like's not a thing too. But
Speaker 1: it also says they may become still an uncommunicat so
Speaker 1: it can be one or the other. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: guess it has to do with motion or movement or
Speaker 1: lack of. It's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort
Speaker 1: of the umbrella term for when you have a mix
Speaker 1: of symptoms and they don't want to classify you as
Speaker 1: one specific kind. And then residual is if you have
Speaker 1: a history um of schizophrenia but you have a long,
Speaker 1: extended period of time with no negative I'm sorry, with
Speaker 1: negative but no positive symptoms, they'll classify you as residual,
Speaker 1: which you know, I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia
Speaker 1: in a way. I don't think any form of schizophrenia
Speaker 1: is right. It would that would be it would be horrible.
Speaker 1: This is a horrible disease. That's like the curb your enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: When Larry asked if that some one had Good Hodgkins
Speaker 1: from the Party of five episode is what he was
Speaker 1: referencing when Charlie got sick. He had quote unquote good
Speaker 1: Hodgkins and they were like, they were so offended. There
Speaker 1: there's no good Hodgens. He's like, yeah, but one's better
Speaker 1: than the other, right, And they were just like, you're
Speaker 1: such a jerky never seen anything like that, Yeah, pretty much. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated
Speaker 1: version of schizophrenia, and then 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, so um,
Speaker 1: we should probably say there's delusions and there's hallucinations, uh,
Speaker 1: mixed in together often with schizophrenic symptoms, and they're often confused.
Speaker 1: But a delusion is a false belief and and hallucination
Speaker 1: is a false sensation like Hey, I'm Jesus Christ. That
Speaker 1: would be a delusion, or hey there's Jesus Christ on
Speaker 1: top of that subway car, that would be a hallucination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can extend that to anything. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be Jesus or a subway car. Um. But the
Speaker 1: there's just studying hallucinations and delusions are really really interesting
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Um, the most common hallucination is auditory
Speaker 1: among schizophrenics, and the most common auditory hallucination is our voices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they hear voices that can come from anywhere from this kermit,
Speaker 1: the frog could start talking to me, or it could
Speaker 1: come from thin air, or it could come from the
Speaker 1: electrical outlet in the wall. Um and uh, the voices say.
Speaker 1: Usually it's like one word, a couple of words, there's
Speaker 1: an implication of word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. Um. On occasion,
Speaker 1: very rare occasions, will the voice like ramble on coherently
Speaker 1: where the patient understands, like long sentences, but um that
Speaker 1: they also maybe commenting on what the person is doing
Speaker 1: is very um common. Yeah, Usually it's um, not a
Speaker 1: voice that they recognize, although that can happen as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Uh. And then sometimes there's more than one
Speaker 1: voice and even more disconcerting, lee, the voices will argue
Speaker 1: about the patient, 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 schizophrenics,
Speaker 1: and they are yelling at the voice in their head.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the stand up that I saw
Speaker 1: when I was a kid in the eighties. Uh. This
Speaker 1: guy was like this. This comedian said he was walking
Speaker 1: down the street and he walked past this guy was
Speaker 1: 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 is 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, right, and
Speaker 1: you'll go shave again. Yeah, it can be innocuous, but
Speaker 1: it can it can lead to violence, or it can
Speaker 1: urge violence. Apparently the vast majority of people who suffer
Speaker 1: uh dangerous command hallucinations are able to suppress them. But
Speaker 1: it's a struggle and you know this is going on
Speaker 1: in this person's head. Yeah, and rarely. And I wondered
Speaker 1: about this too before I got to that point in
Speaker 1: the article that you sent me early. Do you hear
Speaker 1: like a really great things, like you're doing great today
Speaker 1: and you should go and smell it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that it usually takes a dark turn and they
Speaker 1: don't know why. No, they don't. Um. There's also hallucinations
Speaker 1: of touch haptic hallucinations, which sound pretty awful. Um, things
Speaker 1: are crawling on you, things are inside of you trying
Speaker 1: to get out. Your bowels are shriveling. Um, you're being
Speaker 1: jolted by electricity is a very common one. And then
Speaker 1: delusions obviously, or any like any false belief. There's some
Speaker 1: that like you are Jesus Christ. That's a delusion, right, um.
Speaker 1: But there's there was one subcategory that caught my attention
Speaker 1: that I wasn't aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about that. Well. It's basically like every single
Speaker 1: thing that 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 chroma 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, it is a signal for everybody to
Speaker 1: swarm on you and finally take you away or kill
Speaker 1: you or whatever. Like everything in life has meaning and
Speaker 1: it's making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind
Speaker 1: is turning against you. It's pretty awful. 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 percent are improved but
Speaker 1: require a pretty extensive support network. So that's of people
Speaker 1: after diagnosis after a decade, are are dealing with it
Speaker 1: fairly well. Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.
Speaker 1: Are unimproved. Ten percent, unfortunately, are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: ten percent at least of UM schizophrenics commit 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 f people that try to kill themselves.
Speaker 1: Just uh, I mean imagine sometimes the voices say to
Speaker 1: do it, and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was wondering what the breakdown between those two is. UM.
Speaker 1: And then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least
Speaker 1: in the public mind, right, but you're dangerous. Apparently studies
Speaker 1: have shown I remember reading about this when we talked
Speaker 1: about latent inhibition. Um that if you are typically violent
Speaker 1: when these uh, when the symptoms set when you're like
Speaker 1: early twenties or whatever. Um, you're going to possibly be
Speaker 1: a violent schizophrenic. If you're not a very violent person,
Speaker 1: you're it's just not part of your personality before the
Speaker 1: symptoms set in. Then you're not going to be a
Speaker 1: violence schizophrenic unless you abuse drugs or alcohol, which apparently
Speaker 1: vastly increases the chances that you may be a violence schizophrenic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even then, I think the violence is generally either
Speaker 1: self inflicted or it takes place inside the home, like
Speaker 1: against your family, which is not good. But the point is,
Speaker 1: if you're walking down the street and sadly you see
Speaker 1: the homeless man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to be afraid that he's about to, you know, attack
Speaker 1: you in a violent manner. Right, that's probably not going
Speaker 1: to happen, Chuck. Let's say you do want to talk
Speaker 1: to that schizophrenic homeless man over there, but you don't
Speaker 1: want to make things worse for him, right, But you
Speaker 1: don't want to ignore him. He's another human being. Um.
Speaker 1: The National Institutes of Mental Health have UM suggestions I
Speaker 1: guess for talking to schizophrenics and specifically with their families
Speaker 1: who have to deal with delusions and hallucinations all the time,
Speaker 1: specifically delusions. Um, apparently you don't. You don't contest what
Speaker 1: they're saying. Yeah, you don't want to say you're not
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ what you're talking about. Yeah, you don't. Definitely
Speaker 1: don't know. You say, um, I respect your right to
Speaker 1: believe different things, and I hope you'll respect my right
Speaker 1: to believe different things. But I I, you know, politely disagree.
Speaker 1: And what you also don't want to do is agree
Speaker 1: and say I know, honey, you are Jesus. Right, You're okay,
Speaker 1: you're Jesus and it's fine. Yes. A lot of people
Speaker 1: probably take that tack in the family, you know, well, yeah, first,
Speaker 1: I mean, at the very least, because it's it's just
Speaker 1: easier after a while, it's like yes, yes, or you
Speaker 1: get so frustrated you're like no, you're not, and you
Speaker 1: want to shake the person. Um. But yeah, apparently, And
Speaker 1: I wonder how hard it is to say, well, I
Speaker 1: respectfully disagree with you. Yeah. I bet it's hard, you know,
Speaker 1: and if it, if it does go over as well
Speaker 1: as as it seems like it that it suggested it should, right,
Speaker 1: you know, all right, Josh, I think this was really interesting,
Speaker 1: the recovery in the Third World part. Yeah, Apparently the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization did a study in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and uh I found that the recovery rate for schizophrenia
Speaker 1: and developing nations is higher by a full third than
Speaker 1: it is in the industrialized world. And then they did
Speaker 1: a follow up study even to correct possible selection biases,
Speaker 1: and they confirmed the original all finding, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting. And they There's a lot of hypotheses,
Speaker 1: but one of them is that a there might not
Speaker 1: be a stigma like in the industrialized world, and they're
Speaker 1: just more readily accepted. And the other is that they
Speaker 1: might be able to have a job that they can
Speaker 1: do successfully. And here in the West, farming or digging,
Speaker 1: you know, digging the trench for the farm or whatever.
Speaker 1: Here in the West were very competitive. Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get a job that a schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean, the rest of us are paranoid enough
Speaker 1: as it is about losing our jobs. If you are
Speaker 1: clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then it's probably going to be very
Speaker 1: difficult to keep your job true or do it in
Speaker 1: a way that will help you keep your job. That's
Speaker 1: very true. But Josh, there have been some successful stories
Speaker 1: of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Well, some some
Speaker 1: more successful and some Sid Barrett was successful, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if you call him a success story. Was
Speaker 1: up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: said Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd schizophrenic, and they
Speaker 1: believe that massive amounts of drugs that he used made
Speaker 1: it worse, way worse. John, he is he is the
Speaker 1: crazy Diamond. Yeah, shine on you, Crazy Diamond. I love
Speaker 1: that song. That's a good one. All four parts of it, right,
Speaker 1: and they're like part I think up to part four,
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? Yeah, John Nash, Yeah, from the movie
Speaker 1: A Beautiful Mind, the Ron Howard film with Russell Crowe
Speaker 1: as John Nash, the Nobel winner to figure out that
Speaker 1: cable companies would do better if they cooperated with one another.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that movie did a lot for putting
Speaker 1: this on the map in a compassionate way, you know.
Speaker 1: And Jack Caro whact did you know that one? That
Speaker 1: one's debatable. Okay. He was in the Navy and they
Speaker 1: discharged him honorably after I think like a little less
Speaker 1: than a year and and the report they said he
Speaker 1: had schizoid tendencies. But um, other people have said that
Speaker 1: he faked that stuff to get out of the navy,
Speaker 1: uh and just wanted to not take orders and drink
Speaker 1: himself 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 go 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 uh like whiskey and malt liquor.
Speaker 1: When he started blood started coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 1: I wonder how it tastes. Would you shake or stir that?
Speaker 1: And I don't think he mixed him. I think he
Speaker 1: was like whiskey with a beer back in a garness
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. Who's that?
Speaker 1: 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 they
Speaker 1: buy food, beat. It is a good place to listen
Speaker 1: to the music. People flock here to get down to
Speaker 1: the rock music. Rocky romcdono, Rocky ro mcdono, brocka romdono,
Speaker 1: rocky roommate, donle so Chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: And um, he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote
Speaker 1: about it a lot, He talked about it 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 bus. 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 of Rock and Roll as a documentary. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really good. I'll check that out. Yeah, Lionel Aldridge
Speaker 1: is a last name on our list. And he was
Speaker 1: a Green Bay packer and he was homeless unfortunately after
Speaker 1: he was diagnosed for a while and then later was
Speaker 1: able to climb out from that wreckage and go around
Speaker 1: and talk about mental illness. And he was he was
Speaker 1: playing in the sixties, the seventies. I think it was
Speaker 1: late sixties or seventies. So think about it. Man, that's
Speaker 1: a big deal to go around and talk publicly about
Speaker 1: mental illness at that time, and it still is now,
Speaker 1: but 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. Okay that you're like, he
Speaker 1: was this guy? Yeah, all right, I understand now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all 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. It's possible that
Speaker 1: it's because we just haven't isolated all the genes and
Speaker 1: don't know the right combination yet, or it's possible that
Speaker 1: it's from other causes, one of which one of the
Speaker 1: theories that's out there right now is that it's the
Speaker 1: result of an in utero exposure to either a flu
Speaker 1: or the dread toxoplasmosis. Remember toxoplasmosis 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, well, I guess one of the evident
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence that supports this is called the birth
Speaker 1: month effect. And the birth month effect is um, if
Speaker 1: you were born in winter months or early spring months,
Speaker 1: you are at a higher risk for mean schizophrenics 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 or
Speaker 1: trigger its 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 which kert He has identified the brain
Speaker 1: mechanism that derails decision making in people. So basically the
Speaker 1: part of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: stry Adam, and it lights up you know, they put
Speaker 1: people in the m all right, lights up when in
Speaker 1: response to rewards and healthy people and it's linked to
Speaker 1: your decision making. But completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they
Speaker 1: don't uh, they don't know the difference between expected and
Speaker 1: unexpected rewards, and so they don't have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: make a good decision to begin with. And that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us
Speaker 1: any closer. Well, maybe it does, you never know. They say,
Speaker 1: with proper funding that they predicted they could have a
Speaker 1: cure 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 like adding that UM. And we've also
Speaker 1: long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that
Speaker 1: helped developed anti psychotics, or better antipsychotics UM is PCP.
Speaker 1: Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenyl cycladine UM or
Speaker 1: fencycladin 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,
Speaker 1: domine right, Yes, well it has to do with both.
Speaker 1: But the emphasis before on anti psychotics was strictly dopamine
Speaker 1: and all it all it did was keep dopamine in
Speaker 1: the synapse is longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors.
Speaker 1: That's what antipsychotics do. And then in the eighties, after
Speaker 1: the PCP stuff, UM, they figured out that there was
Speaker 1: glutamate was involved and they came up with a typical antipsychotics,
Speaker 1: and these focus somewhat on dopamine, but more on things
Speaker 1: like glutamate and it's re up to ache and uh.
Speaker 1: These things have produced better results with fewer side effects,
Speaker 1: so um, they're they're figuring out how to treat it.
Speaker 1: The problem is that there's all sorts of side effects
Speaker 1: even even with atypical UM antipsychotics, like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness,
Speaker 1: muscle spasms, yeah allum. Bulging eyes apparently is one, and
Speaker 1: I guess most of the stuff can be treated by
Speaker 1: lowering the dosage, but they're they're bothersome enough that a
Speaker 1: lot of people just go off their meds, and you
Speaker 1: know that doesn't help ect. Electro Convulsive therapy is another
Speaker 1: thing that they still do. It's not something a relic
Speaker 1: from the fifties. It's changed a lot, and how they
Speaker 1: do it and they're not sure still how it exactly works.
Speaker 1: They stopped using car batteries, but about a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Americans each year still receive e c T, So that
Speaker 1: is an option. And obviously the group therapy and family
Speaker 1: therapy help just the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we encourage you to seek help 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 just 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 per drome, which is the period
Speaker 1: between on set of symptoms where you think maybe I
Speaker 1: am Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like
Speaker 1: your reality. So it's this point where you're starting to
Speaker 1: have the ideas, but they still seem bizarre or weird
Speaker 1: or why am I having these ideas? So if you
Speaker 1: apparently seek out treatment for schizophrenia when you start to
Speaker 1: have these ideas, um in the prodrome, the success rate
Speaker 1: of treatment is through the roof. Like, Yes, this British
Speaker 1: doctor in the late eighties set up shop in these
Speaker 1: two towns outside of London and he's set to work
Speaker 1: finding every potential early case of schizophrenia he could and
Speaker 1: he started treating people with therapy and low doses of
Speaker 1: anti psychotics and in four years those two towns had
Speaker 1: a tenth of the prevalence of schizophrenia than the rest
Speaker 1: of the country. Yeah, so apparently, like this pro drome research,
Speaker 1: there's like clinics that are opening up and like entire
Speaker 1: like departments in universities are dedicated to this per drome
Speaker 1: period where you can be like, come, come back, come,
Speaker 1: this is reality. Yeah, and they're successful or they have
Speaker 1: been so far. Well, Josh, I got one more stat
Speaker 1: if you live in a city of three million people,
Speaker 1: then over twenty one thousand people in your city are
Speaker 1: suffering from schizophrenia. So well keep that in mind. Yes,
Speaker 1: don't make fun of people. Don't obviously get scared or
Speaker 1: violent and in a reactive way. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, like, you should go over and talk
Speaker 1: to them, like you might want to just be compassionate
Speaker 1: and uh and hopefully they're getting help, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yes, go to schizophrenia dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find all kinds of good information. And if you hadn't
Speaker 1: already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out. He was
Speaker 1: a great guy. Check out The Daddy or Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll and um, also, I would say, in addition to
Speaker 1: how schizophrenia works, UM required reading for this one is
Speaker 1: an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By Rachel Lviv.
Speaker 1: It was in the December issue of Harper's And I
Speaker 1: have a link. I'll I'll tweet it. I'll tweet the
Speaker 1: link out with that. It sounds great. If you want
Speaker 1: more about schizophrenia, UM, there's plenty of it. There's an
Speaker 1: article and then some on the site. Just type schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: which again means split mind. That's right into the search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com and that brings
Speaker 1: up what chuck listener? Now, yes, Josh specifically corrections. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: I forgot about those. Yeah. Well, well we'll correct ourselves
Speaker 1: on Facebook and stuff. But they mounted up, so sure
Speaker 1: we want us, 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: sending this in. Uh, the flashpoint of paper is not
Speaker 1: fahrenheit for fifty one, I said books. The flash point
Speaker 1: of books is not fahrenheit for fifty one. It is
Speaker 1: fahrenheit eight fifty one celsius four fifty and a Bradbury
Speaker 1: apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one sounds
Speaker 1: a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently what was one?
Speaker 1: No celsius for fifty is the flashpoint or fahrenheight eight
Speaker 1: sounds as good as four, I think, yeah, okay, but
Speaker 1: I assume that as well. Man, I wish I had
Speaker 1: his name. You know who you are. And it was
Speaker 1: a very nice correction. Those are the ones we like
Speaker 1: to read. Uh. Then we got a correction on who
Speaker 1: was the first murderer. Apparently David says, and even sent
Speaker 1: in a copy of one by Charles Mann. What where
Speaker 1: what he's an email? No, not a not a He
Speaker 1: sent a scanned copy of the page in 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: those on page fifty five. Yeah, there it is. That
Speaker 1: is crazy, okay, But still Billington is a very noteworthy figure.
Speaker 1: Obviously sees a whole chapter on him. And then we
Speaker 1: got some uh oh. First of all, some people wrote
Speaker 1: 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 Okefinoki. So I misspoke
Speaker 1: for sure, because I was just talking about the North
Speaker 1: Georgia mountains, which are very lush and green, but South
Speaker 1: Georgia can get quite dry, and there are wildfires in Georgia.
Speaker 1: I did not know that that is true. And then
Speaker 1: finally we got an email from an actual Hindu named
Speaker 1: kush k U s h and Kush says, you guys
Speaker 1: missed a few things. Hinduism typically, I'm sorry, technically only
Speaker 1: has one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain,
Speaker 1: especially no non Hindus. But the general ideas there is
Speaker 1: one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called the
Speaker 1: brah Brahman, that not the Brohm, and every living thing
Speaker 1: has a part of that in us called the Atman.
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: ofman action will get the result to the result of
Speaker 1: the action will come right at the right time. And
Speaker 1: three good actions bring good results, Bad actions bring bad results.
Speaker 1: And fourth, the gods are technically subject to karma if
Speaker 1: you also expand the definition of karma to include the
Speaker 1: law of karma. But he says it was a good
Speaker 1: podcast overall, you guys really hit it on the head
Speaker 1: except for these peop points. He did not hit it
Speaker 1: on the head cover that No, well, just for that
Speaker 1: one part. And finally he pointed out, and a few
Speaker 1: other people pointed out that I was wrong in correcting
Speaker 1: you with Jainism and ye's jaine is Um. Thank you,
Speaker 1: but gonna play you something right now? Okay, okay, that
Speaker 1: was from dictionary dot com. Well that that voice is
Speaker 1: obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Mariam Webster. If
Speaker 1: it's the same voice, it doesn't count twice did you
Speaker 1: hear that that's a different voice? Did that one come
Speaker 1: through Matt? Okay? And then finally, this is Google definitions
Speaker 1: and this is my favorite of all. Actually I don't
Speaker 1: like for this. Wow, So I don't know because I
Speaker 1: had like three other people said no, many other robots, no,
Speaker 1: three other real people said no, it's jain is um.
Speaker 1: And then I went on YouTube and people said jain
Speaker 1: is um. So I don't know. Well, I like that
Speaker 1: it's both we're both right, yea, or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was genis um. Well, we love corrections so much
Speaker 1: that I managed to forget that we or are corrected
Speaker 1: a lot, or we used to read them. I never
Speaker 1: forget that we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Agree,
Speaker 1: Go through all fifty episodes, find everything you can that's
Speaker 1: 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 fashion email at stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
Speaker 1: our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home
Speaker 1: page