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Can someone post a reference for the Hammersley & Read article and/or presentation with the findings that childhood trauma is a causative factor for schizophrenia?

thanks

If this is right, it's fantastic news especially for the reasons cited - people not resigning themselves to a supposed genetic condition etc.

As long as it doesn't interfere with the prescription of drug treatments in favour of a counselling approach. The longer people are left unmedicated the more damage is done and the likelihood of a proper recovery is reduced.

Blacknad.

Nice stuff. An important disclosure.

"Psychiatric patients who report abuse are much more likely to experience hallucinations ? flashbacks which have become part of the schizophrenic experience and hallucinations or voices that bully them as their abuser did thus causing paranoia and a mistrust of people close to them."

How about the prospect that people that hallucinate, hear voices, are paranoia and are schizophrenic, are more inclined to create stories of abuse and mistreatment. My non-scientific view is that the alleged percentages are far too large. Even comon people, like me, understand that our social history plays a part in our today. The simple thing of the pink dress worn at the Prom where she had a terrible time will be reason enough for never wearing a pink dress again. We all have our little triggers and good lawyers sometimes use them to upset an overconfident witness. Any way they will get the recognition they seek and may also actually advance the diagnoses of the problem.

Nice link Warren.
jjw

What do you with failed experiments ?
You declare them mad??? So sad..
Remember every byproduct of our evolution is due to us. we are responsible for it...

Today we are approaching Age of DNA where such accidents can happen with great likely hood..
What will you do then ?
Declare them dead because you cant treat them .. ok .. you dont even know how to treat such a behavioural decease... And then we debate mercy killing...
Fact is we are not willing not accept the truth...
A big chunk of solution comes from knowledge .. knowledge of Supreme Consciousness...

Thanks

Jim,

Facts and figures about child abuse

NSPCC research shows that a significant minority of children suffer serious abuse or neglect:

7% of children experienced serious physical abuse at the hands of their parents or carers during childhood.

1% of children experienced sexual abuse by a parent or carer and another 3% by another relative during childhood. 11% of children experienced sexual abuse by people known but unrelated to them. 5% of children experienced sexual abuse by an adult stranger or someone they had just met'.

6% of children experienced serious absence of care at home during childhood.

6% of children experienced frequent and severe emotional maltreatment during childhood. i


16% of children experienced serious maltreatment by parents, of whom one third experienced more than one type of maltreatment. ii


Latest available figures show that there are 32,700 children on child protection registers in the UK as at 31 March 2003. iii


Nearly 79,000 children are currently looked after by local authorities in the UK. v


Every week in England and Wales one to two children will die following cruelty. vi


There are on average 80 child homicides recorded in England and Wales each year. vii


On average one child is killed by their parent or carer every week in England and Wales. viii


Three-quarters of sexually abused children did not tell anyone about the abuse at the time, and around a third still had not told anyone about their experience(s) by early adulthood. x


Over a quarter of all rapes recorded by the police are committed against children under 16 years of age. xi


31% of children experienced bullying during childhood, a further 7% were discriminated against and 14% were made to feel different/an outsider. 43% experienced at least one of these things during childhood.xii


NSPCC teams and Helplines accepted over 24,000 requests for help in 2003-4. xiii


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MentalHealth.org tell us that 1% of UK population suffer manic depression or schizophrenia.

Compared to figures of 15% of children experiencing sexual abuse by someone known or related to them (therefore likely to be prolonged) and 16% of children experiencing one or more type of serious maltreatment, I certainly don't see the percentages as being far too large.

Blacknad.

Well done Blacknad:

How many of those statistics are counted in an overlaping manner? The article in question said:

"Their evidence includes 40 studies, which revealed childhood or adulthood sexual or physical abuse in the history of the majority of psychiatric patients and a review of 13 studies of schizophrenics found abuse rates from a low of 51% to a high of 97%."

This effort "includes 40 studies" they say. Is that on 40 participants or 40 individual studies comprized of hundeds of participants each?

My concern is for innocent people being accused of child abuse because some eager beaver social worker with a repressed sexual fixation gets a child to "recall" some fictituous abuse that never occured at all excpt in the mind of some public servant that herself may have been abused. I went to visit a rehab center that had a program to help alcholics get over it. The basic staff were all exalcholics or products of families where one of the parents was one. I sat in on a session and it was extremely obvious to me that the person leading the session was so sreeped in every body being a drunk and abusive there was no way the session could proceed on a logical basis. I told the doctoras in management as much and question their judgement in using such people as guides and instructors. I left never to go back but I am sure nothing changed.

You make the UK sound like a battle ground and I suppose the USA is no better and possibly worse. Keep in mind it takes only one misguided child to make an accusation that will ruin a persons life forever. Some public servants just don't give a damn about the effects of thier claims.

97% causitive!! What other cause is there?
jjw

Jim,

I would expect to find mixture of traumatic abuse and genetic propensity behind schizophrenia.

I worked counselling schizophrenic teenagers in a Richmond Fellowship residential home and every one of the thirty or so residents who passed through in the time I was there had a history of either severe mental & physical abuse or sexual abuse. Every single one.

These were not false memory syndrome, they each had an in-depth story of horrendous abuse and they displayed a pattern of similar symptoms linked to the kind of abuse they had suffered.

For years I have been convinced that personal trauma played a much more significant part in schizophrenia than the medical community was prepared to admit. I have always been perturbed by the amount of weight placed upon the genetic link and look forward to seeing a more balanced approach.

Like you, I have a real anger towards those who have made a nice living convincing people that they have been sexually abused. Their psychological fads ruin lives. The same goes for social workers who wade in and rip children from their parents on the smallest suspicion - it still happens, so I can understand your reservations.

This may well be a case where both you and I are examining the evidence and coming to a conclusion based more upon where we are coming from, than on the facts. I have to admit that my evidence is purely anecdotal.

Blacknad.

Hey Blacknad, if your not careful you will convince me.

Be-ing 77 going on a real close 78, I uaually don't give much of myself to what I write. Today I learned that one of my monthly luncheon budies died. He was about 83 but he looked and sounded so good at our last pow wow in Long Beach Ca that his death came as some what of a shocker. The humerous part is that his body was discovered by his girl friend that was worried because he did not show up for their usual gymnastic thing that they had going so she went by his home. How bad can it be to have an attractive woman and a gymnastic program with the remnants of a lawyers talents and go bye bye like a fade away dream. May god or buda or ? bless him, I do.

It is a sad day in this inner world.

Any way I am sure you are right about the kids.
jjw

I remember once my brother lost an argument with him self, got up and stomped around the room, sat back down.
Then he started laughing his ass off. I asked him what was so funny? He mumbled something about the dog and the microwave oven (and yes he would hallucinate, hear voices)

That was 25 years ago. I was 11, he was around 25 26. Now he is in a burn out stage from over medication.

He graduated from OIT Klamath falls in the mid 70's on the Deans list. He had his break down soon after that, with in 3 years. During that time
he designed for Boeing.

He was never molested, abused, and all that other crap.

This runs in my family my mothers Grand uncle was affected by it and I wonder if it is in my children now.


So in my opinion this article is well just...does not fit into my life experiance.

Blacknad,
I would love to know if in any of your cases you covered included Drug abuse, above experimenting with pot.
In my experiance, I think drug abuse is a factor to consider.

I'm not thriving for pitty or any thing, in telling my story. When I read that study, all i could think was they pay this guy for this crap?


John

Currently after 27 years of medication my brother is in more of a burn out stage then recovery.

Jim,

Sorry to hear of your loss.

I also didn't realise you were in your late 70s. If I am as lucid as you are when I'm your age I'll be happy.

Hi John,

I think it's clear that with an issue like this that has touched so many people on a personal level it's very easy for people to come to a leaning that is based upon subjective experience.

I don't know whether you need a genetic predisposition first and then abuse or cannabis etc. act as the trigger.
Certainly there are enough people who experience nothing unusual and still end up displaying schizophrenic behaviour.

As someone who suffered severe abuse and trauma in childhood, I have experienced periods of schizophrenic behaviour in my twenties. This was also, I believe, exacerbated by moderate cannabis use. Since I hit my thirties I have been fine. I have seen another friend, who was certainly never abused, descend into a painful and severe schizophrenia for two years after eating a huge chunk of cannabis. He had never had any psychological problems 'til that day.

I am aware that there is a problem with coming to a conclusion that schizophrenia is heavily linked to abuse - the cloud of suspicion will hang over parents. But also, as the article says, patients who think they are suffering from nothing more than a genetic condition are more likely to give up the ghost, as are those around them.

It's a difficult one.

Thankfully, our improved understanding of the human genome and modern brain imaging techniques will hopefully provide some concrete answers in the not to distant future.

Can I ask how long your brother's symptom went on for before he was first medicated?

And yes, drug abuse was rife in the teenagers at Verecroft. Mostly pot, amphetamines and magic mushrooms.

Blacknad.

This finding does not surprise me in the last. Actually it makes sence.

Think of what a child must endure and hold inside them whe nit is a loved one, or someone they trust that abuses them either physically, emotionally, or seuxally.

Blacknad, thank you for the kind words. I find it demeaning for people to play the old age card and I did not intend to do it that way.

Abuse seems to be a major factor in our world today. The USA will be misguided at times and seek to stop the abuse of peoples around the world and keep digging themselves deeper and deeper hatreds everywhere. The new rant is the abuse of seniors, usually the helpless kind. We are expected to stop genocide and AIDs in Africa when those in those countries do nothing noteworthy on thier own about it. We were asked to do something about the abuse of women in Afganistan by the sob sisters here in the USA and we are hated even more. I will not go on with all the misguided good will we wasted on the world but rather conclude why can we not, AT THE VERY LEAST, eliminate child abuse here at home? Part of the reason, in my opinion, is that the very experts in charge of the issue are the ones that let convicted pedophiles back out on the street to attack more children. They are the PHds that recomend rapests are recovered and rehabilated for the world- where they find more women to rape. There is a good reason why Law Enforcement Officers check on previous convicts as potential suspects in the newer crimes.

Most academics in charge of deciding which pervert should be peroled early are immune form any kind of lawsuit when acting for the state. I wonder how liberal they woud be if they could be implicated in the next criminal act of the person they claimed was rehabilated and be sued by the victims? That would be justice for me.

jjw

It seems that there may be a more powerful influence of environmental factors (such as abuse, drugs etc) that influence the expression of genes. There is no denying that there is a genetic basis to schizophrenia (admittedly looking at the most recent research results, a very complex genetic relationship that presents itself more as a disposition towards the condition than the only cause), but what comes through more and more when looking at family, adoptive and twin studies is that there are other factors that seem to trigger the onset and development of the condition. And this muct include the patient's own 'attitude' towards themselves and schizophrenia.

The hardest part about finding the cause of schizophrenia (and further more a more effective and restorative treatment) is that scientists don't truly yet understand the biology of a thought. The mind is highly complex, and while we are closer to understanding what goes on than a hundred years ago, it is obvious that there needs to be work between both neurologists AND psychiatrists in order to unlock the secrets of such a complicated condition.