Talk:Schizophrenia/Archive 9

Diagnosis

About this: [1], I tend to agree that we should be cautious about what we say here about it not being "a valid construct", but I think we ought to consider retaining some of the material from the reverted edit. In particular, the last sentence, about it possibly being "a spectrum of conditions", strikes me as useful. The approach should, I think, be to steer clear of WP:UNDUE material questioning the validity of clinical practice. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:30, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder.

Can make mice be schizophrenia?Manzzzz^(talk) 06:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

No Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

For a more nuanced answer see animal models of schizophrenia. Looie496 (talk) 15:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Can make someone be schizophrenia?Manzzzz^(talk) 06:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If you mean whether one person can make another person schizophrenic, the answer is no. However, schizophrenic people can sometimes have worsened symptoms as a result of hostile behavior by other people. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Facial Recognition

I noticed facial recognition is not even mentioned in this article; despite impaired facial recognition being one of the symptoms of schizophrenia; which makes me wonder where to put this. I believe this is a review of the use of Dr. Ekmans Micro Expression Training Tool for improving facial recognition in peoples with schizophrenia; which makes it a secondary source; correct? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22959743 — Preceding unsigned comment added by CensoredScribe (talk • contribs) 16:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Note that it's very important to distinguish between facial recognition and facial emotion recognition. Facial recognition means being able to tell whether a face is Jack or Joe; facial emotion recognition means being able to tell whether a face is happy or sad. Anyway, independently of that, the paper you cite would not count as a secondary source -- it's not a review, it's a primary research study. I do think that this is a legitimate topic for the article to cover, though, and I'm sure that proper secondary sources are out there. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Moved to talk

Facial emotion defecits in schizophrenia are one of the most examined symptoms and are very responsive to computerized training; such as Micro Expression Training Tool. Positive results are indicated with as few as three sessions. http://books.google.com/books?id=QnWXw4asKLIC&pg=PA284&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

I have moved this section here for discussion to resolve multiple issues:

1. It was two sentences placed into its own section (two-level heading, see WP:MEDMOS). It mixes symptoms and treatment, which if included, need to go in the right place. At most, one sentence might be worked into symptoms if a high-quality secondary review mentions it (this is a Featured article and length is an issue-- if there is not a high-quality secondary review mentioning this, it could go to a daughter article). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
2. Prose needs cleanup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:37, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
3. The citation needs to be cleaned up. If facial recognition is important to enough to be in a summary article, there is likely to be a recent high-quality review mentioning it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:37, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
4. The treatment statement (in as few as three sessions) requires a high-quality source. The source given does not include a free link to the pages that discuss Micro Expression Training; please provide a quote here on talk. If there is a high-quality source, that text might go to Management of schizophrenia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with taking it out of the page. It seems to me to be much too "primary" for inclusion on this page. I think the kind of content, from secondary sources, that Looie referred to above, would be quite different from this. I doubt that there will be adequate sourcing for treatment based on this, but there may well be sourcing for difficulty in processing facial images as a symptom. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

DSM 5 changes

Schizophrenia is no longer separated into its subtypes. It needs to be updated; DSM-IV has been superseded :) 129.180.138.106 (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

DSM 5 has not supplanted DSM 4. DSM 5 in fact is fairly controversial. Even though ICD10 has been out for years the USA still uses ICD9. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Treatment of negative symptoms

The minocycline page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minocycline), as well as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18991666 and http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/09/12/the-life-cycle-of-medical-ideas/ say that it seems to be at least somewhat effective in treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Neither this page nor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_schizophrenia make any mention of it. I don't have bits to edit this semi-locked page, but it might be nice to mention it on the schizophrenia page for any who come to wikipedia looking for treatment options. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.111.100.165 (talk) 07:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

In the research stage. Added it to a section on research. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:14, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there reason to mention treatment by administering of oestrogen or its flavonoidal substitutes eg extracts of belamcanda chinensis radix ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.121.237.14 (talk) 02:33, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Disability-adjusted life year (DALY)

What's the use of this here esp. that world-map denoting its trend? I'm asking because DALY is not even simply described on its own Wiki page. It makes no sense to put up a world-map denoting something that neither lay people know about nor can understand even when they check its Wiki page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Britsin (talk • contribs) 21:58, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Anti-psychiatry perspective

A play on peoples ignorance.

This article is a play on peoples ignorance, and consists of pure guesswork, and nothing substantial. No phsyical tests exist for "schizophrenia". There is no evidence that is is chemically related, and there is no science that connects the drugs used, to any particular physical error.

Unfortunately that is how doctors have formed the language around this. However when analysed, it falls apart.

What this article SHOULD include, is ofcourse a critical view, that includes the anti-psychiatry movement, and also the insights of many mystics and saints through the times. And that is the logic of monotheism. Satan is in polytheism. There may very well be a connection between polytheism, and experiencing a "schismd mind", since that is a schism in force. God is one divinity. "And snakes fell to the ground", as The Bible says.

For an extremely critical article, from a perspective of many years of research on religion, please read: http://ovekarlsen.com/Blog/psychiatry-refuted/

Peace Be With You. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.211.129.189 (talk • contribs)

Please see WP:NOTAFORUM and WP:MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:20, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Schizophrenia in continental philosophy / post psychoanalysis

In Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari develop a philosophical en post psychoanalytical account of schizophrenia, that explains it within the context of social- and desiring-production. They develop on the one hand an account of schizophrenia that is inherently positive and cite an abundance of authors in this respect. They do claim, on the other hand, there is a difference between their concept of schizophrenia and a person with the actual psychiatric condition, but then their account is a philosophical one and not merely a metaphorical or literary one. It is not as if their philosophical account treats some sort of valuesystem that is 'as if' it were schizophrenia. they develop an actual philosophical concept op schizophrenia.

I wonder how this works, but shouldn't there be at least a section on non-psychiatric accounts of schizophrenia (deleuze and gauttari's account is hardly the only one)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.157.56.245 (talk) 10:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Please see WP:MEDRS and WP:UNDUE. If you have a high quality, secondary review article that mentions this, please post it here for discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think WP:MEDRS applies to discussion of schizophrenia outside the context of medicine, but I do have a concern that this would be giving undue weight to relatively obscure ideas. Of course it is possible that they are not actually obscure and I am merely ignorant of them, but it would be nice to see evidence of that. Looie496 (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

See also WP:FRINGE. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, it is not really obscure. As a matter of fact, deleuzian philosophy has seen an immense rise in popularity in the last two decades (just google for deleuze-related research: the influence is immense). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to say about their (deleuze + guattari's) use of the concept schizophrenia:

"Anti-Oedipus identifies two primary registers of desiring-production, the natural or “metaphysical” and the social or “historical.” They are related in the following way: natural desiring-production is that which social machines repress, but also that which is revealed in capitalism, at the end of history (a contingent history, that is, one that avoids dialectical laws of history). Capitalism sets free desiring-production even as it attempts to rein it in with the institution of private property and the familial or “Oedipal” patterning of desire; schizophrenics are propelled by the charge of desiring-production thus set free but fail at the limits capitalist society proposes, thus providing a clue to the workings of desiring-production.

It's important at the start to realize that Deleuze and Guattari do not advocate schizophrenia as a “lifestyle” or as the model for a political program. The schizophrenic, as a clinical entity, is the result of the interruption or the blocking of the process of desiring-production, its having been taken out of nature and society and restricted to the body of an individual where it spins in the void rather than make the connections that constitute reality. Desiring-production does not connect “with” reality, as in escaping a subjective prison to touch the objective, but it makes reality, it is the Real, in a twisting of the Lacanian sense of the term. In Lacan, the real is produced as an illusory and retrojected remainder to a signifying system; for Deleuze and Guattari, the Real is reality itself in its process of self-making. The schizophrenic is a sick person in need of help, but schizophrenia is an avenue into the unconscious, the unconscious not of an individual, but the “transcendental unconscious,” an unconscious that is social, historical, and natural all at once.

In studying the schizophrenic process, Deleuze and Guattari posit that in both the natural and social registers desiring-production is composed of three syntheses, the connective, disjunctive, and conjunctive; the syntheses perform three functions: production, recording, and enjoyment. We can associate production with the physiological, recording with the semiotic, and enjoyment with the psychological registers. While it is important to catch the Kantian resonance of “synthesis,” it is equally important to note, in keeping with the post-structuralist angle we discussed above, that there is no subject performing the syntheses; instead, subjects are themselves one of the products of the syntheses. The syntheses have no underlying subject; they just are the immanent process of desiring-production. Positing a subject behind the syntheses would be a transcendent use of the syntheses. Here we see another reference to the Kantian principle of immanence. Deleuze and Guattari propose to study the immanent use of the synthesis in a “materialist psychoanalysis,” or “schizoanalysis”; by contrast, psychoanalysis is transcendent use of the syntheses, producing five “paralogisms” or “transcendental illusions,” all of which involve assigning the characteristics of the extensive properties of actual products to the intensive production process, or, to put it in the terms of the philosophy of difference, all the paralogisms subordinate differential processes to identities derived from products."

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/#AntOed)

another treatment of the matter is to be found in this article, which also covers Fredic Jameson's views on schizophrenia. I cite from the part on delouse and guattari:

"Deleuze and Guat­tari react strongly against the Freu­dian and Lacanian treat­ment of schizo­phrenia. In char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally play­ful and com­bat­ive lan­guage they warn us of Freud’s dis­taste for the schizophrenic:

For we must not delude ourselves: Freud doesn’t like schizo­phren­ics. He doesn’t like their res­ist­ance to being oed­ip­al­ized, and tends to treat them more or less as anim­als. They mis­take words for things, he says. They are apathetic, nar­ciss­istic, cut off from real­ity, incap­able of achiev­ing trans­fer­ence; they resemble philo­soph­ers –“an undesir­able resemb­lance” (23).

Accord­ing to Deleuze and Guat­tari, Freud does not like the schizo­phrenic because s/​he is a dir­ect affront to Freud’s psy­cho­ana­lytic sys­tem. The schizo­phrenic has not developed an ego, or gone through the Oed­ipal pro­cess of indi­vidu­ation. Thus, the schiz­oid is “some­where else, bey­ond or behind or below” the Oed­ipal triad that is so cent­ral to Freu­dian ana­lysis (23). The schiz­oid has no “me” and hence does not have an uncon­scious that is pre­oc­cu­pied with the Oed­ipal drama of daddy, mommy, and me.

In attempts to cure schizo­phren­ics, Freu­dian psy­cho­ana­lysts have often tried to lead the schizo­phrenic down the road to ego form­a­tion, and nor­mal­ity. This has often meant for­cibly impos­ing the Oed­ipal cycle, which is sup­posedly char­ac­ter­istic of nor­mal psychic devel­op­ment. Melanie Klein is per­haps “the ana­lyst least prone to see everything in terms of Oed­ipus” (Deleuze and Guat­tari 45). Nev­er­the­less, even she was unre­mit­ting in her attempts to oed­ip­al­ize her psychotic patients. When a psychotic child named Dick came to see her for ther­apy she encour­aged him to play with toy trains. Deleuze and Guat­tari quote Kline’s first per­son account of the session:

I took the big train and put it beside a smal­ler one and called them ‘Daddy-​train’ and ‘Dick-​train.’ Thereupon he picked up the train I called ‘Dick’ and made it roll [toward the sta­tion].… I explained: ‘The sta­tion is mummy; Dick is going into mummy’ (qtd. in Deleuze and Guat­tari 45).

Kline’s state­ments ter­ri­fied the kid, caus­ing him to run into a closet to hide. Klein respon­ded to this by say­ing that “[i]t is dark inside mummy. Dick is inside dark mummy” (45). No mat­ter what beha­vior the child exhib­ited, Klein imposed an Oed­ipal inter­pret­a­tion. The pur­pose of this treat­ment was to make the dis­join­ted and inco­her­ent beha­vior of the patient coalesce into a nor­mal (i.e. Oed­ipal) iden­tity formation.

Deleuze and Guat­tari see this kind of treat­ment as a form of ter­ror­ism. In the course of such treat­ment “[a]ll the chains of the uncon­scious are…linearized, sus­pen­ded from a des­potic sig­ni­fier (i.e. Oed­ipus)” (54). Indeed, they assert that schizo­phren­ics who are treated this way often digress into aut­ism, which has unfor­tu­nately been asso­ci­ated with schizo­phrenia. For Deleuze and Guat­tari, it is the ana­lyst and the psy­chi­at­ric ward that make the schiz­oid sick, and turn him/​her into a silent and psy­cho­lo­gic­ally unpro­duct­ive aut­ist. The healthy schiz­oid has an essen­tially pro­duct­ive (un)consciousness. S/​he does not fan­tas­ize. Instead, Deleuze and Guat­tari assert, s/​he pro­duces and makes the real."

(http://criticallegalthinking.com/2010/12/21/towards-a-radical-anti-capitalist-schizophrenia/) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.157.56.245 (talk) 18:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, I see that the book on Capitalism and Schizophrenia has over 12000 citations in Google Scholar, which is pretty impressive. However, the passage from SEP that you quote is practically word salad, except for the scientific content, which is psychoanalysis at its most absurd. Is there anything that can be said about this that might actually make sense to an ordinary reader? Looie496 (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a good question. I don't know. It is kind of rigorous philosophy, so I haven't seen anyone ever try to translate it into non-technical language. But when I look at entry's on (e.g.) mathematics, there is hardly anything to be understood if you're not a mathematician, so how 'simple' does it have to be to be on wikipedia. Today the tradition of deleuze is called new materialism (cf. 'new materialism: interviews & cartographies' by Rick Dolphijn & Iris van der Tuin (2012) from Utrecht University - they are students of Rosi Braidotti, head of women's studies at the same university, and a big name in deleuzian 'new materialism' these days). So I guess the concept of schizophrenia should be explained in that vain. I guess the core of this philosophy is a certain view on time and consciousness, in a philosophy of radical immanence and becoming. This means that an actual living being is not in the first place an individual subject, but a singularity in a transcendental field. The movement of becoming is in fact the unfolding of the subject and the world. This is an actualization of a continuous virtual and formless present. Forms, objects and subjects are secondary to the continuous present in which neither form, nor subject exist. This virtuality is not actual, but it is nonetheless real. I don't know how to explain it better from the top of my head. I guess the concept of the schizophrenic had to do with this formation of the subject, i.e. the actualization of a subject. In a sense the schizo is believed not to form an ego (in the psychoanalytical sense) and i guess deleuze feels that by trying to force an ego on the schizophrenic psychiatry and psychoanalysis are actually making the schizo unhealthy. A healthy schizo would not have to be forced to form an individual ego, but on the other hand, to create relations with the outside world not based on the relation between two ego's, but based on countless virtual relations of interconnection and mutual becoming. But as you can see, i'm not per se the designated author for this entry, because to actually write this in a way that is acceptable would be kind of a big job, i guess. I will try to see if there are articles out there that explain this in a simpler fashion, but the thing is that even though schizophrenia is an inportant concept in new materialism, it is not at all set on therapy or treatment of the schizo. it is in the end a concept and has nothing to do with modern medicine. (but it does have to do with health, in the sense that making connections in the schizo sense are considered to be healthy, but this would have to be explained once again. the whole philosophy is a complex network of interrelated concepts and each concept has to be explained. that is the difficulty of deleuze i guess, it's hard to make it small. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.157.56.245 (talk) 20:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 12 October 2013

In the Management - Medication section, please add The amino-acid glycine, which works on the NMDA glutaminergic receptors, has also been positively tested as an add-on to antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia. (Coyle JT, G Tsai (2004). "The NMDA receptor glycine modulatory site: a therapeutic target for improving cognition and reducing negative symptoms in schizophrenia". Psychopharmacology. 174: 32–28.)

Reason for change

Glycine works on NMDA receptors, unlike antipsychotics which work mainly on the dopamine (D1-D4) receptors. This opens up the possibility of other mechanisms involved in the dissease. 200.10.231.249 (talk) 14:02, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

PMID 15205876 is a 2004 review. Do you have a recent secondary review that covers this text? This article is an overview, built upon sub-articles, and consideration for what should be added here (length) should be accounted for. In some cases, info may be covered in sub-articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

There are a number of reviews that cite that article, but in my opinion this possibility has not received enough attention to justify mentioning it in our article. It's certainly a long long way from viable use as a treatment. Looie496 (talk) 16:04, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the NMDA receptors relation to schizophrenia is covered in the Neurological section of this wikipedia article Refs 65 to 68. There is just no mention of glycine or d-serine in Ref. 68 in the treatment section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.10.231.249 (talk) 16:50, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 15:49, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I recommend moving the sentence "But positive symptoms fail to respond to glutamatergic medication.[68]" at the end of the Neurological Section to the Management-Medication Section or the Research Section of the wikipedia article, reworded as follows "NMDA receptor co-agonists amino acids glycine and d-serine have been proven effective in reducing negative, but not positive symptoms of schizophrenia in conjunction with antipsychotics. [68]" or else something like this "NMDA receptor co-agonists amino acids glycine and d-serine are being studied as augmentation therapy for schizophrenia and have proven some effectiveness in reducing negative, but not positive symptoms of schizophrenia. [68]" The Neurological section discusses cause, but not management. Antipsychotics have so many devastating side effects, including sudden death, that I think it is important to better highlight the relative effectiveness of other alternatives (yes, they are given toguether with antipsychotics, so much research still needs to be done). But, residual schizophrenia is mostly negative symptoms so they may be useful in those cases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.52.132.189 (talk • contribs)

@Casliber: perhaps Cas will look at this edit request? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Funnily enough I was talking to a professor of psychopharmacology about advances in pharmacotherapy recently and he pointed out that further research into these drugs had not resulted in any new treatment turning up with any clinical use. i.e. they are not effective, sadly, and have not come onto the market. The wording of the article abstract is so qualified and guarded as well. i.e. I can't support any other wording as it would be giving false hope. Sorry. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you should take a look at http://www.schizophrenia.com/glycinetreat.htm and http://depressiontribunegrel.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/novel-pharmacologic-targets-for-the-treatment-of-negative-symptoms-in-schizophrenia/ with other derivatives. They claim an NMDA receptor dysfunction is the true cause behind the D2 receptor malfunction, which is also claimed on Wikipedia. They say there is also moderate, but significant, improvement in negative symptoms of schizophrenia with simple amino acids with few side effects. I don't see why this cannot be included in the Research section at the end of the wikipedia article, the same way an antibiotic with little clinical use has been included there. If there is a 2013 paper on the subject that claims there is no efficacy whatsoever in the treatment of the NMDA receptors, please place the link here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.10.231.249 (talk) 15:38, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I will have a look for something published on where things stand today. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

See, none of the drugs mentioned here have made it into clinical practice - this article is used in the neurology section. Must be an update somewhere....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:22, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Here's something...now to digest....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:29, 22 October 2013 (UTC) that article was hard to read - that was just imaging....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:54, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Googling "glycine" + "schizophrenia" - articles really seem to dry up in the mid-2000s, as everyone lost interest in the subject, which makes me suspicious that subsequent trials showed it just doesn't work. Still be good to find some recent review which summarises this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:54, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I found the following http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1892 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.10.231.249 (talk) 16:23, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

IP 200, please sign your posts by entering four tildes ( ~~~~ ) after them. There are several problems with that source. 1. It is not a reliable source. 2. It is not compliant with Wikipedia's medical sourcing standards. 3. It references a primary study and a laypress report. Unless you are able to locate a recent, high-quality, secondary review compliant with WP:MEDRS, based on what Cas found, we can't place the text in this article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, here is the study referenced in that article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23729812?dopt=Abstract . It is a recent 2013 positive primary study on mice. So it injects some new hope on NMDA receptor therapy after Eli Lilly abandoned their compound last year. Other pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs that increase levels of glycine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitopertin. 200.10.231.249 (talk) 18:04, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for signing your entry. Yes, that study is a primary source, not covered by a secondary review as far as we know, so not only does it not meet WP:MEDRS, other relevant guidelines and policies are WP:NOT (news), WP:RECENTISM, and WP:UNDUE. Until/unless an independent secondary high-quality (per WP:WIAFA) review covers the subject, it does not have a place in this article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, the article is quite recent (May 2013), you can't expect it to be referenced that much yet. I will look for older articles, maybe 2011, 2012 ... Maybe some good recent reviews of older literature if I can find. 200.10.231.249 (talk) 18:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Let me preface my comment here by saying, per WP:COI, that, in real life, I'm friends with some of the authors of some of the sources being suggested here, although I personally have nothing to do with any of that research. That said, I'm pretty sure there won't be any sources indicating successful clinical use of glycine in people who have schizophrenia, and I don't think this page should include studies that have not gone beyond lab animals (although that would be fine for some of the sub-pages). We might want to look at where clinical studies currently are for derivative drugs such as Bitopertin, but again I would only want to include it on this page if the drugs have moved successfully into clinical practice, and we might not be there yet. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:24, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd not heard of bitopertin before - I guess it is a case of "watch this space". One thing is that blogs etc. provide some search terms..so to look up d-serine too etc. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:50, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

"... characterized by ... poor emotional responses"? Also "lack of emotional intelligence"?

"Poor emotional responses" doesn't seem specific enough for schizophrenia, so they don't seem to "characterize" it. As I understand, what's characteristic of schizophrenia is a lack of emotional responsiveness or strangely inappropriate emotional responses, whereas things like exaggerated emotions, raging, etc., seem to be more common in bipolar and borderline conditions, even though those can be said to represent "poor emotional responses" as well.

Also regarding "lack of emotional intelligence," that doesn't narrow down enough to the negative symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia. Lots of people lack emotional intelligence without developing serious mental illness.

Also, I couldn't find support in outside sources for such broad terms referencing emotions in schizophrenia, so perhaps we need to go back to the older terms? "Deficit of typical emotional responses" seemed to better capture how emotions are typically in schizophrenia. --Cornince (talk) 02:11, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

As a general overview I see no concerns. Further specifics can be developed in the signs and symptoms section. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:37, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Apparently, also, emotional instability, so perhaps some of those exaggerated emotions and raging, can also occur in schizophrenia according to this source, so such general terms might be appropriate:

"Nevertheless, there are some children who display the severe, early-appearing social and communicative deficits characteristic of autism who ALSO display some of the emotional instability and disordered thought processes that resemble schizophrenic symptoms."

http://childstudycenter.yale.edu/autism/information/mdd.aspx --Cornince (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

But affective blunting is more a feature of schizophrenia - particularly chronic schizophrenia. I need to re-read some key sources (when I get time...) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:45, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

This study seemed interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22021660

But you're right, emotional instability is not really characteristic of schizophrenia because it can also appear in lots of other disorders. --Cornince (talk) 00:28, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

However, one should also take under consideration the side effects of medication for schizophrenia, such as antipsychotics commonly given. These drugs tend to produce emotional apathy, agression, etc, which are the very same symptoms they are supposed to treat. Many times, they damage the dopaminergic pathways and other neurotransmitters (sometimes permanently), making things much worse than before treatment200.10.231.249 (talk) 16:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi all! As you can see, I happily edited "poor emotional responses" without even taking a look at this Talk page. Anyway, nobody reverted it and, as I wrote in my edit summary, in my opinion, "impaired" is better than "poor", because poor suggests the emotional responses are weak but they can be strong.

I'm also not very happy with "lack of emotional intelligence" but I didn't know what to do with it. Lova Falk talk 20:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)