Q. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS HAPPENING (brain shrinkage in schizophrenics at a rate of about 1% a year)
A. Well, what exactly do these drugs do? They block basal ganglia activity. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t get the input it needs and is being shut down by drugs. That reduces the psychotic symptoms. It also causes the prefrontal cortex to slowly atrophy.
What is this? In a robust, soon to be published study, brains exposed to the new anti-psychotics are shown to shrink. Recently some pharmaceutical companies have been claiming that their drugs protect the brain, somehow.
The most distressing thing to me is this:
More and more children are being diagnosed as bi-polar.
The diagnosis is vague and highly overapplied.
These same anti-psychotics are being used on these children.
There are NO studies on their safety for children.
These drugs are not even approved by the FDA for use in Bi-polar diagnosis.
Yes, there are some children who are suffering inexplicably and they are tearing their families apart. And yes, emotional problems- whatever that means- are every bit as destructive and painful as physical illness and requires enormous resources to deal with.
And yes, medication might be one part of the solution. But it has to be approached empirically.
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