SYSK Selects: How Schizophrenia Works - podcast episode cover

SYSK Selects: How Schizophrenia Works

Jan 12, 201944 min
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Episode description

Up to 24 million people worldwide have schizophrenia. Despite the vast amounts of research, the disorder remains mysterious. In this episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the nature of schizophrenia, from the history of the disorder to the latest research.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Hi everyone, It's Josh here and for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our episode on schizophrenia. UM. First of all, please excuse the rampant use of the word schizophrenic. We know better now, UM, and delight in a clip of Wesley Willis's rock and roll McDonald's. If you've never heard of Wesley Willis, co check him out, UM, as I clearly want you to do throughout this episode.

And UM. Also note that there is a rare corrections rather than listener mail correction segment that apparently just didn't take off, probably because we would have just ended up doing nothing but corrections for episodes at any rate. I hope you enjoy this one. It's a good one. Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chuck Tran Chuck a

luck Right? How you doing? I'm great. I'm going to see Bob Dylan tonight. People are gonna be like, I mean times, is Bob Dylan playing Atlanta? Have you ever seen David Bowie? It's good I have not. Um, Yes, you are, Chuck. I know you're very excited. I am. I've seen him a few times, but it's always good. Really yeah, too short though he buzzes through like fifteen songs. He's out of there. Is he short? Oh? Well, he's also short? But yea is he really? I was just kidding. No,

he's short. I guess those um Bell bottomed long pants that he wore in the sixties on his album Like Bottoms made him look kind of tall. Yeah. Um, alright, so enough about Bob Dylan for the second time. I'm not a big Dylan fan myself. It Um, let's talk about schizophrenia instead. Okay. So I was looking for an intro for this, and I mean there's plenty of stuff, but it's all like pretty, you know, research heavy Astra

Zeneca was marketing Sarah quil off label and just settled. Um, let's see what else Jared Lofner as being medicated against as well. The guy who shot Gabrielle Gifford's Okay, really, yes, he's he's been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Um. Finally uh and then um, there was a homeless man in Los Angeles who was beaten to death by the police yesterday or today. Um, and all of this is kind of I realized like there wasn't any one thing that I was like, well,

here's the intro. But I realized like all of it together gives a pretty good overview of you know, schizophrenia as it stands right now, which is it's misunderstood, it's heavily prescribed, underfunded, and um. Yeah, and there's a lot of people out there who aren't necessarily getting help who need it. Yeah. In fact, I got a stat if you want to go ahead and go there. You got a bunch of stats you said for this, right I do. Um, if you want to talk about people getting help and

and or needing help and not getting it. Uh, six percent of six schizophrenics are homeless. Yeah, six percent are in jail or prison, ten percent in nursing homes with a family member or independently living supervise housing. So and and it makes sense, Chuck to that these makes sense because first of all, you have all of this crazy stuff going on to you. That's your reality. So you're

having trouble dealing with reality as it stands. Um. It's secondly, a lot of times schizophrenia comes on, Um, during times when you learn how to hold down a job or take care of yourself or do whatever. So you might never learn how to do this because you're dealing with your schizophrenia. Here's the shocking one. Okay, at any given moment, there are more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living on the streets than there are receiving care. Well, they

outweigh that people that are actually getting help. That's that is shocking, but not surprising. Somehow agreed. Wow, so you said, what was that last one? Severe psychiatric illnesses? That's an

umbrella term. Obviously that schizophrenia falls in under that for sure, But prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was pretty much thought of as generalized illness, like the mental illness was mental illness, and maybe there is a symptom, your symptoms were different, but really you're mentally ill, which was a huge step up from the spirit possession that had you know, it had previously been ascribed to or millions of years. Yeah, um, so it was. It's a

fairly recently classified mental illness. It wasn't until that. Um. A German psychiatrist name Emil Crapelin classified schizophrenia as a mental illness, and uh, he missed classified it as a form of dementia early and early type of dementia. And then in nineteen eleven a Swiss psychiatrist named Yugen Bleuler came up with the name schizophrenia. That's right, Josh, and he uh got that word from the Greek words for split and mind, which contribute somewhat to the misconception that

it is a split personality disorder. But what he meant was there's a disconnect with reality, right, the mind splits from reality, which today we still that's how you still perceive um schizophrenia, but rather than split, we use the word break. There's a psychotic break. Yeah, and we should go ahead and just uh, since that is a common misconception, it is entirely different than split personality disorder, which they call disassociative identity disorder. Now, and if you know the

movie the show United States of Terra, have you seen that? No, I know what you're talking about though, with Tony let she is has split personality disorder on that show. And that's the one that you've always seen in the movies where you have multiple personalities and they don't know about each other, and one dominates the other. And uh, and then what all about Eve was about? I never saw that sybil civil Yeah for sure, but it's not schizophrenia.

That they have done nothing to do with each other other than they're both types of mental illness, and um, Hollywood is fascinated by them, that's right. Um. So yeah, well, and that's that's a pretty good example, like of medicines is starting to get ahold of what schizophrenia is, what mental illnesses you know, in general, and then the public at large still just being completely under educated about it. Um,

so let's educate people about it. Yeah. I want to say too that this is like a lot of conditions UM and disorders that developed later in life. To me, that's this one of the ski areous things that can happen, like your cruising along at years old and you think, like you know, I'm all good, and you can develop schizophrenia like a boom in a matter of weeks. Sometimes. Yeah, it can either come on gradually or very suddenly in

an acute manner. Um And like you said, later in life with men, schizophrenia usually develops UM in the late teens or early twenties is when it starts UM or in women, it's the mid twenties or the early thirties. So yeah, by the time, by the time I was thirty, I certainly didn't think I was going to become mentally ill. No, you thought, I know my demons. You can write them down in a list. I can quit them anytime I want.

And that's what they are, their self imposed demons, right, this this is it wasn't something that was beyond my control that happened to my mind. And yeah, that's how schizophrenia hit you hit you later in life, and it can happen all at once or gradually. And this is not to scare the crap out of you if you're in your teens or twenties, because there's only about a one percent chance schizophrenia. It depends if if you're part

of the general population, there's a one percent chance. But as we'll see that there are risk factors that increase your chances of having schizophrenia. And no, we're not trying to scare you. But then I guess kind of the newest forms of treatment or newest thoughts about treating schizophrenia is to make people aware of it, uh so that they will be able to recognize it early on, and apparently early treatment leads to a better success rate. I

think we'll talk about that across the board. But chuck, um, there's two kinds of symptoms of schizophrenia and they're positive and negative. And it's not like positive symptom means you hallucinate bunnies, where negative symptom means you hallucinate like a hell demon. Instead, positive symptom is like an exaggeration of normal behavior. So like I see you, I hear things, but I don't see you with horns, and I don't hear Kermit here talking to me. Right, Um, So a

positive symptom is an exaggerated behavior. Negative symptom is the absence of normal behavior, like you lack affect or the ability to experience any emotion um or you you basically are just generally apathetic, right and so it so those are that's positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Yes, and uh, certain negative symptoms are cognitive that deal a lot with attention span and memory. Um, lack of memory an ability to like plan anything or organize anything. Right. And then

another form of negative I should say, is called evolition. Um. It's basically I think crippler the guy who first classified schizophrenia, call it the annihilation of the will, where you're just so withdrawn you can't. You no longer engage in gold directive behavior, from brushing your teeth to paying your bills to doing anything. You just totally withdrawn. So that's that's that's not the form of schizophrenia you usually hear about,

but apparently it's fairly common. Yeah, so get diagnosed. Uh, Josh, you have to um, exhibit a certain number of these symptoms over at least six months without stopping. Right. Yeah, um, if you have uh, is it schizophrenic form? Is like a shorter it's schizophrenia, but it lasts less than six months. Yeah,

that's schizophrenic form. Good point. But if you according to the d s M, and we should say like this is you know, it's based on clinical observations or whatever, but this is the d s M saying six months, it may be you may have schizophrenia and you just haven't reached the six months you know period yet, but you're still schizophrenic. But to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist or a psychologist who's a member of the a p A, you have to have X number of symptoms for six

months or more. Yeah, and they have to do that because it's like the same as the cops when they say, you can't find a missing person's report unless they've been gone for twenty four hours. And it's not like that, but it's sort of like that. Now there's like a law, I think in Michigan called Kaylee's Law or something that they're introducing where if you're a parent and you don't report your kid missing after twenty four hours is a felony. Really,

what kind of parent wouldn't do that? The parent that Casey Anthony, Yeah, made the kid go away allegedly alleged. Not In general. Uh, schizophrenia apparently, as how it's pronounced, can take a few forms. Uh. One you've probably heard about most is paranoid schizophrenia, which is when you have the full on delusions and hallucinations and uh, then there's disorganized that is disorganized thinking. Uh, your behavior is probably incoherent.

It's also called hypophrenic. Really and you you probably don't exhibit a lot of emotion. Yeah. Well, usually like there's a negative simp them coupled with um disorganized behavior, so it's almost like two separate things. I think you can be hypophrenic without being negative. There's catatonic um that means you move around and talk excessively. Um. Yeah, that was a surprise to me. I always thought, you know, catatonic

state where you're just like's not a thing too. But it also says they may become still an uncommunicat so it can be one or the other. Yeah, but I guess it has to do with motion or movement or lack of. It's catatonic. Undifferentiated means that it's just sort of the umbrella term for when you have a mix of symptoms and they don't want to classify you as

one specific kind. And then residual is if you have a history um of schizophrenia but you have a long, extended period of time with no negative I'm sorry, with negative but no positive symptoms, they'll classify you as residual, which you know, I guess that's better than paranoid schizophrenia in a way. I don't think any form of schizophrenia is right. It would that would be it would be horrible. This is a horrible disease. That's like the curb your enthusiasm.

When Larry asked if that some one had Good Hodgkins from the Party of five episode is what he was referencing when Charlie got sick. He had quote unquote good Hodgkins and they were like, they were so offended. There there's no good Hodgens. He's like, yeah, but one's better than the other, right, And they were just like, you're

such a jerky never seen anything like that, Yeah, pretty much. Uh. And then we mentioned schizophrenic form, which is an abbreviated version of schizophrenia, and then this one has to be just horrible schizo effective disorder. It's any kind of schizophrenia couple with the mood disorder like depression. All right, so um, we should probably say there's delusions and there's hallucinations, uh, mixed in together often with schizophrenic symptoms, and they're often confused.

But a delusion is a false belief and and hallucination is a false sensation like Hey, I'm Jesus Christ. That would be a delusion, or hey there's Jesus Christ on top of that subway car, that would be a hallucination. Yeah, and you can extend that to anything. It doesn't have to be Jesus or a subway car. Um. But the there's just studying hallucinations and delusions are really really interesting in my opinion. Um, the most common hallucination is auditory

among schizophrenics, and the most common auditory hallucination is our voices. Yeah, they hear voices that can come from anywhere from this kermit, the frog could start talking to me, or it could come from thin air, or it could come from the electrical outlet in the wall. Um and uh, the voices say. Usually it's like one word, a couple of words, there's

an implication of word. Sometimes it's indistinct mumbling. Um. On occasion, very rare occasions, will the voice like ramble on coherently where the patient understands, like long sentences, but um that they also maybe commenting on what the person is doing is very um common. Yeah, Usually it's um, not a voice that they recognize, although that can happen as well.

Yeah right, Uh. And then sometimes there's more than one voice and even more disconcerting, lee, the voices will argue about the patient, which that's wow, Well those I mean, there's a guy on Martha that I see that and a lot of people that you see that are walking down the streets screaming out out loud. They there's probably a pretty good chance that they might be paranoid schizophrenics, and they are yelling at the voice in their head. That reminds me of the stand up that I saw

when I was a kid in the eighties. Uh. This guy was like this. This comedian said he was walking down the street and he walked past this guy was talking to himself and it's just mumbling, sounded so angry, and the comedian goes and I thought, man, that guy is really crazy. He's talking to himself. And then I thought, wait, who am I talking to? Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, I talked to myself all day long. I have arguments

in my head. But of course it's not the same thing. No, um, no, you don't have two voices arguing over what you're doing at that moment and what's best for you or whether you should hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Not making light of that. Uh. And the reason that a percentage of frightening percentage of schizophrenics kill themselves is a lot of times because the voice in their head may command them to do so. Right there, there, there's such a thing

as um commanding hallucinations. Which is sometimes they could be suggestive like, um, maybe we should go outside for a while, or they could be like go outside, you know. And it's not always scary, like they just point out. Sometimes it's uh, hey you need to shave again, right, and you'll go shave again. Yeah, it can be innocuous, but it can it can lead to violence, or it can urge violence. Apparently the vast majority of people who suffer

uh dangerous command hallucinations are able to suppress them. But it's a struggle and you know this is going on in this person's head. Yeah, and rarely. And I wondered about this too before I got to that point in the article that you sent me early. Do you hear like a really great things, like you're doing great today and you should go and smell it. You know. It's interesting that it usually takes a dark turn and they don't know why. No, they don't. Um. There's also hallucinations

of touch haptic hallucinations, which sound pretty awful. Um, things are crawling on you, things are inside of you trying to get out. Your bowels are shriveling. Um, you're being jolted by electricity is a very common one. And then delusions obviously, or any like any false belief. There's some that like you are Jesus Christ. That's a delusion, right, um. But there's there was one subcategory that caught my attention that I wasn't aware of. It's called delusion of reference. Yeah,

tell me about that. Well. It's basically like every single thing that goes on in life is full of meaning. Right. So, like in this Brown University sheet I sent you, there's a like a waiter leaving a chroma on the table. That's purposeful. It's an insult to the patient, like the the busboy or the waiter did that on purpose as an insult or Um. The street lights coming on all of a sudden, it is a signal for everybody to swarm on you and finally take you away or kill

you or whatever. Like everything in life has meaning and it's making you. It's it's fueling this paranoia. Your mind is turning against you. It's pretty awful. We said, it's awful. Yeah, okay, yes, it is quite awful. Um, But people live with this. Yeah. I mean we painted a dark picture because it is a dark disorder, but the majority of people in fact stet time. Uh after ten years. If you want to know, after ten years of diagnosis with schizophrenia completely recover are

much improved and relatively independent. And percent are improved but require a pretty extensive support network. So that's of people after diagnosis after a decade, are are dealing with it fairly well. Um, that's it's very hopeful. That's not bad.

Are unimproved. Ten percent, unfortunately, are dead, probably by suicide. Yeah, well, ten percent at least of UM schizophrenics commit suicide, which is incredibly high because in the general population of the United States, point zero one percent of people commit suicide to point zero one percent. Yeah, and that's people who are successful. They think it could be attempts could be as high as f people that try to kill themselves. Just uh, I mean imagine sometimes the voices say to

do it, and sometimes it's just a fine piece. Yeah. I was wondering what the breakdown between those two is. UM. And then violence is often attendant with schizophrenics, at least in the public mind, right, but you're dangerous. Apparently studies have shown I remember reading about this when we talked about latent inhibition. Um that if you are typically violent when these uh, when the symptoms set when you're like early twenties or whatever. Um, you're going to possibly be

a violent schizophrenic. If you're not a very violent person, you're it's just not part of your personality before the symptoms set in. Then you're not going to be a violence schizophrenic unless you abuse drugs or alcohol, which apparently vastly increases the chances that you may be a violence schizophrenic. Yeah, and even then, I think the violence is generally either self inflicted or it takes place inside the home, like

against your family, which is not good. But the point is, if you're walking down the street and sadly you see the homeless man screaming out loud, you don't necessarily need to be afraid that he's about to, you know, attack you in a violent manner. Right, that's probably not going to happen, Chuck. Let's say you do want to talk to that schizophrenic homeless man over there, but you don't want to make things worse for him, right, But you

don't want to ignore him. He's another human being. Um. The National Institutes of Mental Health have UM suggestions I guess for talking to schizophrenics and specifically with their families who have to deal with delusions and hallucinations all the time, specifically delusions. Um, apparently you don't. You don't contest what they're saying. Yeah, you don't want to say you're not Jesus Christ what you're talking about. Yeah, you don't. Definitely

don't know. You say, um, I respect your right to believe different things, and I hope you'll respect my right to believe different things. But I I, you know, politely disagree. And what you also don't want to do is agree and say I know, honey, you are Jesus. Right, You're okay,

you're Jesus and it's fine. Yes. A lot of people probably take that tack in the family, you know, well, yeah, first, I mean, at the very least, because it's it's just easier after a while, it's like yes, yes, or you get so frustrated you're like no, you're not, and you want to shake the person. Um. But yeah, apparently, And I wonder how hard it is to say, well, I

respectfully disagree with you. Yeah. I bet it's hard, you know, and if it, if it does go over as well as as it seems like it that it suggested it should, right, you know, all right, Josh, I think this was really interesting, the recovery in the Third World part. Yeah, Apparently the World Health Organization did a study in the nineteen sixties and uh I found that the recovery rate for schizophrenia and developing nations is higher by a full third than

it is in the industrialized world. And then they did a follow up study even to correct possible selection biases, and they confirmed the original all finding, and I thought that was really interesting. And they There's a lot of hypotheses, but one of them is that a there might not be a stigma like in the industrialized world, and they're just more readily accepted. And the other is that they might be able to have a job that they can

do successfully. And here in the West, farming or digging, you know, digging the trench for the farm or whatever. Here in the West were very competitive. Yeah, it's hard to get a job that a schizophrenic can maybe successfully complete, right, And I mean, the rest of us are paranoid enough as it is about losing our jobs. If you are clinically paranoid schizophrenic, then it's probably going to be very difficult to keep your job true or do it in a way that will help you keep your job. That's

very true. But Josh, there have been some successful stories of people that are afflicted with schizophrenia. Well, some some more successful and some Sid Barrett was successful, but I don't know if you call him a success story. Was up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Yeah, said Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd schizophrenic, and they believe that massive amounts of drugs that he used made it worse, way worse. John, he is he is the

crazy Diamond. Yeah, shine on you, Crazy Diamond. I love that song. That's a good one. All four parts of it, right, and they're like part I think up to part four, is it? Yeah? Yeah, John Nash, Yeah, from the movie A Beautiful Mind, the Ron Howard film with Russell Crowe as John Nash, the Nobel winner to figure out that cable companies would do better if they cooperated with one another. That's right, And that movie did a lot for putting this on the map in a compassionate way, you know.

And Jack Caro whact did you know that one? That one's debatable. Okay. He was in the Navy and they discharged him honorably after I think like a little less than a year and and the report they said he had schizoid tendencies. But um, other people have said that he faked that stuff to get out of the navy, uh and just wanted to not take orders and drink himself to death, which is what he did. And Pop

Benny's do you know how he died? No, he woke up and was just like coughing blood and bleeding from his mouth and basically was like, I gotta go the hospital. Took him to the hospital and he was his liver was so shot that his blood wooden clot and they just were giving him transfusion one after the other and he just basically bled to death. Holy cow from drinking Holy cow. And he was drinking at the time. He was drinking whiskey and uh like whiskey and malt liquor.

When he started blood started coming out of his mouth. I wonder how it tastes. Would you shake or stir that? And I don't think he mixed him. I think he was like whiskey with a beer back in a garness with a drop of blood. So, kids, there's a lesson for you there. Here. There's one more person who is indisputably schizophrenic or was His name is Wesley Willis. Who's that? He is a musician who had such songs as well. Really, the only title I can say is rock and roll McDonald's.

I don't I've never heard of him. You you have had to have heard of Wesley Willis. Okay, let me play you a little Wesley Willis right here. McDonald's is a place to rock. It is a restaurant where they buy food, beat. It is a good place to listen to the music. People flock here to get down to the rock music. Rocky romcdono, Rocky ro mcdono, brocka romdono, rocky roommate, donle so Chuck. That's Wesley will Okay, Okay,

And um, he was very much schizophrenic. Um he wrote about it a lot, He talked about it a lot of his songs. And um, he said he'd just be going along, having a nice time riding the bus. I believe he lived in Chicago, and then all of a sudden, his um, his hell demons would take him on one of his torture hell rides, which meant he was going on a little bit of an exacerbation of his schizophrenia symptoms.

But he's a great, great guy, great music, very prolific and uh, if you liked that, you should go watch Daddy of Rock and Roll as a documentary. But yeah, it's really good. I'll check that out. Yeah, Lionel Aldridge is a last name on our list. And he was a Green Bay packer and he was homeless unfortunately after he was diagnosed for a while and then later was able to climb out from that wreckage and go around and talk about mental illness. And he was he was

playing in the sixties, the seventies. I think it was late sixties or seventies. So think about it. Man, that's a big deal to go around and talk publicly about mental illness at that time, and it still is now, but I mean, like back then, that's hats off to him. Yeah, he was the guy that I included in the presentation that you did by yourself. Okay that you're like, he was this guy? Yeah, all right, I understand now. Yeah,

it's all coming together. So chuck, um, what causes this? Well, uh, it seems like there are environmental factors and there are genetic factors. Um. They have isolated what they believe are some genes, the d I, s C one, the disbanden, the neuragoulin, and the G seven two genes, and they think there might be up to a dozen more genes that could impact this. Okay, So the basis of that is that they can't just look at your genes and

say you're you're going to be schizophrenic. It's possible that it's because we just haven't isolated all the genes and don't know the right combination yet, or it's possible that it's from other causes, one of which one of the theories that's out there right now is that it's the result of an in utero exposure to either a flu or the dread toxoplasmosis. Remember toxoplasmosis that hijacks rats brains,

that's found in cat urine. That's why if you have a cat and you're pregnant, you don't be clean enough that litter box, right, um, And they think that one of the reasons, well, I guess one of the evident pieces of evidence that supports this is called the birth month effect. And the birth month effect is um, if you were born in winter months or early spring months, you are at a higher risk for mean schizophrenics in life,

and they think that those are flu months UM. And another aspect of it is apparently the brains of schizophrenics show inflamed white blood cells, which is a sign of an infection. And they think that possibly all of us are carrying around a retrovirus encoded in our genes that lies dormant like ms that under the right circumstances like early exposure between infection um can trigger its release or trigger its activation and it takes eighteen to twenty to

thirty years to come on. Now you see why people that are pregnant are worried a lot. It's amazing that like we've gotten anywhere. Yeah, so what else? Uh well, they did do have some new findings. I got this today, um from the internets. They have a new South Wales study from Thomas which kert He has identified the brain

mechanism that derails decision making in people. So basically the part of the brain is called the ventral stratium I'm sorry, stry Adam, and it lights up you know, they put people in the m all right, lights up when in response to rewards and healthy people and it's linked to your decision making. But completely unresponsive among schizophrenics. So they don't uh, they don't know the difference between expected and unexpected rewards, and so they don't have the opportunity to

make a good decision to begin with. And that, you know, it's a it's a nice finding. It doesn't get us any closer. Well, maybe it does, you never know. They say, with proper funding that they predicted they could have a cure for this. Well, yeah, but they don't get proper funding. But they're UM. They're looking into stem cells, right, they're looking into UM figuring out if it is an infection and if so like adding that UM. And we've also

long had antipsychotics. One of the things, strangely enough, that helped developed anti psychotics, or better antipsychotics UM is PCP. Apparently researchers figured out that UM phenyl cycladine UM or fencycladin PCP, the drug angel dust UM, produced such similar symptoms to schizophrenia that they started investigating and found that it had to do with UM the neurotransmitter glutamate, right, right, domine right, Yes, well it has to do with both.

But the emphasis before on anti psychotics was strictly dopamine and all it all it did was keep dopamine in the synapse is longer by blocking its reuptake by receptors. That's what antipsychotics do. And then in the eighties, after the PCP stuff, UM, they figured out that there was glutamate was involved and they came up with a typical antipsychotics, and these focus somewhat on dopamine, but more on things like glutamate and it's re up to ache and uh.

These things have produced better results with fewer side effects, so um, they're they're figuring out how to treat it. The problem is that there's all sorts of side effects even even with atypical UM antipsychotics, like weight gain, drowsiness, servishness, nervousness, muscle spasms, yeah allum. Bulging eyes apparently is one, and I guess most of the stuff can be treated by lowering the dosage, but they're they're bothersome enough that a lot of people just go off their meds, and you

know that doesn't help ect. Electro Convulsive therapy is another thing that they still do. It's not something a relic from the fifties. It's changed a lot, and how they do it and they're not sure still how it exactly works. They stopped using car batteries, but about a hundred thousand Americans each year still receive e c T, So that is an option. And obviously the group therapy and family therapy help just the dealing with it aspect of the family. Yes,

so we encourage you to seek help as soon as possible. Yeah, And apparently families can help in very little ways. They're encouraged to UM set small goals. Apparently, if especially if you UM have lost your drive or your will as a result of your schizophrenia, or you're disorganized, it can just be compounded by all the you know, like when your life is disorganized, it seems just completely unwieldy, Like

where do I start right now? If if that's a symptom of your schizophrenia, it's it's just that much worse.

So if you can help a schizophrenic get back on track by setting small goals and building up their confidence again, apparently that has a measurable effect in their recovery UM and then the like the one of the leading edges of UM schizophrenia treatment right now is based on the this thing called the per drome, which is the period between on set of symptoms where you think maybe I am Jesus Christ and the time when that seems like

your reality. So it's this point where you're starting to have the ideas, but they still seem bizarre or weird or why am I having these ideas? So if you apparently seek out treatment for schizophrenia when you start to have these ideas, um in the prodrome, the success rate

of treatment is through the roof. Like, Yes, this British doctor in the late eighties set up shop in these two towns outside of London and he's set to work finding every potential early case of schizophrenia he could and he started treating people with therapy and low doses of anti psychotics and in four years those two towns had a tenth of the prevalence of schizophrenia than the rest

of the country. Yeah, so apparently, like this pro drome research, there's like clinics that are opening up and like entire like departments in universities are dedicated to this per drome period where you can be like, come, come back, come, this is reality. Yeah, and they're successful or they have been so far. Well, Josh, I got one more stat if you live in a city of three million people, then over twenty one thousand people in your city are

suffering from schizophrenia. So well keep that in mind. Yes, don't make fun of people. Don't obviously get scared or violent and in a reactive way. I don't know that. I'm gonna say, like, you should go over and talk to them, like you might want to just be compassionate and uh and hopefully they're getting help, you know what I'm saying. Yes, go to schizophrenia dot com. You can find all kinds of good information. And if you hadn't already checked out Wesley Willis, check him out. He was

a great guy. Check out The Daddy or Rock and Roll and um, also, I would say, in addition to how schizophrenia works, UM required reading for this one is an article called Which Way Madness Lies? By Rachel Lviv. It was in the December issue of Harper's And I have a link. I'll I'll tweet it. I'll tweet the link out with that. It sounds great. If you want more about schizophrenia, UM, there's plenty of it. There's an article and then some on the site. Just type schizophrenia,

which again means split mind. That's right into the search bar at how stuff works dot com and that brings up what chuck listener? Now, yes, Josh specifically corrections. Oh wow, I forgot about those. Yeah. Well, well we'll correct ourselves on Facebook and stuff. But they mounted up, so sure we want us, we'll go for it. How wildfires work? Oh, man, I don't have this guy's name. A couple of people sending this in. Uh, the flashpoint of paper is not

fahrenheit for fifty one, I said books. The flash point of books is not fahrenheit for fifty one. It is fahrenheit eight fifty one celsius four fifty and a Bradbury apparently changed the title because fahrenheit for fifty one sounds a lot better than celsius for fifty Apparently what was one? No celsius for fifty is the flashpoint or fahrenheight eight sounds as good as four, I think, yeah, okay, but I assume that as well. Man, I wish I had his name. You know who you are. And it was

a very nice correction. Those are the ones we like to read. Uh. Then we got a correction on who was the first murderer. Apparently David says, and even sent in a copy of one by Charles Mann. What where what he's an email? No, not a not a He sent a scanned copy of the page in he says. Charles Mann says. Although Billington was in fact hanged, at least two other Europeans were executed before him. One was convicted for the much more interesting offense of killing his

pregnant wife and eating her. So how about that, he said, those on page fifty five. Yeah, there it is. That is crazy, okay, But still Billington is a very noteworthy figure. Obviously sees a whole chapter on him. And then we got some uh oh. First of all, some people wrote in about wildfires in Georgia when I said, oh, Georgia, and that wildfires South Georgia does, and there's actually one

going on right now in the Okefinoki. So I misspoke for sure, because I was just talking about the North Georgia mountains, which are very lush and green, but South Georgia can get quite dry, and there are wildfires in Georgia. I did not know that that is true. And then finally we got an email from an actual Hindu named kush k U s h and Kush says, you guys missed a few things. Hinduism typically, I'm sorry, technically only has one god, not a pantheon. It's complicated to explain,

especially no non Hindus. But the general ideas there is one universal soul or god that encompasses everything, called the brah Brahman, that not the Brohm, and every living thing has a part of that in us called the Atman. The different gods are just different forms of the one Brahman. Also, you didn't properly explain the laws of karma. The law of karma has three parts in Hinduism. One the performer ofman action will get the result to the result of

the action will come right at the right time. And three good actions bring good results, Bad actions bring bad results. And fourth, the gods are technically subject to karma if you also expand the definition of karma to include the law of karma. But he says it was a good podcast overall, you guys really hit it on the head except for these peop points. He did not hit it on the head cover that No, well, just for that

one part. And finally he pointed out, and a few other people pointed out that I was wrong in correcting you with Jainism and ye's jaine is Um. Thank you, but gonna play you something right now? Okay, okay, that was from dictionary dot com. Well that that voice is obviously wrong. Maybe so this is from Mariam Webster. If it's the same voice, it doesn't count twice did you hear that that's a different voice? Did that one come through Matt? Okay? And then finally, this is Google definitions

and this is my favorite of all. Actually I don't like for this. Wow, So I don't know because I had like three other people said no, many other robots, no, three other real people said no, it's jain is um. And then I went on YouTube and people said jain is um. So I don't know. Well, I like that it's both we're both right, yea, or we're both wrong. Yeah, yeah, it was genis um. Well, we love corrections so much that I managed to forget that we or are corrected

a lot, or we used to read them. I never forget that we're corrected. Um, but let's do this again soon. Agree, Go through all fifty episodes, find everything you can that's wrong with them, and then let us know. Okay, okay or you can just correct the most recent ones whatever we got wrong in this one, which I'm sure is substantial. Um.

You can go on Facebook if you want. You can tweet to us s y s K podcast, or you can send us a plain old fashion email at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page

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