From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 10:36:28 MDT
Hello Sylvia,
Sylvia Morscher:
>so i am suspicious when people want to make laws to force menatlly ill
>people to take "their" drugs,
Laws ? No, I don't support that. Hopefully to convince an ill person
to take their medication is the role of the family and friends,
as difficult as that can be.
(Which will often fail because:
>even though an artifact of the illness is
>often the refusal to believe one is ill.
)
>many people can have very odd resons for clinging to delusional thinking,
>and not all of these are entirely due to schizophrenia.
I agree.
some quotes in answer to Lee:
"Based on studies of gross pathology, microscopic pathology,
neurochemistry, cerebral blood flow and metabolism, as well as
electrical, neurological neuropsychological measures, schizophrenia
has been clearly established to be a brain disease just as surely as
multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease are
established as brain diseases. The dichotomy used in the past,
whereby schizophrenia was classified as a 'functional' disorder as
distinct from an 'organic' disorder, is now known to be inaccurate;
schizophrenia has impeccable credentials for admission to the
organic category." (_Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual_
by E. Fuller Torrey, 1983, pg. 138.)
"Szasz' theories deserve refutation only because they have been so
widely circulated. Szasz himself conducts a traditional psychoanalytic
practice for individuals with problems of living; there is nothing in
his writings to suggest that he has any experience with or ever treats
patients with schizophrenia. Moreover, schizophrenia is now regularly
tested in a scientific fashion and the evidence that schizophrenia is
a brain disease is overwhelming. The theories of Thomas Szasz about
schizophrenia, therefore, have been relegated to the shelf of quirks
of medical history." (ibid., pg. 165)
Amara
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