Psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia is not compatible with the facts of modern science

A Few thoughts prompted by this article in Psychology Today

The Oct 16 issue of the Scientific American has a short piece on “Massive Study Reveals Schizophrenia’s Genetic Roots.” These roots are, we learn, incredibly complicated. A huge consortium involving more than 300 scientists from 35 countries found “128 gene variants associated with schizophrenia, in 108 distinct locations in the human genome.”

Wow, eh?

This “genome-wide association study” found so many mutations in the molecular pairs of the 113,000 people it studied that . . . I can’t tell you. The mind boggles at how complicated “schizophrenia” must be.

Unless there is no such thing as schizophrenia.

The obvious conclusion seems not to have occurred to the Scientific American commentators: It is not that schizophrenia is “incredibly complicated,” but that there are several different diseases buried under the term “schizophrenia,” each with a genetics of its own.

[...]

It is a sign of the diminished American interest in psychopathology that all of these symptoms, which are highly diverse, each pointing in a different direction, have all been lumped together as “schizophrenia,” which makes as much sense as lumping measles, syphilis, and gangrene together as “skin diseases.”

[...] it was all dumped together in the same cauldron. Catatonia, adolescent insanity, psychosis at midlife, paranoia, who cares? It was all “schizophrenia.”

And this is the inheritance we’re now living with, as the geneticists take the phenotypes they’ve inherited from psychiatry and try to make sense of the anomalies they find on the DNA – which up to now, after billions of dollars and decades of research – have been indecipherable.

So, hunting for schizophrenia’s “genetic roots,” are we? Good luck with that.

But it all gets worse. As seen in this blog article "Biology and Genetics are Irrelevant Once True Causes are Recognized"

As superbly reviewed by psychologist John Read in the 2013 second edition of Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis, since the turn of the 21st century many studies have linked schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions to childhood adversities such as having experienced bullying, emotional abuse, incest, neglect, parental loss, physical abuse, or sexual abuse—findings that are well known to clinicians who work with people diagnosed with psychotic disorders.

Read reviewed research linking schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders to social environments such as poverty, racism, migratory stress, and urbanicity. He concluded, “There is ample evidence that inequality, deprivation and discrimination, filtered through their social and personal meanings, are key causal factors in psychosis.” Psychological processes identified by Read and his colleagues, through which childhood adversities may lead to symptoms of psychosis later in life, include attachment, dissociation, dysfunctional cognitive processes, psychodynamic defenses, problematic coping responses, impaired access to social support, behavioral sensitization, and revictimization. A biologically oriented commentator might object that even if these factors play a role in causing schizophrenia and psychosis, only people who are genetically predisposed will develop them, and it is therefore important to understand and study hereditary factors. Aside from the fact that the evidence in support of genetics is weak, a clear understanding of the environmental causes of a condition frequently renders potential genetic factors irrelevant.

For example, 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days in a copper mine near Copiapó, Chile in 2010. Although the miners were finally rescued and were treated as heroes, and in some cases as celebrities, many subsequently developed severe psychological symptoms caused by their ordeal, such as depression, anxiety, nightmares, and avoidant behavior. Because the causes of these symptoms are obvious and recognized, no one to my knowledge has suggested that the miners have genetically based brain disorders or “chemical imbalances.” It is clear that the miners’ experiences caused their symptoms, and the symptoms of most psychiatric conditions can also be seen in this way.

Simply, psychiatric diagnoses are not compatible with the facts of modern science