What Causes Schizophrenia?

[Ginger Breggin]

my husband's colleague and one of our dearest friends, Dr. Bertram Karon, was interviewed in 2007. I'm including a link below. Dr. Karon was asked what causes schizophrenia and he replied:

 

Dr. Bertram Karon said: if you look at all the data we have and all the case studies... schizophrenics are very sick human beings. What it really is, is primarily, a chronic terror syndrome. We're supposed to feel terrified for a minute, maybe for half an hour when there's a danger but if you feel you are in danger of being destroyed and you have to live that way for days, weeks, months, or years... the toll on you is terrible. All of the symptoms of schizophrenia are either aspects of the terror syndrome or defenses against it. And that includes, the catatonic state where people become rigid which we've demonstated in animals occurs when they seem they are on the verge of dying. The hallucinations and delusions which all human beings are capable of doing but most of us will never have to do...

 

The best evidence of this goes back to WWII. There was a situation in WWII where every solder who went through it -- and they were always sent for treatment -- looked like the sickest, most chronic schizophrenics. And the situation was very simple: people were out there shooting at you, trying to kill you. And so you dug a foxhole as quick as you could and you could barely get into it, and as soon as you could barely get into it, you got into it, so you wouldn't die. And they kept shooting at you trying to kill you, so you didn't move... when your food ran out you stopped eating... if you had to urinate or defecate you did it on yourself. And if this went on for more than three days and nights, every single soldier looked like the most chronic, sickest schizophrenic. The strange thing was however, if they were reasonably healthy people beforehand, when brought to a place of security and safety and just given rest, they got better spontaneously.

 

At the time, people said it couldn't be schizophrenia because we know that it doesn't get better. The long term studies however ... done in 12 different countries now indicate that irrespective of treatment, 30% of schizophrenics completely recover within 25 years. There have been studies from Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia, the United States, Germany... they all find the same thing. Unfortunately, the best of the American studies -- that of Courtney Harding, which studied patients from Vermont -- found that the patients got better in 20 years but the patients who stayed on their medication as long as their doctors told them to, none of them ever recovered. 50% of the patients eventually stopped taking their medication against medical advise and all of the patients who had a full recovery were in that group.... read more here:http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2007/03/dr-b...

 

 

We highly recomment Dr. Karon's book:

Psychotherapy of schizophrenia: The treatment of choice. by Karon, B.P. & VandenBos, G.R. (1981). New York: Aronson.

[Alan Gorman]

As a parent of a son who was diagnosed about five years ago and then placed on very heavy doses of multiple psychiatric drugs I can attest to the harm the drugs do and the significant value in an empathic approach to treatment. Our lives began changing when we withdrew his drugs and began altering our relationship.

 

Dr. Bertram Karon was instrumental in providing the catalyst for change. I had come across a paper Dr. Karon had authored "The Tragedy of Schizophrenia Without Psychotherapy" and that paper became the catalyst for change. It opened up the possibility that there was another approach that might be undertaken in order to support recovery. I contacted my very dear friend the late Mary Karon who helped immensely. Dr. Karon had suffered a bad car accident at the time. Mary's guidance and encouragement were always a blessing and more than enough to get us started. Later I found Dr. Jack Rosberg who was equally helpful and who provided significant insight into the processes of pychotherapy.

 

So off we went, father and son, in the face of all of the denial and criticism that suggested that the only solution is neuroleptic drugs, often multiple neuroleptics and then antidepressants and others to counteract the effects of the neuroleptics. In Canada you won't find a psychiatrist to aid in withdrawing the drugs so we undertook the task on our own; gradually reducing one drug and eliminating it and then another until they were all eliminated. We spent hours and hours talking, incurred a few bumps in the road, worked through a psychotic episode without drugs and I believe are nearing the end of a long road of recovery. Life then becomes about growth and not recovery.

 

I read Dr. Breggin's book "Medication Madness" at Mary's insistence and it provides great insight into many of the reasons why my son took impulsive action, was heavily engaged in suicidal fantasy, and incurred long bouts of depression and immobility when psychiatrists had him on the drugs. Interesting enough none of these side effects occurred when we worked through a psychotic break with no psychiatric drugs and though he experienced a bery brief period of depression afterward it was consistent with what any normal person would occupy themself with after an acute illness, or a major disappointing life event.

 

I am pleased to have joined your social network and wish you my very best regards in continuing your good work. I am concerned that we need to broaden the understanding out further and keep the conversation living. Those who truly understand the alternatives in my experience are all individuals who started their practice before or very early after pharmacology hit the scene.