Vitamins Can Replace Tranquilizers

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Vitamins Can Replace Tranquilizers

 

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The Future of Psychiatry

by Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

 

Recently, in an orthodox medical journal, the question was discussed whether

psychiatrists were still going to be needed. Basically, modern psychiatrists

have two main treatment functions: they prescribe drugs - tranquilizers or

antidepressants; and they may also do psychotherapy or counseling. It was

suggested that general practitioners are just as capable of prescribing drugs,

and that psychologists and counselors are perhaps even more capable of doing

psychotherapy and counseling. In other words, the family physicians could

initiate the medical regimen, and the psychologists could take over the

counseling function.

This was not a very radical idea as it has been happening for many decades.

Psychiatrists themselves have started deserting the really seriously ill--the

schizophrenics, the senile states, the personality disorders--and have devoted

themselves more and more to the more benign forms of disease such as depression

and mild anxiety conditions. And general practitioners have become more and more

skillful at treating seriously ill psychiatric diseases. I know many physicians

(MDs, osteopaths, naturopaths, chiropractors) who practice orthomolecular

medicine, and who have a much higher cure rate when treating schizophrenics than

do the psychiatrists in their area who work only with drugs. In Saskatchewan

many years ago, a family physician was so effective local psychiatrists

complained about him. Later he lost his license to practice medicine.

Over the past 100 years, psychiatric conditions that were almost exclusively

treated in

mental hospitals have disappeared from psychiatry because they were treated

successfully by general practitioners. In a book on psychiatry written about

1900, the four differential diagnoses for psychosis were pellagra, scurvy,

general paresis of the insane and dementia praecox. The treatment for pellagra

was dietary until niacin was recognized to be vitamin B3 in about 1935. Pellagra

has disappeared; at one time it made up as much as one-third of all admissions

to mental hospitals in the southern U.S.A. It became the province of the early

pellagrologists. But they were no longer needed when synthetic vitamin B3 became

available and was added to white flour in the U.S.A. and Canada. Most

psychiatrists today would not recognize it if a patient with pellagra walked

into their office. Scurvy severe enough to cause psychosis is no longer present.

Syphilis responded to the physician and the needle, and is rarely found in

mental hospitals.

But dementia praecox, the disease, did not disappear. It was simply renamed

schizophrenia, and has remained the major problem for psychiatry. Freud

recognized that psychoanalysis would have a short career, only until the

physicians with their syringe (drugs) came along. He knew nothing about

nutrition and nutrients when he practiced. The process of breaking the broad

group of the schizophrenias into unitary syndromes still goes on. Arising from

our work in Saskatchewan in 1960, Carl C. Pfeiffer was able to divide

schizophrenias into three broad groups: those excreting krytopyrrole, the high

histamine group, and the low histamine group. Each group requires a different

treatment plan, and when they are followed the results are very good. He

recognized a fourth large group, the cerebral allergies. But orthodox psychiatry

is not aware of this useful subdivision and looks upon each schizophrenic as a

member of the same class-a class for which the only treatment is to be

tranquilized.

If modern psychiatry did its job effectively, there would be no need to consider

replacing them with their more biochemically oriented colleagues. The results of

modern drug treatment are not very good compared to what was obtained before the

tranquilizers were introduced. Thus, at a symposium held in Vancouver in the

fall of 1995 sponsored by the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Dr. Alan Brier,

Chief, Unit of Pathophysiology and Treatment, Experimental Therapeutics Branch,

National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, is quoted as saying,

" Eighty-five percent of all people with schizophrenia who are treated with

neuroleptic drugs are deriving suboptimal benefits. So it is clear that new and

better drugs are needed " . He should have said, more appropriately, that we need

better treatment. Orthomolecular treatment is not new, but it is an awful lot

better than merely allowing patients to vegetate on tranquilizers.

A fifteen percent response rate is pretty good if there are no other treatments

which yield a better outcome. In fact, in 1850 Dr. J. Conolly in England

reported that fifty percent of his insane patients were discharged well. The

early mental hospitals in the northeastern U.S.A. reported similarly good

results. What did they use? Good food, shelter, sympathetic care, and respect.

This fifty percent is probably the natural recovery rate if our schizophrenic

patients were treated with the same sympathetic care, good nutritious food and

decent shelter (not the city streets).

Modern psychiatry, with the huge expenditure of money for drugs, has in 150

years gone down to a 15% recovery rate. Yet its practitioners seem to be content

with this very dismal response rate while they wait for the miracle-the drugs

which will cure their patients. Each year we hear the announcement of new, ever

more expensive drugs, with little evidence they have any major impact on the

problem as a whole. I don't see reports that the schizophrenic homeless are no

longer homeless, or that the suicide rate among young schizophrenic patients has

gone down.

Recently, on Canada's news channel, Pamela Wallin discussed schizophrenia. For

the first fifteen minutes a couple spoke about their schizophrenic son, still

ill. For the next fifteen minutes the Honorable Michael Wilson, formerly

Minister of Finance, described his son's illness culminating in his suicide. The

first half hour, then, was devoted to demonstrating the failure of modern

psychiatry. The third fifteen minute section was given to a modern psychiatrist

who seemed quite cheerful with the present treatment of schizophrenia. He gave a

good account of the nature of the illness, but was pleased with the

tranquilizers and was cheerfully hoping for that ever new, better tranquilizer.

It appeared to me that he had not seen the first half hour of this program. The

last fifteen minutes was given to a schizophrenic patient who appeared well, and

who created and edits a journal for schizophrenics. It is a good journal to

which I have made several contributions which have been accepted, indicating a

degree of broad-mindedness which does not exist in standard psychiatric

journals. This TV production typifies the state of schizophrenia treatment

today: tranquilize, be content, wait for the new, ever-better tranquilizer.

But how long can patients wait? A year in the life of a schizophrenic can be

like an eternity. Patients and their families do not have the luxury of waiting

for the day when psychiatry will at last start treating their patients properly.

It does not provide much solace to the Wilsons and other parents who have lost

their children to suicide. (The suicide rate for schizophrenia is about 25 times

that of the general population).

In sharp contrast, at the 25th anniversary conference of the Canadian

Schizophrenia Foundation, held in Vancouver in May 1996, two chronic

schizophrenic patients, who met and married after they had recovered, described

their own illness and their recovery on the orthomolecular program. They had

both failed to respond to previous modern psychiatric treatment.

Modern psychiatry has not been very good at treating schizophrenia. One need

only glance over at the homeless people who live in the our city centers for the

evidence. Is there any other disease, other than addictions, where so many

sufferers are forced to wind up in the streets for lack of proper medical

attention? Think what would happen if half the homeless suffered from

tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is contagious, but in a social sense so is

schizophrenia. In my opinion, many patients today are no better off than they

would have been in 1950 when they were incarcerated in hopelessly overcrowded

dungeons called hospitals. Perhaps they would have been better off then, for at

least they had a few nurses and doctors to look after them.

Today patients are released early, after a short stay in hospital in order to

start them on tranquilizers. They are discharged as soon as their major symptoms

are partially suppressed, but long before they have regained enough health to

permit them to live on their own, or with their families. Or--and this is

becoming more frequent-- their diagnosis

is changed from schizophrenia to personality disorder, and they are discharged

with the unhelpful advice that personality disorders can not be treated.

The reason why modern psychiatry has failed is that it has such a narrow vision

of what to do. All psychiatry knows is to use tranquilizers, waiting for that

distant day when they will have a drug, the Holy Grail, which will cure

schizophrenia. I do not know of a single xenobiotic chemical that has ever cured

anything, even though some of them are useful in ameliorating the discomfort of

the disease. The answer to schizophrenia will come from recognizing more clearly

its causes and biochemistry and dealing with them, as is done in orthomolecular

psychiatry.

Modern tranquilizer psychiatry has been struggling for the past forty years with

the tranquilizer dilemma, which they are aware of but have not clearly faced.

Very simply it is this: when one uses a tranquilizer, one converts one

psychosis, schizophrenia, into another, the tranquilizer psychosis. I believe it

was Dr. Mayer-Gross who first suggested, in about 1955, that tranquilizers

converted one psychosis into another.

Tranquilizers alleviate many of the symptoms of schizophrenia, and make life

more comfortable for the patient and for their families, as well as for the

hospital and its staff. As the patient begins to recover, she becomes more

normal. However, tranquilizers also make normal people psychotic-a fact proven

by the Soviet practice of committing dissidents to mental hospitals and giving

them tranquilizers. Therefore, we can assume that as treatment continues the

patient becomes less and less schizophrenic, and more and more psychotic from

the drugs.

The tranquilizer psychosis is characterized by the following features: fewer and

less intense hallucinations, fewer and less intense delusions, difficulty in

concentration, memory disturbances, indifference, increased self interest,

moderation of moods and less agitation, social and behavioral deterioration, and

physical side effects such as impotence, tardive dyskinesia, apathy,

sluggishness, obesity, deterioration of teeth from lack of saliva. And perhaps

most important of all, the inability to engage in productive labor, i.e. to pay

income tax. That is why the average schizophrenic patient will cost the

community $2 million over a forty year life span of disease, unless they are

treated properly and become well.

Patients prefer to be normal, i.e. they do not prefer the tranquilizer psychosis

over the schizophrenic psychosis, but they have no choice and have to accept

elements of the tranquilizer psychosis in order to be freed of elements of their

original psychosis. The modern solution is to keep them swinging between the

extremes of schizophrenia and the tranquilizer psychosis. As they become more

and more tranquilized, the dose of drug is decreased to try and halt this

process, or the drug will be discontinued. In most cases the original

schizophrenia returns. They are suspended in this uncertain world swinging

between the two psychoses. They can not escape, and the only choice for these

unhappy patients is to take to the streets where they can avoid taking the

drugs.

But with orthomolecular treatment patients are offered a real choice, the choice

of becoming and remaining well. The large doses of nutrients and the diet will

maintain the patient in good health. One can combine the rapid effect of the

drugs with the slow curative effect of the nutrients. As the patient begins to

recover one slowly reduces the dose of the drugs, and this time instead of

become psychotic from the drug they remain well as the nutrients take over.

There is no other answer to this tranquilizer dilemma. This is why acute

patients treated for at least one year will reach a 90% recovery rate. By

recovery I mean that they are free of signs and symptoms, they are getting along

reasonably well with their family and with the community and they pay income

tax. They are working, or they are graduating and

getting ready to work.

I know of 17 young men and women who became schizophrenic in their teens, were

treated properly, recovered, went to college, became doctors and psychiatrists

and are practicing. A few years ago the father of one of them, a physician, was

concerned about his son. His son had been offered an appointment as Chair of a

large department in a medical school. His father wanted to know if I thought it

might be too stressful for him. Patients pay income tax because they are well

enough to work. I challenge orthodox psychiatric to show me any cohort of

patients who have been treated with tranquilizers alone of whom even ten percent

are gainfully employed in responsible jobs. Since modern psychiatry has failed

its essential task of curing schizophrenics (in the same sense that insulin and

diet cures diabetes mellitus), since modern general practitioners can give

tranquilizers as skillfully as psychiatrists, and since counseling and

psychotherapy can be given even more effectively by psychologists and social

workers and nurses, does it not make sense to replace psychiatry with more

efficient health workers? Psychiatry should be allowed to practice only if it is

prepared to use the most advanced treatments, and can show that it can do a

better job than could other physicians.

Reprinted with the permission of

Abram Hoffer, MD, Ph.D

3A-2727 Quadra Street

Victoria, B.C. V8T 4E5

 

 

 

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