Hello Maphesdus
Where to begin? This is going to be long, but it was interesting to me. First, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is this country’s top researcher into brain diseases. I’ve read many of his books, and I find he throws everything at you, challenging you to shift through what is relevant and what isn’t. For instance, he makes the claim in his book Surviving Schizophrenia: A Handbook For Consumers and Families (Or is it the other way around?) that there is an inverse correlation between schizophrenia and arthritis. He mentions a study, gives the figures, but on further investigation, through peer-review the observation of this particular study have been dismissed. For years he looked at a possible autoimmune connection. He challenged the medical profession to do the same. He started the world’s first brain bank in Washington DC. Now, he almost exclusively looks for a viral connection. He looked at a possible viral infection being transmitted by cats. The Washington Post did a brilliant story on his study several years ago. He spent many years looking at that possibility. He is a researcher. He has laid out the case that severe mental illness (primarily psychosis) did not appear in medical evidence in society till around the industrial period. He doesn’t determine why this is --he just throws it out there, along with some hypothesis. That’s where the author of your article just picked it up and thought he had all the answers without doing s lick of research himself. He talks about how Dr. Torrey believes in forced medications. Dr, Torrey deals almost exclusively with severe mental illnesses, and it wasn’t his intent to get in bed with big ‘pharma’ so much as it was his intent to combat the change of laws that occurred in the late sixties that de-institutionalized mental patients, leaving them to fend for themselves. Prior to the introduction of medicines like Clozapine and it wouldn’t have been possible to release these patients. Unfortunately, mental patients are often left to take these medicines on their own. When you got voices in your head telling you that the meds are poison and everybody is out to kill you, or you suffer from a cognitive deficiency that leaves you confused and unable to remember if you took your meds, well...you see the problem don’t you? He also has a life-long personal reason for his research--his sister suffers from schizophrenia. Dr. Torrey is not about the money, and I resent the writer of that article lazily implying that he is. I once talked to Dr. Torrey by phone. Me, a total stranger concerned about a love one at my wit’s end, and he talked to me for a good forty-five minutes without making me feel once I was keeping him from something more important then trying to help me understand schizophrenia.

The author of this article mixes up tribal attributions of the french polynesians with some of the habitants of Papua New Guinea. And I beg to differ with the writer on whether or not tribes in New Guinea suffer mental illness. It is hard to document. Of the thousand or so tribes in New Guinea, many are still animist in practice, believing in sorcery even though a majority of them also practice christian faiths. Prior to the introduction of christianity, many of the tribes didn’t have a concept of theft or murder. If someone went nuts or killed someone it was because of an ‘evil spirit’. Often the murdered person was named the sorcerer who brought an evil spirit in their mist. Brain disease has never been a consideration. Some of these tribes invite the neighboring village over to eat a piece of the dead victim as a act of loyalty and friendship. I’ll skip the pow-wow, thanks. The writer talks about how the tribes don’t fuss over their children like Westerners do.The families of some tribes also don’t count the children as a member of the tribe or considered them ‘born’ until the first tooth comes in. Anthropologists contribute this to the fact infant mortality is a way of life. Parents don’t allow themselves to get attached to their children like we do as a general rule. It’a cultural thing based on the low survival rate among the young. I love Jared Diamond. I read almost everything he writes, however he is not a research psychiatrist, he is a sociologist and and an anthropologist. Schizophrenia is a brain disease. It is more prevalent in western-european descent, and even more prevalent in black skin ancestry especially those with afro-Caribbean ancestry. It’s irresponsible to suggest there is a cultural or sociological reason why it happens without spending decades in the field. The writer of this story is neither a psychiatrist or an anthropologist. Interesting topic, but the article left me shaking my head. It was sadly put together, stepping on the face of giants.