Some people develop symptoms that could indicate future schizophrenia, but never actually develop it. Other people with the same symptoms do. The better we get at telling who will and who won’t develop schizophrenia, the better we can treat it.
Anxiety, Addiction, Depression, and Depression Treatments reports on a study that exposed people with symptoms indicating possible future schizophrenia to a mix of six voices speaking simultaneously. It was designed so that only four words were clearly audible in the noise. When asked to describe any words they heard, most people reported words and phrases that were not spoken. The interesting finding, though, was that 6% who reported phrases under three words developed schizophrenia within two years – but 80% who heard phrases of four or more words did.
This doesn’t tell us whether the under-three-words people will ever develop schizophrenia, but it suggests a time frame in which most of them won’t, and a time frame in which many of the four-words-or-more people will.
I hope this finding holds up! An easy test that could help doctors know who best to medicate to help avert development of full-blown schizophrenia could mean a lot fewer people developing it.
mark p.s. says:
Maybe this is the cause of my schizophrenia, trying to hear words that are not there. I long ago got a cheap keyboard that could record sounds and play them back as notes(I haven’t used it in many years). One feature was the reverse function. I listened to sounds and spoken words backwards, looking for hidden messeges. This might have been before your era, but once apon a time there were hidden backwards messeges in records. You would have to disengage the drive and manually spin the record backwards. So I went looking for things to listen to backwards. You can try it too today with a mic and microsofts built in recorder. I learnt that whatever you wanted to hear with sounds(within reason), you could hear in the recording. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Court_cases
if this interests you , you can look up many things
misheard lyrics http://www.amiright.com/misheard/artist/
McGurk_effect =seeing mouth movement+ listening to words at the same time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect
as for any medication fixing schizophrenia before it happens, this is totally insane thinking, there is no lab test to prove I, or anyone has schizophrenia, and to force medication on people who are not even sick is crazy. To force medication on law abiding people who happen to be different is fascism. “Care” is not care if it is unwanted and unwarrented.
November 6, 2007, 10:40 pm