|
This page last updated Jan
26 2005
Stuff
January 17, 2002
Experts at odds over schizophrenia study
NZPA
A classic "nature or nurture" debate
has been reignited by research claiming that childhood sexual abuse is often
a factor in causing schizophrenia.
The research, led by Auckland University
clinical psychologist Dr John Read, concludes that treatment of schizophrenia
should include helping patients to talk about the traumas that may have
helped bring on the disease.
But an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the
university, Dr John Werry, insisted yesterday that the illness was genetic
and needed medication.
"There is no good evidence to show that
schizophrenia is caused by sexual abuse or any other psycho-social
factors," he said.
"Though one needs to be cautious, the highest
probability... is that it is a genetic disorder, and that the answer will not
come from studies like Dr Read's but from molecular biology."
Mental health workers and people who have suffered
from schizophrenia - estimated to affect 1 per cent of people during their
lifetimes - lined up yesterday on both sides of the argument.
A mental health advocate at Auckland Healthcare,
Debra Lampshire, who has suffered schizophrenia herself, said she was not
surprised at Dr Read's finding that 50 percent of female psychiatric
inpatients said they had been sexually abused.
She said many patients did not consider that they
had been abused, because there was no sexual penetration, yet they had
experienced "horrendous things". The clinical director of the
Richmond Fellowship, Dr Michael Reid, said he would "absolutely
endorse" Dr Read's findings.
"I would say, in almost a majority of cases,
that a significant number of people who we work with, who are diagnosed with
schizophrenia, have also been abused in some form as a child," he said.
He said the mental health profession had
increasingly seen medication as the "frontline intervention", and
had not always been good at dealing with the underlying factors that made
people unwell.
But Dr Werry said there was no dispute that
stresses, particularly experiences that made people feel denigrated or
rejected, made things worse for people who already had schizophrenia.
"That has been known for at least 50 years. So
there is actually very little, I would think, that is new in this study
except any implication that this is a cause rather than an aggravating
feature," he said.
Psychiatrists had always tried to treat patients
"holistically" rather than relying purely on medication.
|
