Seismic Shift for Psychiatry

A study of schizophrenia by NZ psychologist John Read, as published in leading psychiatric journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, could potentially “trigger a landslide” in his field, according to Guardian columnist and clinical psychologist Oliver James. The traditional view of schizophrenia is that it is a genetic disease which can only be cured by anti-psychotic drugs. Read “slays these biological cows” by showing that, in the vast majority of cases, schizophrenia is a result of nurture rather than nature and is specifically triggered by traumatic events such as childhood sexual abuse. James: “Not since the publication of RD Laing’s book Sanity, Madness and the Family, in 1964, has there been such a significant challenge to [psychiatry’s] contention that genes are the main cause of schizophrenia and that drugs should be the automatic treatment of choice.”