- Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may be the same disorder;
- Both are caused by the cumulative effects of thousands of tiny genetic mutations.
The scientists involved found a “highly polygenic model [which] suggests that genetically influenced individual differences across domains of brain development and function may form a diathesis for major psychiatric illness” (Nature).
What? Ever play the game Jenga – that game where you try to be the last person to pull a block out of a stack of blocks without knocking them over? While the blocks are essentially the same size, there are little differences that make them not stack perfectly. As the game is played, various factors -- who stacked the blocks, the table surface, how well turns are completed, etc. -- contribute to the balance of the blocks. The more rounds of people poking and pulling out blocks, the closer the tower comes to falling over and it eventually collapses.
Consider each of us as the stack of wooden blocks in the game. The variations in the blocks are genetic mutations and the players turns are life events. The two combine to eventually cause the onset of the disorder. So essentially the more mutations the higher the risk for developing the disorder and the more risk factors experienced in life, the higher the risk. This is the diathesis-stress model that I detailed in What Causes Bipolar Disorder.
In Unlocked: The Secrets of Schizophrenia, Steve Connor with quotes Thomas Insel, director of the US National Institute for Mental Health, "If some of the same genetic risks underlie schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, perhaps these disorders originate from some common vulnerability in brain development. Of course the big question then is how some people develop schizophrenia and others develop bipolar disorder."
Research marches on! ~Kimberly
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This is fascinating … research about links between Schizophrenia and BP. This is something I would like to know more about!…Karen
what ever the problem,where ever you are it is vital you do not keep your worries to yourself.
seek good professional and independant advice.
Hi Karen,
I found another article today on this topic that explains a few more important facts about this:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/07/02/breakthrough-for-schizophrenia-and-bipolar/
Kim
Here is the most important part to me: “Although the vast majority of the genetic causes of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder remain unknown (the current studies could account for only approximately 30 percent of the genetic risk), the current research is an important contribution to our real knowledge of how these disorders may be caused by gene variants.”
THey still don’t know and are only reporting on relative observations. However, the media will get a hold of this and try to sell it as absolute.
Bipolar illness, Schizophrenic illness, Borderline illness and all other psychiatric illnesses have one feature in common and that is each one of the illnesses is a manifestation of low self- esteem perceived in the world of Interpersonal relationships.
A bipolar is an almost completely mature personality where as schizophrenia is a very immature personality and the only link between these personalities is Anger.
When a bipolar has a full blown manic attack, that person may have delusions but he still does not have hallucinations in manic attack.
A bipolar can have anger and paranoid feature depending upon his parents and thus mimic a schizophrenic. Those are the bipolar who are prescribed drugs that were made for serious anger in a personality.
This similarity of bipolar and schizophrenic is made by the drug companies and the FDA. This is done because the treatment of mental disorders have taken a turn towards chemical rather than support and love which when missing caused the very illness of the individual.
Most of us are surrounded by the borderline people of the world who keep shifting from one personality to the other. They have no depth in understanding of the nature of their behavior with others. They insult the others with their urgent need to let our their anger.
They cause most of the harm to a personality and yet do not blame themselves for causing illness on other. Their anger has to be discharged to maintain their sanity.
Jesus was crucified by these borderline personalities of his time.
A bipolar will go through a very serious depressions and stay in it until he can reform his personally and the others will regress to a primitive level of Schizophrenia. It all depends upon his nurturing.
A child is diagnosed as a bipolar today because the parents cannot stand their angers when they themselves have given the anger to their children.
This is a world of crazy people and some of the children become crazier.
A state of schizophrenia is reached by all mental illnesses in their ultimate regression.
I believe that extent of anger is the difference in various mental illnesses.
The treatment of these mental illnesses is supported by psychotherapy or chemical therapy on the basis of the symptoms. The treating people are also the product of this borderline culture.
In summery all mental illnesses are shades of abnormal maturity of a personality and the fixation of a personality at level when serious setbacks of self-esteem took place in the course of development of the child.
A serious setback to a child at his almost complete maturity leads to a Bipolar illness where as a serious setback at the start of personality makes him a schizophrenic.
That is all the difference between the Bipolar and the Schizophrenic.
All of us have the memories of our development in our brain and all of us can regress back to any level with a serious attack of loss of self-esteem.
Different diagnosis for our mental disorders is the imagination of the drug companies for the purpose of billing the insurances. .
The symptoms of mental illness are manifestations of the immaturity of a personality.
Can a schizophrenic adult be changed in to an adult of a normal mind. Perhaps yes. If some one can raise the child of schizophrenia to an adult stage.
Can a relative, society or a psychiatrist or psychologist have so much patience and know how to raise a child with a body of an adult?
In this world, it is not possible.
Only in the movies it has been shown the recovery of a schizophrenic to a normal level.
All psychiatric medications are designed to cut down the anger of a person who has lost his self-esteem.
Even a parent cannot do this for his grown up son, because he can never have unconditional love for the mental patient. The psychiatrist who is supposed to provide selfless service is also very preoccupied with his desires of greed of money.
The parent passes this responsibility to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist along with the drug companies have blamed on the chromosomes.
If a psychiatric patient recovers from his illness, what happens to the chromosomes that caused his illness to start with.
Very few people are willing to face the reality of life. Most people in the world are working on getting rid of their anger in the society with their interpersonal relationships.
The marriages are designed for that purpose. The children are born with accidents and sexual desires of the parents. They love and anger their children as they need to and they give up caring after some time. How can a psychiatrist keep up the care of these people, if not with CHEMICALS.
Ramesh.
I read the psych central article last week and after having read yours and the comments I can say that it is interesting and it’s good that research into genetic links is important, the conclusions from what is still preliminary research should be drawn with care and further study. I agree that this topic can produce misunderstandings; it already has. First, if bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are shown to be caused by a series of genetic mutations, are they different mutations for each condition or are they the same? If different, then bipolar disorder and schizophrenia would be different. I do not think schizophrenia is the same as bipolar disorder and the differences have been extensively studied and written about. While I have seen delusions and paranoia in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder and those with schizophrenia, I have never seen a person with longstanding schizophrenia in a manic state. Depression? Yes. Hallucinations? Sure, in both. Schizophrenia is, however, more of a thought disorder than a mood disorder.
There are people who hold to a “trauma” model, citing the high incidence of traumatic childhood in many people who have either one of the types of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Then there’s schizoaffective disorder which throws another complication into the mix.
I once heard a therapist say that the DSMIV was basically written so that insurance companies would have codes which doctors and therapists could use when filing claims for insurance. While this is true, it is inaccurate and unfair to say that that is the only reason that the book is used. I don’t like it either. I don’t like overmedication or inappropriate medication either and I know that happens. On the other hand, to say that psychiatric disorders are simply a result of a response to various degrees of lack of self-esteem and to completely throw out the medical model and to blame parents and doctors totally (though in some cases I know parents who could do a lot better) is ridiculous and irresponsible. The person making comment no. 5 writes with an attitude of know-it-all authority and insensitivity as well as irresponsibly. Answering all of what this person asserts to be true, (and the whole comment is done in a very condescending, patronizing, pompous and overly simplistic way) is almost impossible. First, he calls us a “borderline culture”. Ok, on what borders is our culture on the borderline of? Is he saying we all have borderline personality disorder and we’re all reacting to life with anger? He says that drugs are prescribed for conditions that are a result of poor self-esteem and a result of anger. And the idea that Jesus was crucified by borderlines is, while perhaps original, is completely inaccurate. The whole thing with the crucifixion of Jesus is complex but at its simplest it involves people who were threatened that they might lose their power, including the Romans and those in line with them, and the Pharisees and other sects of Judaism. Sure, the crowd was fickle. A few days before he was crucified he was making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem cheered on by a crowd who thought he was coming in to establish his kingdom and overthrow the Romans. I don’t want to get into a discussion of religion specifically but this guy’s claims are just so far out there. I was in a perfectly decent mood until I read his irresponsible post. I do not believe that schizsophrenia and bipolar disorder are just manifestations of one disorder. I agree that genetics probably plays a role in each but I don’t think they’re the same. Having said that, however, I state clearly that this is my opinion and that I am not a doctor, researcher, geneticist or any other kind of expert in the field and that my opinions are my own, being a long-time consumer of mental health services both in and outpatient, a lot of reading, experience and independent research, being as much of an informed consumer as I can. I don’t believe in censorship, but I think the previous comment was totally inappropriate, for reasons mentioned above, and that’s the kind of insensitive,irresponsible thing that I don’t think should be allowed on this kind of blog. I realize that the guy could be delusional and in some kind of episode himself or he could be speaking out of bitterness, anger and misunderstanding. But it’s a hurtful message. Oh, I’m not sticking up for drug companies which I know are often greedy and less than ethical and the same could be said of some psychiatrists. But this guy seems to be forgetting that he’s writing to an audience of mental health consumers and their friends and families who don’t need that kind of post.
Laura
all of these studies/findings NEED MORE conclusive evidence before it is ALL tied together and presented to the public — when i first saw this article — i sortta had a sence of WHAT?? after years of research THIS as the whole TRUTH!! no, and i think “about.com” should not put out such material until it is studied fully.
Thank you Laura for writing with a bit of compassion.
That is an interesting concept. My uncle before he died was diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenia. It would be interesting if it were just one illness
I agree, Laura, that some of these remarks are totally inappropriate.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of rhetoric about mental illness and the people who experience it which is founded on ignorance, emotion, and personal/religious/political agendas.
First, it is a giant step backward to use terms like “the bipolar,” “the schizophrenic,” “the borderline,” or “the mentally ill” to describe groups made of individual human beings. It’s an easy way to make a broad sweep at a whole population. And the generalizations cannot logically be factual in such a context.
Many people instead use phrases like, “a person who has bipolar disorder,” “someone with a mental illness,” “an individual diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,” etc. I personally believe this is the respectful way to reference people who have any given condition.
Another problem with the language of mental illness is that some medical diagnoses have seeped into ordinary vernacular. For example, we hear things like “I’m being bipolar” if someone, anyone, has a sudden shift in mood. Or, “I’m being schizophrenic” is still used in ignorance to describe a sudden conflicting, apparent personality change.
It’s important to distinguish a medical diagnosis from non-symptomatic behavior that is part of the human experience for every person.
To call a culture “borderline,” is a similar misuse of the name of a specific illness. In some instances, this might appear to be colorful prose, as if the deliberate misplacement makes some greater point with more precision.
Instead, “borderline culture” as a misused/mismatched adjective closes off understanding and generalizes people with a medical diagnosis as if they, as a whole group, are reflective, or even responsible for some social problem.
And to say “borderlines” crucified Christ? How long have scholars and religious figures, Churches, etc been trying to blame THAT on someone OTHER THAN THEMSELVES??
I am supposing that since the writer points to “the borderlines,” he has not been labeled as “one of them,” those that killed Christ.
But how blind of him, while pointing fingers, labeling those people, there’s no apparent awareness that he’s doing the very same kind of projecting anger and blame that he accuses this whole general group of “borderlines” of doing? And I’d say, it’s a VERY dramatic card to play. Ridiculous!
The rest, I don’t know how to begin to address, so I won’t. But it’s glaringly obvious that these comments are based in personal opinion rather than any genuine knowledge of a true psychiatiric condition.
If mental illness is really about how much anger the person has, then I would hope the very angry person who wrote those absurd remarks is up for an evaluation, and open to some help.
I agree that the poster who diagnosed everything as a result of self-esteem and anger is misinformed. Is he/she speaking from their own experience as a consumer? As a relative of someone who is bipolar or schizoprenic? I would suggest that some people who are bipolar have anger issues, some do not. Some people who are schizophrenic have anger issues.
While I think this research is interesting insofar as it points to the same gene, it seems to me (though I haven’t read the full article in “Nature,” which I intend to do) that the different mutations mean a different disease. I bet that is saying like breast cancer and pancreatic cancer are the same disease. I mean, maybe there is a gene that predisposes someone to getting cancer, but why in the breast vs. pancreas? Is it just random where the cancer settles? I suspect we will know that this is not the case at some point when cancer research is clearer?
So, if the media picks this idea of bipolar and schoprenia up and runs with it, they will, of course, oversimplify. Just because they start with the same gene mutating, that is not saying it’s the same disease.
Isn’t that like saying brown eyes and blue eyes are really the same? (Or am I confused about the genetics there?)
Anyway, I too prefer Laura’s thoughtful comments and find them MUCH more helpful, compassionate and informative than the previous poster’s.
I welcome this research. It indicates why the same medicines can work well in treating bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. By looking at both, instead of each separately, researchers might get to the root causes of both together. Also maybe researchers will be less reluctant to consider those cases of schizoaffective disorder (which is what troubles me) where bipolar and schizophrenia coexist. For too long, schizoaffective disorder has been a problem for researchers since it shouldn’t exist because to them bipolar and schizophrenia were considered to be separate and unrelated illnesses. But since they are genetically similar, it would make sense to me that some people (like me) would have aspects of both bipolar and schizophrenia. Schizoaffective disorder should not be the step-child of psychiatry any longer in light of these genetic studies.
I figured they worked hand in hand somewhere because my father was schizophrenic and I have bipolar.
Between Billy Jack & Donna..Donna who states she has no intentions of ever changing & or stopping her Lithium[not sure,but it was lithium,right?
Then the Sarah Palin thing,about.com will not allow comments in,Palin is a narcisissist,perhaps ManiAc would be better...she's an egotist,devoid of any genuineness,warmth,devoid of intellectual depth!Her watcha's,doncha's..and the Wolves she claims get in the way of Alaskan's survival for food is a lie a $4000,000$ Bounty/Ariel Flying henchmen activities,shooting,wiping out[trying to] is the extent of her so-called legit disease,it takes one to see one!Bi-polar doesn’t include torture of animals…they do not carry such tendencies..go ahead,take the Lith that in time will destroy your entire body,’cause “I” am seeking alternative[s] way to..I cut one 450mil from 2X day & lost 4lbs!I can handle the “sometime” discomfort,without indulgence,I understand bi-polar[10yrs,however on-off for 5/diagnosed late...'80'sI am hypothythyroid,synthroid?I wanted to be on Amourthyroid,but MD's here in eastern Pa are idiots,said the levels change too much..the FDA must be happy about that as Amour is natural!They hate that word..they "do" have CURES!Things many do not bother to explore,including Billy Jack saying he hates to read?I've never heard anyone say such a thing?Are you,Donna,too lazy to explore the scientific proof,that "Ultimate Healing"[Book] has to offer?From diabetes to Alz..they’re both the same,these doctors have won the highest awards in exploratory medicine!They do this on paid programming,giving 3 books FREE w/ purchase of ONE! Alternatives for every single prescription!READ,& if people like you keep this up,FDA will love you for it,indeed!You CAN do something else to feel the quality of life,not popping chemicals,because you can’t face another episode?