Applying
Artificial Intelligence

(first draft, first revision)


© Arthur Winarczyk, 5GL Software, Australia


Schizophrenia-Like Syndrome

A personal problem I have with psychiatrists is that, it seems to me, such are prone to use "legal type thinking" instead of medical and scientific thinking. Consider this explanation of a particular mental disorder: blocking, poverty of content, prosody, mutisim, neologism, incoherence, word salad, glossolalia, echololia, verbigeration, stilted language, tangentiality, circumstantiality, flight of ideas, vagueness, idiosyncratic associations, identical predicates, clang associations, etc.

Now, think carefully. Is this not the case of the cattle calling the pot black? (oops, is this an idiosyncratic association?). A "word salad"? The sentence above has to be a "word salad" by any common sense definition! And what does it all mean anyway? Short of looking up a glossary of psychiatric terms, the reader no matter how intellectual may struggle to make sense of that sentence. Even language experts have enormous difficulty with terms such as "neologism".

To be impartial and fair, let me include this. Perhaps what is meant is what one user wrote to me in an e-mail (only the name is removed, else it is exactly as the email came): Hi My Name Is (name) And I'm Liveing Here In The United States And I Have A Question Wish U Get Back At Me A.S.A.P And I Wanted To Know That If I I Have Moved Over There In AU From United States And I Fell Like Someone Is Trying To Brainwash Me.And If I Come To U Guys For Help What Will U Prefere Me To And How Can I Get Contacted With Cause I'm Thinking About Moveing Over There In Next Year So Contact Me BAck At My E-mail Address If You Have A Group That U Know The Best For Me Contact Me A.S.A.P (but note this is an unusual email; many people in the past had written to me and I had to suspect schizophrenia, however, none of these came across in writing as having any particular condition - sure, themes emerged, such as one young lady that seemed very nice who had this problem that she was certain beyond a doubt that her next door neighbour was telepathically asking to marry her - but she articulated all this very well, exceptionally well even.) Can a psychiatrist who reads such an email know, or suspect, what, if any, mental or other psychiatric condition is expressing itself? Possibly - in my case I would first have to know the education level of the person who wrote this, and actually discuss something with them to have a feel for how they combine thoughts and so on, and even consider whether this was just some kind of new "rap talk" in certain socio-economic groups, etc., before I could form a particular impression. In any case, in my case, I would need to input all in a more formal way this into 5GL-Doctor which then would produce a short list of possibilities. In fact, version 9.2 of 5GL-Doctor which at the time of writing is not commercially available yet, there is an additional analysis that "splits" symptoms and signs and produces a unique short list that attempts to identify any mental illness that is in fact covering up a known medical condition such as thyroidism for example. Explained simply, a person may have a thyroid disorder at the same time as a delusional disorder and not schizophrenia - the latter might be the obvious assumption on first evaluation - the idea being that in rare cases, for example, say a thyroid disorder combined with a delusional disorder may in fact be imitating the symptoms and signs of schizophrenia. You might wonder how useful is this function? You might point out that in most psychiatric clinical practises it is probably routine to do thyroid function tests with new patients - sure, but this is just an example. In actual testing given particular symptoms/signs, sometimes a very large (and at times so surprising you would not think of some conditions and variations) differential diagnosis list is produced by 5GL-Doctor.)

In Australia, I have observed what appears to be legal firms that specialize in only one word, such as "malice". Such build this super framework of how to get a court or jury to accept that "malice" is the reason for an action. This type of manipulation is art at its finest! Courts are about winning a case, not about logic, fairness, justice, proof, or evidence unless this can not be avoided (these fine values are what television tries to sell), and it does not matter what techniques are used to define this framework of malice, as long as the lawyer wins the case for his client. (read my Neuroscience in Psychiatry treatise for clarifications of how you might go about building such a framework of "malice").

I put it to you that once you start using legal type thinking in medicine - you mold your brain to accept a view of the world that you compel yourself to accept.

What are some of the true medical/scientific facts about schizophrenia? While not diagnostic, a person with schizophrenia may exhibit increased ventricular size and decreased medial temporal brain volume. This is a sound medical fact. It is science. Compare the scientific value of this fact to the term "word salad" or "identical predicates" (even experts in language have difficulty working out what such is???)

Let us consider an aspect of definition of schizophrenia: periods of desire to swear, pray, be naked. These are deep intense desires and persist and repeat, as distinct from emotional discharges that fade away afterwards.

By that reasoning every Catholic Priest or Sister is a schizophrenic; by that reasoning every nudist is a schizophrenic; by that reasoning every child who grew up in a home in which swearing was the norm is a schizophrenic.

Psychiatrists cover themselves by explaining that some things are culturally dependent. So in a culture in which nudism is accepted, like in a nudist camp, such people would not be technically schizophrenics. What a bizarre way of saying "we have little idea what this disorder is, so we cover our bases." That is "law" at its finest, law that is about manipulation of facts or evidence, be such hearsay evidence, in order to suit.

However, over the great many years of having a web page about telepathy, I have received a fair amount of email from people. Some of these were from people to whom I suggested to see their physician and talk it over because they might have a medical condition called schizophrenia for which medication is available and a person can lead a normal life. Sadly, only one out of perhaps fifty accepted my suggestion, a teacher in Japan, went to their doctor, and months later wrote back thanking me very much for suggesting this and now he had some medication that worked swell for him.

I suppose, in a sense, the hallmark of a mental illness is that a person is not aware they have it. Consequently it is not surprising most people with undiagnosed schizophrenia would never entertain the notion of schizophrenia. An intelligent educated person might also refuse to accept this is possible but their higher functions are more prepared to consider the possibility and even dismiss it - hence the reason my Japanese teacher went to his physician was perhaps not that he thought in anyway that he had a mental illness, but he wanted his physician to prove that I was wrong.

What I am proposing is that Schizophrenia be further divided to also include "schizophrenia-like syndrome" which is not a mental illness. Certainly, there is a chance it may develop into such.

Auditory hallucinations seems to be a key feature of schizophrenia. This can be like hearing a voice inside the room you are in, but in fact there is no one else in the room. Research with monkeys has found "mirror neurons" in the sound generating brain areas (equivalent to our Wernicke and Brocce areas) which "imitate" the sounds they hear. Parents with autistic children sometimes complain "the echololia is driving me crazy". (another invented word! the linguists have difficulty with this term too!) Presumably what is being referred to is that a child keeps on repeating what the parent is saying. From my neuroscience point of view, that suggests something is not connecting between the left and right cerebral hemisphere to block this effect or absorb its natural energy into neural networks that would form to dampen or block the effect of such voices in the head.

I put it to you that if schizophrenia was studied from purely a medical science point of view, forgetting all these bizarre terms that try to define the condition, surgeons might have found suitable procedures to assist some patients. Just like the corpus callosum can be severed surgically to help patients with serious and life-threatening epileptic seizures. You might say, "hold on, surgery on the brain is a drastic solution." Sure - but how many teenagers or young adult schizophrenics get tired of the voices in the head and jump under a moving train to end their life? Clearly, if such an operation was available, those patients likely to opt out life could be identified and such procedures perhaps suggested or recommended. Once the brain learns to talk, then perhaps surgically removing this "mirror area" of the brain might stop all voices in the head - sure, perhaps the person will no longer be able to learn another language but how important is that in truth?

When it comes to schizophrenia, there are about 100 medical conditions that can cause symptoms similar to schizophrenia - in other words, schizophrenia should be a diagnosis of exclusion. For this reason, I suggest the new medical diagnosis of "schizophrenia-like syndrome" which is not a mental illness unless proven otherwise.

Why do I feel this is important or would be useful? Well, it is my personal view from trying to get people with likely schizophrenia to see a medical doctor (i.e. via emails). From my example of my Japanese teacher, if you mention a person could have a "schizophrenia-like illness", then they are more likely to see their physician - but if you mention schizophrenia then they are likely to never go to their physician. So, if your patient has a son or daughter or friend and begins to talk to you in such a way that alarms you - perhaps suggesting "schizophrenia-like illness" is what you would like to dismiss or consider, might actually bring such a patient to your consulting room. If you use a term such as "borderline schizophrenia" this sounds like you have already made up your mind and the patient is even less likely to want to talk to you. A term such as "simple schizophrenia" can be, to some patients, even more frightening because it implies "stupidity" as well as a mental illness.

All right, so you are a psychiatrist and you have read all this and smile and muse and may call this a silly idea and not developed well - sure, I can not argue with that, all I am doing is proposing a suggestion that could be useful. Sometimes, after reflection, I even suspect schizophrenia might be the only true mental illness identified to date. The "Will Syndrome" that I have documented elsewhere might be another and as yet not understood. Why do I say this? Well, if you read the Alzheimer's Scam report you might get a feel why I say this - here is a man who is a solicitor who pretends to fall, calls police claiming he was assaulted, then rushes out in weeks to come to a private legal firm to obtain something called an AVO to stop his mother being seen by her other son. A few months later he drags this 80 year old frail woman with advanced Alzheimer's to a legal firm and get her to sign a new will or equivalent and power of attorney and the like. Is this not a mental illness? It could be caused by drugs, true, but even if it is, it is still a mental illness. The man can lie so convincingly it can bring tears to your eyes - a feature I believe of psychopaths - and can manipulate so well you have no idea what he is manipulating until it hits you in the face - I am not sure this is a feature of psychopaths, not to that finesse as the Alzheimer's Scam report explains and details. Not only this, once the woman in question passes away, this man will not let any relative into the house to touch any of her things - what kind of obsession is that? It is insanity all right - but impossible to quantify especially since this person is a lawyer and uses "law" as his "reason" for all he does. (in fact, when this lawyer began his scam by pretending to fall then calling the police claming he was assaulted, when the police arrived he told them he could not find his wallet and to search his brother's car - fortunatelly the windows on that car were locked (the brother new to lock his car when his half-brother was around for other reasons) else more than likely a "wallet" might have been tossed into the car before the police arrived. This type of scheming is not just a sick mind - it is not just drugs - it is not just the motive of getting hold of the elderly parents bank account and get her to sign a new last Will and Testament - it is "mentally ill" cunning in the extreme and that is part of the Will Syndrome as I have defined it.)