I often wonder, what if there actually is a pill that could cure schizophrenia permanently? The worst part is that all the medications currently used to treat schizophrenia have so many side effects. For example, clozapine, which I took during and after my psychosis, even caused me to have a seizure (at a low dose). The medication is effective, but it can also be dangerous.
So, what if there really is a pill that could cure schizophrenia forever? Science has advanced so much, AI exists and all that. Of course, this is probably a bit of a conspiracy theory, but… what do you guys think?
Schizophrenia is not a fatal disease like that of cancer where people do die if cancer goes untreated. Schizophrenia is managed similar to that of AIDS where medication is used to somewhat remedy the disease or syndrome. Lastly, schizophrenia affects the two lobes of the brain where certain functioning is impaired unlike a common cold, cough or flu where the illness is temporary if treated properly.
Artificial Intelligence detects potential patients that may develop the disease by scanning, searching and comparing blood flow within the brain and making a diagnosis based on other data sets where there are positive markers of schizophrenia. A.I. cannot find a cure for schizophrenia as A.I. does not ingest anti-psychotics or have human brain tissue to experiment on. A.I. is a tool to assist in medicine just as how a smartphone is a tool for everyday people.
I have this view that indeed in not too distant future there could be far better treatments overall. One possible example is Spg-302/Tazbentetol which is claimed to regenerate lost synapses caused by the disease. It is in phase two studies and results seem positive. So, from that perspective there is justified hope for regenerative and restorative treatment. Maybe such drugs could heal the brain in part or in full. It is just a question of waiting and enduring illness before these drugs become available. But it could still take couple of years so there is that.
Ai assisted diagnosis or indeed drug development is a wild card. Up to this point most drugs have been developed the old fashioned way. But one can envision ai assisted research speeding up brain research and drug development substantially. Maybe robotics and brain organoids as well as improved brain imaging could unlock the secrets of the brain in this future. After all brains are one of the most complex structures known by humans in the universe. So speculatively if one stays positive and optimistic there could be a bright future ahead regarding brain based illnesses and their treatments.
There will never be a pill that cures schizophrenia because schizophrenia is not a single, distinct disease with a uniform cause. It would be the same as hoping for a pill that cures all forms of cancer.
We need to move away from a universal cure to a personalized approach with therapies that minimize symptoms and maximize quality of life.
i think its important to remember that there are many people who get out of psychosis entirely with no meds. SZ is essentially chronic, deep psychosis… so its a bit harder to get to that point, but in my opinion just as feasible as the many people who experience slight psychosis and then never have it again for whatever reason. So it depends on how much a person is able to reduce their stress and improve their health. But technically speaking its similar to type 2 diabetes… reversible in many cases but not all… not that its easy to do, but it is possible. Scientifically there are many people who recover fully from deep psychosis/sz. i think its important to remember this.
google says its about 10-15% of people who recover from sz and live without taking meds.
Google:
In smaller, long-term naturalistic studies (such as Scandinavian or specific cohort studies), a small percentage of individuals—around 10% to 15%—meet strict criteria for long-term functional recovery and symptom remission while being completely off antipsychotics. However, psychiatrists generally consider this the exception rather than the rule. [1, 2]
This statement goes against the altruistic compassion & ethics of why there is medical & health care. Big pharmaceutical companies would prefer to see their drug products cure patients suffering from various diseases.
Sure, capitalism and every other industry such as automobiles, computers, food…etc… but healthcare is an industry where human lives are at stake. Yes, hospitals & drug companies need to generate revenue & make a profit but compassion for patient care ought to take precedence.
A pharmaceutical company has a fiduciary responsibility to its investors, so the company tends to choose to maximize profits over lowering costs for poor patients. However, one could argue that if the company doesn’t produce strong financial returns the funding for future research dries up.
There have been extreme examples of pharmaceutical companies putting profits before patient well-being: Perdue Pharma aggressively marketing OxyContin, falsely claiming that the drug was less addictive than other opioids; Gilead Sciences charging $1,000 per pill for their Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi when the manufacturing cost was $1 per pill; and Mylan raising the price of the EpiPen from $100 to $600, taking advantage of families who had no alternative but to pay.
That said, there is a cost of innovation. Some people argue that the high profit margins are necessary to cover the cost of developing new drugs. The risk level is high. R&D takes years and billions of dollars, and the vast majority of drugs fail in clinical trials.
I think AI will reduce R&D costs by making every step more efficient which should reduce the cost of meds, but that’s only true if the savings will be passed on to the consumer instead of maximizing profits.
Well there could be disruption through technological development in such a manner that drug companies role is reduced. Some sort of grassroots drug development. Another issue is that drug development costs are minority of the overall funding of the process. Profits and marketing are pretty important, besides drug development is externalized from said companies as much as possible. In such a situation ip ownership is the key and monetization, not really treatment. But still if curative and regenerative treatments appear it would be very hard to sweep under the carpet that it is possible and available. As a sidenote, here is a link of the latest results regarding Tazbentetol: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/tazbentetol-for-schizophrenia-shows-symptom-improvement-in-phase-2-trial
There is a neuro chemical imbalance amongst dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine and others in the brain of a schizophrenic. The neuroreceptors are highly active and therefore fire off extensively causing cognitive, behavioural & perceptive sensory to be erratic.