Part One: Schizophrenia Past and Present Treatment
Schizophrenia patients normally exhibit psychotic behavior that can be extreme hence some of the extreme treatments traditionally used to manage it. Among the most extreme of these measures is a type of psychosurgery known as lobotomy. Under lobotomy, the nerves that connected a specific lobe of the brain get severed leading to substantive behavioral changes (Soares et al., 2013). Lobotomy as a treatment for schizophrenia continued through to the second part of the 20 th century spearheaded by experts such as Egas Moniz and Almeida Lima.
In modern times, however, the use of lobotomy to treat Schizophrenia gave way to the combination of pharmacotherapy and psychosocial therapy. Medications are used to control extreme behavior while therapy is used to assist the patient cope with the ailment (Soares et al., 2013). This modern approach for the treatment of Schizophrenia is superior to the traditional approach as it is more effective, safer for the patient and does not carry permanent psychological transformation.
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Part Two: Biochemical Psychology
Revelations from modern research about psychological phenomena has changed academic notions century’s old academic notions about the subject as is evidenced in Soares et al., (2013) Key among the changed notions relate to psychosis and its causes, a fact that led to the development of pharmacological interventions. Some pharmacological interventions are drugs that affect behavior through biochemical raising the question on if biochemical imbalances cause abnormal behavior. The only plausible answer to this question is a resounding yes. It is very possible that future research will reveal chemical causation for almost all psychological problem. After all, alcohol and hard drugs are all chemicals yet they elicit behavioral changes in people.
The most solid justification for the argument that biochemical imbalances cause abnormal behavior lies in the modern use of gut bacteria, a biochemical component, to treat autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Krajmalnik-Brown et al., 2015). ASD has everything to do with the mind, yet there is now effective management for it through the stomach. It might be possible that in the future, other physiology specialists will keep discovering biochemical connections between body tissue and mental problems.
References
Krajmalnik-Brown, R., Lozupone, C., Kang, D. W., & Adams, J. B. (2015). Gut bacteria in children with autism spectrum disorders: challenges and promise of studying how a complex community influences a complex disease. Microbial ecology in health and disease , 26 (1), 26914.
Soares, M. S., Paiva, W. S., Guertzenstein, E. Z., Amorim, R. L., Bernardo, L. S., Pereira, J. F., ... & Teixeira, M. J. (2013). Psychosurgery for schizophrenia: history and perspectives. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment , 9 , 509-515
