I’m less sure about the study’s conclusion that higher rates at higher latitudes “overwhelm protective effects of better healthcare in industrialized countries.”

My instinct is to say this may give too much credit to healthcare in industrialized countries, which is quicker to associate hearing voices with the disease model–and then they generally ignore the voices altogether after that. Or, worse, to try to obliterate them with largely ineffective meds.

Psychiatry itself has ignored these voices, asserting that they were nothing. Now the ground has shifted underneath their feet and people who hear voices are reclaiming their lives through the therapy of “dialoguing” with their voices in concert with other people with schizophrenia who also hear them.

As someone of Irish descent, who also has schizoid tendencies, who has also had many troubled relationships with women of Irish descent, your ideas seem fascinating and I’ll definitely check out your book.

What I’d like you to check out is the relationship between sunlight (vitamin D) and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Ireland’s latitude and climate are less than optimal for sunlight exposure, and serum vitamin D levels are being linked with geographic prevalance of certain diseases like multiple sclerosis and cancer. A link to neurological diseases might not be too far-fetched.

One specific study that you should read was published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, May 2009. The title is “Relation of schizophrenia prevalence to latitude, climate, fish consumption, infant mortality, and skin color.” The abstract is available at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19357239

The more I learn about things like vitamin D, the more skeptical I become about traditional psychology’s ability to truly heal individuals who have neurological illnesses. It won’t hurt a thing to educate yourself about the roots of schizophrenia. If “the environment pulls the trigger,” there are fewer things more environmental than sunlight.