A police officer only needs to use “reasonable force” to make an arrest. How many Fullerton, Calif. police officers does it take to arrest one man?

Well, it took five patrol cars, 6 officers, tasering 37-year-old Kelly Thomas numerous times, and beating him so badly that he went into a coma. And then died a few days later.

What was Thomas’s alleged crime that resulted in his death? Breaking into cars, looking for things to steal.

Welcome to our more violent America, where citizens stand by while the police beating took place, too afraid to intervene and save Thomas’s life. Is this what we’ve come to?

Last month, Andrew Brown writing for the UK’s Guardian, noted when Professor David Nutt kept referring to depression as a “brain disease” on a popular UK television program.

We commend Andrew Brown for his calling out Professor Nutt in trying to dumb down the portrayal of mental disorders to simply “brain diseases.” Mental disorders remain complex disorders that involve all aspect of a person’s functioning and life — their brain and biology, their psychological makeup and personality, and their social interactions and relationships with others. The cause isn’t just one of these things in the vast majority of people who have a mental illness — the cause is all of these things, in differing proportions.

I’ve written about this in the past and in fact, I tag it as one of the top 10 myths of mental illness — because it still is. Even well-meaning family physicians and psychiatrists still refer to the false chemical imbalance theory as though it were fact. A theory, by the way, that has never enjoyed strong research support.

Take a minute and answer this question: Is anyone really normal today?

I mean, even those who claim they are normal may, in fact, be the most neurotic among us, swimming with a nice pair of scuba fins down the river of Denial. Having my psychiatric file published online and in print for public viewing, I get to hear my share of dirty secrets—weird obsessions, family dysfunction, or disguised addiction—that are kept concealed from everyone but a self-professed neurotic and maybe a shrink.

“Why are there so many disorders today?” Those seven words, or a variation of them, surface a few times a week. And my take on this query is so complex that, to avoid sounding like my grad school professors making an erudite case that fails to communicate anything to average folks like me, I often shrug my shoulders and move on to a conversation about dessert. Now that I can talk about all day.

Here’s the abridged edition of my guess as to why we mark up more pages of the DSM-IV today than, say, a century ago (even though the DSM-IV had yet to be born).

Schizophrenia is one of the more debilitating types of mental illness. Over a year ago, I wrote an article for Psych Central about living with schizophrenia. In the beginning, I featured an excerpt from E. Fuller Torrey’s, M.D., excellent book Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients and Providers, because it captures the confusion and misinformation about this disorder.

“Your daughter has schizophrenia,” I told the woman.

“Oh, my God, anything but that,” she replied. “Why couldn’t she have leukemia or some other disease instead?”

“But if she had leukemia she might die,” I pointed out. “Schizophrenia is a much more treatable disease.”

The woman looked sadly at me, then down at the floor. She spoke softly. “I would still prefer that my daughter had leukemia.”

Even though Dr. Torrey wrote this part in the book’s first edition in 1983, I think it still applies today. Though we’ve made advances in treatment and some strides in minimizing stigma, people with schizophrenia still face little empathy or even sympathy from others — in addition to the devastating symptoms they deal with on a daily basis.

That’s why, today, I’d like to share with you several excerpts from Torrey’s book in hopes that they’ll help us to better understand the disorder and be able to put ourselves in the shoes of someone with schizophrenia.

It’s common knowledge that creatives can be eccentric. We’ve seen this throughout history. Even Plato and Aristotle observed odd behaviors among playwrights and poets, writes Harvard University researcher Shelley Carson, author of Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity and Innovation in Your Life, in the May/June 2011 issue of Scientific American.

She gave several examples of creatives’ strange behaviors:

“Albert Einstein picked up cigarette butts off the street to get tobacco for his pipe; Howard Hughes spent entire days on a chair in the middle of the supposedly germ-free zone of his Beverly Hills Hotel suite; the composer Robert Schumann believed that his musical compositions were dictated to him by Beethoven and other deceased luminaries from their tombs; and Charles Dickens is said to have fended off imaginary urchins with his umbrella as he walked the streets of London.”

But what’s most compelling is that research has corroborated the connection between creativity and eccentricity. And it starts, interestingly enough, with schizotypal personality, a milder version of schizotypal personality disorder.

Would you imagine the content of people’s delusions would change with the changing times?

Well, according to Vaughan Bell writing over at Mind Hacks, they do. …

The discussion about a new name for schizophrenia gives us patients an opportunity to present afresh what our condition is really like, warts and all. It gives us the chance to present a more accurate picture — to be honest and open and get away from the misleading and mystifying image of a split mind or split personality.

In this way we can tackle inaccurate and often sensational reporting by journalists and editors working for newspapers, radio and television.

We need to emphasize that some of us — but not all — are on a recovery route, although for the large majority a complete recovery is not attainable.

I was very nervous when my editorial about schizophrenia — there we go, a word I ought not to be using — appeared Open Access online in the December 2010 Journal of Mental Health (published by Informa Healthcare, New York). It contains personal details which it is not customary to reveal. Having got over that I had more anxiety when the printed journal was delayed by a month for unknown reasons. Now that it’s out I am calm again.

Why should I not be using the ‘S’ word? What’s in a name?

The answer is that it has acquired a stigma in the course of a hundred years owing to the small minority of people with our condition who are violent and attack or kill other people.

Some of you may recognize my dream, but I like to repost it every now and then to keep it alive and give it legs.

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I have a dream that one day I won’t hold my breath every time I tell a person that I suffer from bipolar disorder, that I won’t feel shameful in confessing my mental illness.

I have a dream that people won’t feel the need to applaud me for my courage on writing and speaking publicly about my disease, because the diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder would be understood no differently than that of diabetes, arthritis, or dementia.

I have a dream that the research into genetics of mood disorders will continue to pinpoint specific genes that may predispose individuals and families to depression and bipolar disorder (like the gene G72/G30, located on chromosome 13q), just as specific genes associated with schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder have been located and identified.

Last week, I had the opportunity to report from SAMHSA’s annual Voice Awards in Hollywood and to interview one of the consumer leadership award winners. Frederick Frese, Ph.D. is a psychologist with more than 40 years experience in public mental health care. Until 1995, Frese was Director of Psychology for 15 years at Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital. Now he is the Coordinator of the Summit County Recovery Project, serving recovering consumers in and around Akron, OH.

Dr. John M. Grohol: So you’ve had a distinguished career, but it all seemed to start with your diagnosis of schizophrenia when you joined the Marines.

Dr. Frederick Frese: Actually, I was in the Marine Corps for about four years when I had the diagnosis and was discharged. Then spent 10 years, in 10 different hospitals, being hospitalized and re‑hospitalized, at one point being committed as insane. Then I went back to school, got my doctorate, became a psychologist functioning in a state hospital. I was actually director of psychology. I was being told not to tell anybody about my condition.

But one day, and thanks in large part to the last lady you just interviewed, Pam Hodge… She changed the laws in Ohio and encouraged persons in recovery to sit on mental health boards and become open about their conditions. So I did.

Since then, I’ve had quite a career. I’ve given over 2,000 talks. I’ve had movie contracts. No movie, but I’ve had a couple contracts!

Late last week, I received this notice that may be of interest to readers who are interested in the topic of schizophrenia and peer-reviewed journal …

Could inflammation be a contributing factor to some symptoms in schizophrenia? And if inflammation is a significant factor in schizophrenia, could ordinary aspirin help?

Researchers (Lann et al., 2010) from the Netherlands (I love researchers from the Netherlands!) set to find out.

They looked at 70 inpatients in ten psychiatric hospitals who were already taking antipsychotic medications to help treat their schizophrenia (or a related schizophrenia disorder). They randomly divided the 70 patients into two groups — a control group that received placebo, and another group who received 1,000 mg of aspirin per day.

Patient functioning and psychopathology was tested with a common assessment, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). The researchers also looked at cognitive functioning and side effects of both groups.

Their findings?