Today I have the honor of interviewing Irish author Patrick Tracey, who penned an amazing book, “Stalking Irish Madness Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia,” for which he has won the Ken Book Award from the National Alliance on Mental …
Before posting, please read our blog moderation guidelines. The comments below begin with the oldest comments first. Click on the last comments page to jump to the most recent comments.
Before posting, please read our blog moderation guidelines.
Post a Comment:
Copyright © 1992-2012 Psych Central. All rights reserved.
Site last updated: 25 May 2012
|
Patrick, your book sounds fascinating.
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.
Thanks for the link. Of course prenatal malnourisment was the big driver that produced the big bubble in Ireland. So this is very interesting.
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.
Wow! You had a lot of balls writing this book. I believe the Irish culture continues to pull the trigger for mental illness, however when I have mentioned it in conversations with other Irish or family I have been labeled as the nutjob and have been exiled from family or social circles. How have you dealt with the reprecussions of letting the Irish secret out?
my uncle spent 75 years in a mental hospital here in ireland 1928 to 2003, diagnosed with a type of schizophrenia, my two sisters have also been hospitilized, with mental illness, what are the chances of the next generation also having it best wishes josephine