One line of thinking for recovery states that it includes medications (antipsychotic) and therapy that includes “improving a person’s ability to think and interact with the world around them.” Is improving the “ability to think and interact” simply alleviating symptoms while leaving the root cause untouched? If schizophrenia is from trauma, do coping skills play a role in onset and recovery? Reactive coping is in essence, coping skills. These coping mechanisms include “appraisal-focused” – modifies the way a patient thinks, “problem-focused”—reduces or eliminate stress, “emotion-focused”—changing emotional reactions, and “occupation-focused” – finding a lasting occupation which is thought to promote positive feedback.*6 Are these focused therapies a cure or simply management?
Dr. Clancy McKenzie, M.D., Director of the Alternative American Psychiatric Association, has dedicated the majority of his medical life to understanding the origins, mechanisms and treatment of trauma.
Sadly, Dr. McKenzie passed away
earlier this year.
Dr. McKenzie has identified unsuspected separation traumas in the first two years of life, which correlate with the later development of schizophrenia, and has discovered that the identical traumas in the next year of life (the 3rd year) correlate with the later development of non-psychotic major depression. He has confirmed his findings through statistical analysis of hard data on 6,000 patients in a Finnish database and 2,700 in a Danish cohort on schizophrenia, plus hundreds more in smaller surveys. Based on Dr. McKenzie’s findings, he calls this the Unification Theory of Mental Illness, which identifies the mechanism by which emotional trauma produces change in brain chemistry and structure.
Dr. McKenzie claims that schizophrenia is actually a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) -- delayed PTSD from infancy.
Late Dr. Clancy McKenzie, M.D., Director of the Alternative American Psychiatric Association
Example of Delayed PTSD from Infancy…a family brought a young man to me who was convinced he never would be able to walk again because his feet hurt. That was more real to him than the reality that he had just walked into my office. I told the family something happened to him when he was just 12 months old. “Nothing happened,” they replied. I insisted it did, and they insisted it didn’t.
Finally, I exclaimed: “Something happened to cause his mother to be extremely upset when he was just 12 months old!” “Oh,” one replied, “his older brother died then.”
Obviously, with the death of her older son, the mother would have been devastated and emotionally separated from the baby for a period of time.