Drug-Induced Schizophrenia

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Medical research is simpler and generally more productive when it becomes possible to use models. This experimental method is available to psychiatrists who find that certain chemicals called hallucinogens (13) produce in subjects experiences which resemble those described by patients who now have schizophrenia or by those who have recovered. Lewin (19), Kluver (18) and Stockings (31) suggested many years ago that these compounds could be used in this way. However, the differences between these model experiences and schizophrenia rather than their similarities impressed many leading psychiatrists. Thus Bleuler (4) as late as 1956 maintained that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) produced a toxic delirium and therefore this experience had little to offer to the students of schizophrenia. The fallacy of this argument was discussed by Osmond (23) who with Smythies (24) stressed many points of similarity between schizophrenia and the mescaline experience. The consensus today of research psychiatrists such as Rinkel (26, 27, 28, 29), Hoch (10, 11) and others is that the similarities are adequate, provided generalizations remain within the limits imposed by the data.