Remember the phrase from the Soviet cartoon about an independent and overly smart schoolboy Uncle Fyodor? “They go crazy one by one. It’s only the flu that gets sick together!” Indeed, it is believed that mental illnesses are not transmitted either by contact or by airborne droplets. They cannot be infected in transport or picked up through unwashed fruits. However, the term «contact schizophrenia» is a fairly common definition. What is really hidden behind this ambiguous, illogical phrase and is it possible to “catch” schizophrenia from a person with a diagnosis?
A bit of history
In fact, the contagiousness of schizophrenic disorder, despite the fact that this disease is defined as endogenous, that is, not subject to external factors, was discussed back in the 70s of the last century. And not just some amateurs, but the well-known psychiatrist Etely Kazanets at that time, who worked in one of the specialized research institutes of the USSR.
The reason for doubting the basic definition of the term «schizophrenia» for the scientist was the story of one of the girls who came into contact with a patient with schizophrenia and eventually acquired this diagnosis herself. A skeptic-scientist of a hypochondriacal patient did not believe a word, but began to study similar cases, their frequency and regularity.
Having studied the statistics for 40 communal apartments in Moscow, he concluded: where people with a diagnosis lived, at least 10% of such cases were recorded over time from among the residents who contacted them. The conclusion suggested itself: schizophrenia is contagious, like any viral infection. However, shouting «Eureka!» Kazanets was in no hurry to present his discovery to the general scientific public and did the right thing. After all, as soon as the scientist’s vanity got the better of caution and he made public the results of his research, he was immediately fired from the institute and was no longer hired for a job in his specialty.
Is there really azo-virus?
As a result of private studies of patients with schizophrenia and contactees, Kazanets came to the conclusion that contact schizophrenia is more typical for adolescents, but in people over 25 it is extremely rare. But academic psychiatrists had a completely logical argument for this: the disease, if it exists, clearly manifests itself precisely in the puberty period.
But the scientist did not give up, proving that it was not age and hormones that were to blame, but a certain virus that was transmitted by airborne droplets, like a common respiratory disease. And if in the USSR the hypotheses of the “mad scientist” were treated with disdain, then American and European colleagues became interested in his research and … found a molecular trace of a retrovirus in the fluid obtained from the spinal cord and brain of a patient with schizophrenia!
In general, Kravets turned out to be more right than crazy, because 30% of people with mental pathologies had this virus in their bodies, but mentally healthy people did not have it at all. Moreover, this virus has adapted to form DNA from its own RNA, which explains the very fact of the heredity of schizophrenia, because the mechanism has not yet been studied, which means that there is no way to stop the process.
But scientists are still arguing about the contagiousness of schizophrenia, because the viral nature of the disease, even if taken as a proven fact (and it still contradicts the dominant genetic and neurotransmitter theories), speaks more about the etiology of the disease than about the systemic nature of its spread.