Treatment, services, and environmental factors

A great deal of what we know about CNS physiology has grown directly from the study of pharmacological and psychosocial influences on brain physiology and structure. The most durable biochemical hypotheses in the field of schizophrenia research have been drawn from observations of the effects on behavior of drug therapy and from the putative understanding of those effects on relevant neural systems. For example, the noradrenergic hypothesis of anhedonia, the dopamine hypothesis, and the transmethylation hypothesis of psychoses have all emerged from the clinical observation of drug effects. Deriving etiological and pathophysiological hypotheses of disease from the observation of such effects will continue to be of therapeutic benefit in the psychotic or otherwise symptomatic patient. Mechanisms are needed to bring etiologically oriented theorists together with clinical scientists who draw observations from clinical trials. This is important for heuristic theory development and development of testable hypotheses. Hypothesis testing is likely to require interdisciplinary approaches, including the interplay between animal and tissue models on the one hand, and clinical scientists on the other. Clinical research settings are needed in which rigorous treatment research can be carried out to evaluate the pathogenic determinants of schizophrenia. Research to provide better, more effective treatments for individuals suffering from schizophrenia will are vital and will have significant consequences in improving the lives of patients and their families. Further, treatment research has been and will be a major source of theory about etiology and pathogenesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)