Current Biochemical Approaches to Schizophrenia

Abstract

THE schizophrenic psychoses that account for more than half the patients in mental hospitals present a major challenge to medical research. Biochemistry, which has had notable success in other areas of medicine, has appropriately been brought to bear on this one, and the ability of many simple chemical substances to produce a toxic psychosis that simulates schizophrenia in certain respects has generated the hope that a relatively simple chemical disturbance may be identified in its etiology. Heuristic hypotheses such as those formulated on this premise are always beneficial to a field because of the interest, thought and research that they . . .