The Unification Theory of Mental Illness

The Unification Theory of Mental Illness

What we have been describing thus far is a comprehensive formulation for the origin and mechanism of schizophrenia, which applies to all serious mental and emotional disorders that I have studied, and for which the noted late Dr. O. Spurgeon English coined the name, the Unification Theory of Mental Illness.

The Unification Model neither refutes biological change nor precludes genetic predisposition. I have no quarrel with any biological finding. The researchers have done their jobs very well. And their findings are important, because just as a chain can be broken at any link, so can schizophrenia be interrupted at many levels. Biological findings also confirm psychological origin, because nearly every biological change studied is precisely what we would expect to find when persons shift brain activity

away from adult brain structures and back to regions of the brain that were active and developing during infancy. Thus biological change is important in confirming traumatic origin.

Genetic factors are a part of the model as well, but they represent predisposition, and their degree of contribution is not yet determined to my satisfaction. Nonetheless, I have no attachment to any particular result, and my colleagues in genetics can have whatever they prove. This does not change traumatic origin. It is possible that genetic predisposition could be co-necessary in a number of cases. If proven, I shall accept this most readily. The Unification Model encompasses all possibilities. It provides

the framework in which all findings are accommodated and given due measure of importance.

Summary