I think it's highly unlikely that there is any meaningful causal link between a particular parenting style and Schizophrenia.
We currently have a very robust physiological understanding of the disorder, and the symptomatology is linked to observable structural changes in the brains of Schizophrenic individuals.
As with many psychological disorders, there appears to be a stress component: i.e. individuals may be more or less predisposed to the disorder, and therefore some individuals will only ever experience symptoms if triggered by a high level of stress, while for others it's unavoidable.
So in some cases, yes it's possible that a problematic family life was the stressor that pushed them over the edge to develop full-blown Schizophrenia, but that person might have equally been effected by being mugged at gunpoint, or going through prolonged sleep deprivation during basic training in the military.
The causal mechanism is almost certainly an interaction with Cortisol or other stress hormones, or some other well understood biological pathway. It's outdated pseudoscience at this point to take seriously the idea that Schizophrenia is the result of mixed messages during childhood.
> We currently have a very robust physiological understanding of the disorder, and the symptomatology is linked to observable structural changes in the brains of Schizophrenic individuals.
While I agree overall with your point, I think your wording emphasizes a common but mistaken view that psychological experience can't induce physiological changes in the brain. This is obviously false.
Yeah I absolutely agree that there is a feedback loop by which neural activity actually shapes physiology. But there’s also a degree to which psychological disorders are contributed to by errant thought patters, verses being the result of a functional problem with the brain as an organ. For example, with some forms of depression cognitive behavioral therapy (changing your thought patterns about certain things) can be very effective, while in the case of serious bipolar disorder, medication may be the only way to mitigate manic episodes.
For lack of a better analogy, there’s a degree to which different disorders are the result of a software problem or a hardware problem, and all the evidence points to Schitzophrenia as being firmly toward that hardware end of the spectrum.
I again agree with everything you've said, but to tie this all back to the article and the microbiome, while the body does have discrete, specialised organs, we have to recognise that they are leaky abstractions.
Microbiota could influence psychology and thus physiology, or it could directly affect physiology and thus psychology. The fact fecal transplants triggered schizophrenic behaviours in mice shows there's some direct connection here that needs explanation.
> Microbiota could influence psychology and thus physiology, or it could directly affect physiology and thus psychology.
On maybe it's neither and also both. Personally I think Physiology vs Psychology is the wrong terminology to use: Psychology's domain is the mind which is a somewhat abstract concept, and usually refers to things in terms of thoughts and emotions. Our "psychology" is an emergent property of our physiology, but to me it seems like the wrong abstraction to use as a reference point when speaking about the pathology of something like Schizophrenia.
Rather, what I think we're more concretely talking about is the division between nervous system structure (physiology), and activity (which includes, but is broader than psychology).
To me, saying the physiology affects the physiology implies the wrong interpretation: i.e. it would be inaccurate to say that the gut bacteria made rat feel certain emotions or have certain thoughts, and those led to long term structural damage. However, it might very well be the case that the gut biome causes a neural activity pattern which leads to long-term pathological adaptations in nervous system structure.
If I had to guess, there's probably not a one-way causal relationship, but these systems likely feed back on each-other in a way which results in the symptomatology we describe as Schizophrenia.
We currently have a very robust physiological understanding of the disorder, and the symptomatology is linked to observable structural changes in the brains of Schizophrenic individuals.
As with many psychological disorders, there appears to be a stress component: i.e. individuals may be more or less predisposed to the disorder, and therefore some individuals will only ever experience symptoms if triggered by a high level of stress, while for others it's unavoidable.
So in some cases, yes it's possible that a problematic family life was the stressor that pushed them over the edge to develop full-blown Schizophrenia, but that person might have equally been effected by being mugged at gunpoint, or going through prolonged sleep deprivation during basic training in the military.
The causal mechanism is almost certainly an interaction with Cortisol or other stress hormones, or some other well understood biological pathway. It's outdated pseudoscience at this point to take seriously the idea that Schizophrenia is the result of mixed messages during childhood.