Khaberni - Dr. Andrei Shmelyovitch, head of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology at Pirogov University, reported that schizophrenia and depression arise from the same brain change.
According to him, schizophrenia and recurrent depression can develop due to reduced activity in the frontal lobes of the brain, despite being technically different diagnoses.
The scientist points out that the current classification of mental disorders is largely outdated because it primarily relies on describing symptoms and behavioral manifestations.
He says: "The creators of these classifications based them on psychosocial principles, while recent studies show the existence of specific neurobiological indicators for various forms of mental illness."
According to him, this leads to two problems. First, different diagnoses may have the same cause at the brain level. Second, often a single diagnosis encompasses multiple "atypical" forms. As a result, patients suffer because clinical guidelines and treatment standards are based on formal logic, not biology.
For example, a reduction in frontal lobe activity can be observed in both short-term recurrent depression and schizophrenia, despite these disorders being clinically separate.
The frontal lobe is responsible for emotional regulation, planning, and decision-making, and disruption of its functions leads to similar symptoms, such as apathy, decreased initiative, and cognitive difficulties. For instance, hyperactivity of dopamine in the limbic region — that is, increased dopamine activity in brain structures associated with emotion and motivation — is a common factor behind both schizoid personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which explains the similarity of some individual symptoms despite different diagnoses.
