Abstract

The Schizophrenia Association is committed to the belief that schizophrenia is a biochemical disorder affecting the brain and also influencing many other systems of the body. The Association has been strongly criticized for this belief which many think is based on inadequate evidence. However the history of science and medicine demonstrates conclusively that most major advances have been achieved by those who began to believe in a concept long before the evidence was fully convincing. It is this type of faith which has so often provided the driving force enabling people to carry on when faced with enormous difficulties and great scepticism. When the faith proves justified, the outcome is triumph; when the critics are right there is tragedy.

Is the final outcome of the efforts of the Schizophrenia Association and its friends to be tragedy or triumph? It now seems to me that the hypothetical impartial observer must be convinced that triumph is a more likely result. The evidence that schizophrenics are physically and chemical1y different from others, that schizophrenia is a disease of the body which particularly affects the brain, is increasingly persuasive. This book gathers together much of that evidence in a most valuable way. This evidence comes from many different fields of study and the overall impression is that while much remains to be done, the outcome is now almost certain. Within the next twenty years schizophrenia will be shown to be a disease - or more probably several diseases - in which biochemical disarray leads to brain malfunction.

Turning from the general question of schizophrenia I should like to use this foreword to pay a particular tribute to the efforts of Mrs Gwynneth Hemmings and her family and friends who have overcome formidable obstacles in order to keep the Association going and to organize a series of conferences of which this is the latest. Only great enthusiasm and great determination could have achieved what they have done and it seems to me that the worlds of schizophrenics and of researchers on schizophrenia owe them a great debt. Such a debt can, of course, never be repaid, but I know that the Hemmings family will be more than satisfied if as now seems likely their efforts have contributed in a real way to the control of this most difficult disease.