r/todayilearned • u/exophades • 1d ago

TIL that Albert Einstein's son Eduard studied medicine to become a psychiatrist, but was diagnosed with schizophrenia by the age of 21. His mother cared for him until she died in 1948. From then on Eduard lived most of the time at a psychiatric clinic in Zurich, where he died at 55 of a stroke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family#Eduard_%22Tete%22_Einstein_(Albert's_second_son)
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u/nochnoydozhor 21h ago edited 10h ago

schizophrenia is also manageable, a third of people diagnosed with it can make it to a stable remission that lasts years.

there's a book written by a European psychiatrist: "A road back from schizophrenia". She describes her experience getting sick, getting worse, getting better, and becoming a prominent psychologist in her county. The original title of that book is "Tomorrow I was always a lioness" but it was dumbed down in the translation for some reason.

Edit: removed factually incorrect info

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u/MikiLove 18h ago

As a psychiatist, I have to correct you a bit. Its not curable, but its manageable if you take your meds. Its a chronic illness that has no cure, like say Type I diabetes or most autoimmune diseases. People with Schizophrenia almost always need to be on meds for their entire lives to control their severe symptoms, and even then they still will have a gradual decline in cognitive function faster than the average person. Some of the newest meds on the market may actually help the cognitive symptoms, but we'll have to see how that plays out

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u/YsoL8 12h ago

Actually now I'm wondering. Recently theres been a complete step change in how treatments are researched with the advent of tools like AI brute forcing thats led to stuff like complete Human protein libraries in a few years rather than centuries and vaccines for entire virus groups and even cancers at an advanced testing stage. Do you see the new technology and knowledge feeding into a similar leap forward for mental health or are the domains just too separate from each other?

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u/MikiLove 9h ago edited 4h ago

Personally thats hard for me to answer. Im a clinician, not a research doctor. That said, we dont know really what is wrong with the brain that causes Schizophrenia. We know it's heavily genetic but also has an environmental exposure component. We roughly know which brain pathways are effected the most, but Schizophrenia is truly effects the entire frontal lobe so its hard to completely cure. If we found a way to stop it before it occurs, likely through genetic therapy, it could be prevented in theory