Orthomolecular Psychiatry by Hawkins and Pauling Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of Schizophrenia by David R. Hawkins and Linus Pauling (US) (Canada)
Almost Completed

This book is often a very technical manual on the treatment of schizophrenia using (mostly) natural therapies with large amounts of certain vitamins, including niacin (vitamin “B3”, or niacinamide), vitamin C and other vitamins. Different aspects of the treatment of schizophrenia are covered. The articles are written by different authors, including the late Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Abram Hoffer.

I’m interested in different sides of the story. One side is the effectiveness (or not) of megavitamin therapy for mental illness–and how psychiatric illnesses are treated. And the other side is the use of LSD in experiments on patients. Also, I’m interested the different organizations involved in the research. These orthomolecular researchers were mostly promoting natural therapies (to one extent or another) but on the other hand, they also seemed to have been part of the history of how mental disorders were more and more seen as something biological that needs to be treated with medicine of one kind or another.

Outside of this book, I’m also interested in the controversy about how some people dismiss the idea of mental illness altogether even though it seems logical to me that some abnormal states of mind are due to nutritional deficiencies.

And on the other hand, ironically, nowadays we face the prospect with the DSM-V manual of all kinds of normal human behaviors being considered mental disorders and potentially treated with drugs that are sold as cures when they’re not!

There is a definite Huxleyan Brave New World threat to our freedom from the use of drugs, and yet we also want to know what is the best natural way to maintain good health in body and mind. And we’re not getting that information from the mainstream in my opinion.

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