Neurodevelopmental Disorder Quotes

In 2010, the psychiatrist Thomas Insel, then director of NIMH, called for the research community to redefine schizophrenia as “a collection of neurodevelopmental disorders,” not one single disease. The end of schizophrenia as a monolithic diagnosis could mean the beginning of the end of the stigma surrounding the condition. What if schizophrenia wasn’t a disease at all, but a symptom? “The metaphor I use is that years ago, clinicians used to look at ‘fever’ as one disease,” said John McGrath, an epidemiologist with Australia’s Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and one of the world’s authorities on quantifying populations of mentally ill people. “Then they split it into different types of fevers. And then they realized it’s just a nonspecific reaction to various illnesses. Psychosis is just what the brain does when it’s not working very well.

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder where the patient frequently suffers from involuntary convulsive movements (tics) which in some cases are associated with involuntary swearing. Two unrelated individuals with this disorder were shown to have the same single base change in the 3′ UTR of a gene called SLITRK139. SLITRK1 appears to be required for neuronal development. The base change in the Tourette’s patients introduced a binding site for a short ncRNA called miR-189. This suggests that SLITRK1 expression may be abnormally down-regulated via such binding, at critical points in development. This alteration is only present in a few cases of Tourette’s but raises the tantalising suggestion that mis-regulation of miRNA binding sites in other neuronal genes may be involved in other patients.

Exposure to Thimerosal increased beginning in 1989 and rose sharply during the early 1990s as new vaccines were added to the US childhood vaccine schedule. This increased exposure to mercury via vaccines coincided closely with increased case reports of neurodevelopmental disorders, including a dramatic increase in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) cases and a rise in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It is also important to note that not all pathological presentations are caused by the environment. A child may have underlying difficulties such as intellectual disabilities or other neurodevelopmental disorders. On the other hand, just because a child has survived unscathed does not mean that the environment was benign. We know that some children are naturally less sensitive to environmental influences and as such are more resilient to harsh environments.