Dr. Andrei Shmilovich, head of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology at Pirogov University, stated that schizophrenia and depression stem from the same brain change.
According to him, schizophrenia and recurrent depression can develop as a result of decreased activity in the frontal lobes of the brain, although they are technically two different diagnoses.
The scientist points out that the current classification of mental disorders is largely outdated, because it is based primarily on the description of symptoms and behavioral manifestations.
He says: "Those who created these classifications relied on socio-psychological principles, while recent studies show that there are specific neurobiological indicators for different forms of mental illness."
According to him, this leads to two problems. First, different diagnoses may have the same underlying cause at the brain level. Second, a single diagnosis often encompasses multiple "atypical" forms. As a result, patients suffer because clinical guidelines and treatment criteria are based on a formal, rather than a biological, logic.
For example, a lack of frontal lobe activity can be observed in both recurrent (short-term) depression and schizophrenia, although these two disorders are considered clinically separate.
The frontal lobe is responsible for emotional control, planning, and decision-making, and its dysfunction can lead to similar symptoms, such as apathy, decreased initiative, and cognitive difficulties. For example, excessive dopamine activity in the limbic system—that is, increased dopamine activity in brain structures associated with emotion and motivation—may be a common factor in both schizotypal personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which explains the similarity of some individual symptoms despite different diagnoses.
