Dr. Torrey has
conducted numerous research studies, particularly on possible infectious causes
of schizophrenia. He has become well known as an advocate of the idea that
severe mental illness is due to biological factors and not social factors. He
has appeared on national radio and television outlets and written for many
newspapers. He has received two Commendation Medals by the U.S. Public Health
Service and numerous other awards and tributes. He has been criticized by a
range of people, including federal researchers and others for some of his
attacks on de-institutionalization and his support for forced medication as a
method of treatment. He has also been described as having a black-and-white
view of mental illness and as being
iconoclastic,
dogmatic, single-minded and a
renegade.
[4
Torrey is on the
board of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), which describes itself as being
"a national
nonprofit
advocacy organization.
TAC supports
involuntary treatment
when deemed appropriate by a judge (at the urging of the person's psychiatrist
and family members). Torrey has written several best-selling books on
mental illness,
including
Surviving Schizophrenia
Education
and early career
Torrey then
practiced general medicine in
Ethiopia
for two years as a
Peace
Corps physician and in the South
Bronx. From 1970 to 1975, he was
a special administrative assistant to the NIMH director. He then worked for
year in
Alaska in the Indian
Health Service. He then became a ward physician at
St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital for the mentally ill in
Washington, D.C.[3]
for nine years, where he reportedly worked with the most challenging patients
and aimed to avoid the use of seclusion or restraints on the acute admission
units.
He also volunteered at Washington
homeless clinics.
Stanley Medical Research Institute
Torrey is the
founder and Executive Director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute
(SMRI), a large, private provider of research on schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder in
the US. SMRI also maintains a collection of postmortem
brain tissue from individuals
with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major
depression and from
unaffected controls, which are made available to researchers without charge.
After reading
Torrey's book "Surviving Schizophrenia,"
Theodore
Stanley, a businessman who had made a fortune in direct-mail marketing and
whose son had been diagnosed in the late 1980s with bipolar disorder, contacted
Torrey and he and his wife provided the funds for the new institute.
As of 2004 the
Stanley Institute had 30 employees and funded half of all U.S. research on
bipolar disorder and about a quarter of all schizophrenia research. In 2003 the
institute's rapidly growing research budget exceeded $40 million, 74 percent of
which was given out to other researchers through grants. It reports that 75% of its expenditure goes
towards the development of new treatments.
The Stanley Medical
Institute in Bethesda Maryland has collected in excess of 600 brains
PDF
In ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/VOL 61, NOV 2004, in a report called, "Brain
Anatomy in Adults With Velocardiofacial Syndrome With and Without
Schizophrenia", SMRI published results of a Structural Magnetic Resonance
Imaging Study showing difference in brain structure of people with and without
schizophrenia.
The SMRI has been
sued for allegedly taking brains for use in research without proper consent.
One lawsuit was settled out of court.
As of 2008 SMRI was
also supporting the
Stanley
Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, which plans to scan
the entire genome for variants that predispose to schizophrenia and bipolar
disorder, and screen hundreds of thousands of compounds against new molecular
targets prior to clinical testing.
SMRI reports that it
has a close relationship with and is the supporting organization for the
Treatment
Advocacy Center (TAC).
Treatment Advocacy Center
Torrey is a founder
of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national organization that supports
outpatient commitment
for certain people with mental illness who, in his view of their treatment
history and present circumstances, are judged unlikely to survive safely in the
community without supervision. TAC has been credited by
New York State
Attorney General
Eliot
Spitzer and others with helping pass
Kendra's Law in the
state. Kendra's Law allows court-ordered involuntary treatment of people
diagnosed with schizophrenia or other severe mental illness who have a history
of noncompliance with psychiatric advice, i.e., individuals who are, "as a
result of his or her mental illness, unlikely to voluntarily participate in the
recommended treatment pursuant to the treatment plan."
Previously, only inpatient programs were
available to submit a person to involuntary treatment. TAC's efforts to pass
Kendra's Law led to similar successful passage of
Laura's Law in
California, and similar laws
in
Florida and elsewhere.
Torrey has testified numerous times in front of Congress.
National
Alliance on Mental Illness
Torrey was for many
years an active advisor for the
National
Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Parents felt that he spoke up for them
when much of the medical establishment had previously held that parenting was
responsible for schizophrenia. Torrey helped build NAMI into a powerful
political force through campaigning and donating the hardcover royalties from
the sale of his book "Surviving Schizophrenia".
Although Torrey,
TAC, and NAMI remain aligned, NAMI may have tried to distance itself from TAC
in 1998. One source
The Psychiatric Times,
reported that TAC was designed from the start to be "a separate support
organization with its own source of funding." According to
MindFreedom
International, an association of survivors of psychiatric treatment opposed
to involuntary treatment, NAMI severed its relationship with TAC because of
pressure from groups opposed to Torrey both from within NAMI and outside NAMI.
Torrey is, according to MindFreedom, one of 'the most feverishly pro-force
psychiatrists in the world'. MindFreedom suggests that the 'links between NAMI
and TAC are simply going from overt to covert.'
In 2002, NAMI's
Executive Director issued a statement highly critical of
60 Minutes for producing a
piece entitled "Dr. Torrey's War." In the statement, NAMI alternately
criticized and backed various positions espoused by Torrey while aiming its
criticism at 60 Minutes for what NAMI called "sound bite journalism."
.
Torrey was also the
keynote speaker at the 23rd annual NAMI convention in 2002.
In 2005, NAMI gave
Dr. Torrey a tribute on its 25th Anniversary Celebratory Donor Wall, for those
who have donated over $25,000. It called him a groundbreaking researcher, a
ferociously resolute advocate, a prominent and admired author of dozens of
books and a dedicated practicing clinician, and said that he had "touched
the lives of countless NAMI members throughout this nation."
NAMI has some
continuing links to TAC via their board of directors. One individual, Frederick
Frese, is presently on both the NAMI and TAC boards. TAC has two other former
NAMI board members on their board and Laurie Flynn, the former NAMI executive
director, is part of the TAC Honorary Advisory Committee.
In 2008, Torrey
disagreed with a NAMI view on second-generation antipsychotics and accused the
medical director and executive director of failing to disclose conflicts of
interest, because they are employees of an organization that receives more than
half its budget from pharmaceutical companies. He argued they were not
representing the views of many members of NAMI including himself.
Scientific research and views
In the 1950s, it was
commonly thought that schizophrenia was caused by 'bad parenting'. Torrey has
argued that this theory had a toxic effect on parents. His sister had severe
schizophrenia and spent most of five decades in hospitals and nursing homes until
her death.
Torrey has been a
fierce opponent of the influence of
Freud
and
psychoanalysis.
He has also argued that
psychiatry
should focus only on severe mental illness, conceived as neurological
disorders, rather than other mental issues that he viewed as non-medical.
Torrey was principal
investigator of a
NIMH
Schizophrenia/Bipolar Disorder Twin Study conducted at the Neuroscience center
of St Elizabeth's Hospital in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and copublished more
than a dozen studies on structural brain differences between affected and
unaffected siblings. He differed from his collaborators in arguing that the
genetic
heritability of
schizophrenia was lower than typically estimated.
A review of Torrey's data analysis, however,
suggested he had erroneously compared different sorts of concordance
statistics.
In the early 1970s,
Torrey became interested in viral infections as possible causes of
schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, particularly a parasite
Toxoplasma gondii whose
definitive host is the
cat, but whose
intermediate host can
be any mammal, including humans.
Up to
one third of the world's human population is estimated to carry a Toxoplasma
infection.
[12]
Since then he has published, often with
Robert
Yolken, more than 30 articles on seasonal variation and possible infectious
causes of schizophrenia, focusing especially on Toxoplasma gondii. He is
involved in five or six ongoing studies using anti-Toxoplasmosa gondii agents
(e.g. antibiotics such as
minocycline
and
azithromycin[14][15]) as an
add-on treatment for schizophrenia. He believes that infectious causes will
eventually explain the "vast majority" of schizophrenia cases.
Some of his collaborators have disagreed with
the emphasis he has placed on infection as a direct causal factor.
Many of the research studies on links between
schizophrenia and
Toxoplasma gondii, by
different authors in different countries, are funded and supported by the
Stanley Medical Research Institute. The hypothesis is not prominent in current
mainstream scientific views on the
causes of
schizophrenia, although infections may be seen as one possible risk factor
that could lead to vulnerabilities in early neurodevelopment in some cases.
Torrey has generally
been in favor of
antipsychotic
drugs. He has claimed that taking antipsychotics reduces the risk of violence,
homelessness and prison. He has argued that "noncompliance" in about
half of cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is due to lack of
"insight" into the illness because the part of the brain for
self-awareness has been affected; and that in some who are aware it is due to
adverse effects ranging from tremors or sedation to sexual dysfunction to
substantial weight gain.
He has also
reported that at least some antipsychotics cause medical conditions in some
people that can be fatal, especially
African Americans.
He has also argued that pharmaceutical
companies have too much influence over psychiatric organizations and
psychiatrists, effectively buying them off.
[1
Recognition
Dr. Torrey has
appeared on national radio and television (outlets like NPR, Oprah, 20/20, 60
Minutes, and Dateline) and has written for many newspapers. He has received a
1984 Special Families Award from NAMI, two Commendation Medals from the
U.S. Public
Health Service, a 1991 National Caring Award, and a humanitarian award from
NARSAD (now known as the
Brain
& Behavior Research Foundation). In 1999, he received a research award
from the International Congress of Schizophrenia. In 2005, a tribute to Torrey
was included in NAMI's 25th Anniversary Celebratory Donor Wall.
