Page 8 THE BATTALION WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1980 Local/ National Class of’84 dance set Thursday Trying to cure disorders The Class of ’84 will hold a dance Thursday from 8 p.m. to midnight p.m. at Cell Block Five. The dance will be their first fundraiser with proceeds going to the March 6 Freshman Ball. Live music will be provided by Red Stegall. Admission to the dance is $5 per person. Tickets may be bought in the Memorial Student Center or from class officers and representa tives. Beer and setups will be free with the price of admission. Corps underclassmen will have a free night out, class president Jay Cross said. Cross said the Class of ’84 will probably have more fundraisers in conjunction with Cell Block Five, and will also sell T-shirts to raise money. Prof studies schizophrenia bunch-a-b’loons a fun way to say almost anything ask about our BONFIRE BUDDY SPECIAL! call weekdays 1-5 696-4179 Friday, 7:30 p.m. All Conceris Free ' ' " OASJS ffyf ACTION *ith tmr ADS Advertise an item in the Battalion. Call 845-2611 By BELINDA McCOY Battalion Reporter Physical health is a high price to pay for mental health, but that is exactly the price that some schizophrenics must pay. With the currently available treatment for schi zophrenia, serious side effects usually result. Only about half of the cases can be controlled. Not cured, just controlled, said Dr. Susan Robinson, professor of medical pharmacology at Texas A&M University. Schizophrenia is one of two major forms of psychoses — mental disorganizations which re sult in personality disorders. The cause of schizophrenia is still unknown, said Robinson, and so is its treatment in many cases. Robinson is currently conducting a three-year study, funded by a grant from the National Insti tutes of Health, to develop new drugs to treat schizophrenia. She is studying the brains of labor atory rats to better understand the human brain. “Actually I’m trying to make (something) like a map of the brain,” said Robinson. “If we know how the brain is put together, then we can design drugs that act at a certain point, and then we could see if that helps schizophrenics.” Schizophrenia is characterized by a thought disorder, said Robinson. “They (schizophrenics) just can’t see things straight,” she said. There are three common types of schizophre nia. In catatonic schizophrenia — which is char acterized by zombie-like behavior — a patient just sits and stares at a wall, said Robinson. It is the most easily recognized form of the disease and also the most easily controlled. “If we know how the brain is put together, we can design drugs that act at a certain point, ’’said Dr. Susan Robison, profesor of medical pharmacology, “and then we could see if that helps schizophrenics. “ Paranoid schizophrenia exists when a patient thinks that “everybody is out to get them.’ In the third form of schizophrenia, hebephrenic, a pa tient can only talk nonsense. It is thought that schizophrenia is caused by an excess of a chemical substance in the brain called dopamine. The brain works by electrical impulses, ex plained Robinson. The neurons in the brain com municate to start those electrical impulses by re leasing chemical substances called neurotrans mitters. Dopamine is one of about 25 neurotransmitters known today. Too much dopamine is believed to cause schizophrenia by creating a biochemical short-circuit in the brain. i® Some drugs — called antipsychotic cU have been developed to treat schizophrenia U most important of these, Thorozine, wasdL vered accidentally in France. " At one time, said Robinson, it was thouiM sleep therapy helped mental patients. So U tuates were given to them. 1 To speed up the effect of the barbito Thorozine, an anti-histamine, was deveU Eventually it was found that Thorozine ba