Oct. 29, 2003 Your nose could provide the first reliable
diagnostic tool for predicting a person's likelihood of
developing psychosis, new research has found. An Australian team
from the University of Melbourne examined a group of people
deemed to be at ultra high risk of developing psychosis and
found those that went on to develop schizophrenia, rather than
other forms of psychosis, all displayed the inability to
identify smells. This deficit was present before the onset of
any significant clinical symptoms of psychosis. The study, the
first of its kind, is published in the October 2003 American
Journal of Psychiatry. The research has also reignited the
academic debate regarding the influence of genetics versus
social factors on the development of various forms of psychosis.
It has long been known that people suffering schizophrenia and
other forms of psychosis are often unable to correctly identify
smells. That is, pizza may be mislabelled as orange, or
bubblegum as smoke. Before the current findings, howev