Brad of Milligram wrote about a psychiatrist from olden days who claimed he could diagnose patients by their smell alone, and expressed scepticism (wouldn't you?), but there actually is some science behind it.
Identification of schizophrenic patients by examination of body odor using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and a cross-selective gas sensor array, Di Natale et al., 2005 (free PDF) has the scoop on the "richer" and "peculiar" scent. They concluded that there is no one variable, but a "global variant" of body odor.
I imagine that a practising psychiatrist with a good nose just might be able to sniff out a diagnosis, at least a first impression.
Comments
Maybe it's just me, but the sight of a psychiatrist sniffing you is not likely to do much to encourage a therapeutic relationship. Especially if you were paranoid to begin with.
Posted by: Romeo Vitell | June 14, 2007 10:55 AM
You know, I maintain that this is still a clinical nightmare! An aetiological nose-dive, one might say. If one was so inclined.
Posted by: Brad | June 14, 2007 12:08 PM
Smell has commonly been a factor in determining disease in medicine for ages and it is probably evolutionarily ingranied in people to reflexively avoid others with foul body odors because of it's natural association with disease. The idea of using it to diagnose mental disorders is fascinating, but one question I have to ask about this study is how it was known if the individual medications each of the patients was taking affected the metabolites given off in their skin. The patients had a richer mix of metabolites than the healthy controls, but they also had a far richer mix of medications in their blood streams as well. Additionally, if the various medications do affect the metabolites detected, this techniques eventual use as a diagnostic tool would probably come into question using solely the results of medicated studies because individuals don't come in pre-medicated to be diagnosed.
Posted by: lara | June 14, 2007 3:32 PM
Actually, I find this intriguing, but unsurprising overall. I guess what I find most surprising is that a research team looked at it seriously and found something they could measure.
Now, I know that this is nothing more than personal anecdote, and that anecdote in no way replaces data. But the reason I find the smell thing itself unsurprising is that I have some personal experience of this. I have a better sense of smell than a lot of people I know (which is not actually fun; most people seriously don't smell very nice, even if they shower regularly, and I have to work with a lot of people). But in the few years that I took between high school and university, I also had a bipolar friend -- and I could always tell, the moment I came within sniff distance, if there was a mood swing incipient and which direction it would take. This was explicitly smell; I could consciously smell the distinct difference, and it was not a result of "personal hygeine issues", either, as she was generally meticulous. It was a chemical change in her body.
Body chemistry changes reflect brain chemistry changes. I find this plausible, if not entirely understood.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | June 14, 2007 4:28 PM
(sniff, sniff, nose under armpit...)
I wonder if could smell my madness come and go? Might have to experiment, if only I could remember what I was experimenting on when the insanity returns...maybe a string tied to my finger?
Posted by: terry | June 14, 2007 4:52 PM
Romeo, you're right, the sniffing might snuff out trust. I suppose it could be done surreptitiously, but that's even more reason for paranoia.
Luna, it's interesting you'd noticed it yourself, and from someone who's bipolar. I'd only read about schizophrenia tied to the change in B.O.
Posted by: Sandra | June 14, 2007 9:47 PM
It's at least possible that it's the other way around.
Posted by: Caledonian | June 14, 2007 10:05 PM
Dear Mr. Higgins,
I am protesting against the deceptive title you have given this essay.
Clicking onto it I fully expected to read a previously unpublished work by H.P. Lovecraft.
Needless to say, I was disappointed.
Please do not use such deception again or it will be referred to authorities in deep places.
Yours,
R.J. Jase
President Esoteric Order Of Dagon, Connecticut Chapter
Posted by: Rob Jase | June 15, 2007 9:51 AM
I'm entirely confused... what the hell are you talking about?
Posted by: Steve Higgins | June 15, 2007 10:13 AM
Sandra -- I had never read about it before at all; it was purely an observation from experience. I wish I could describe the change in her smell, but I just don't quite know how. All I can say is that, oddly, I found the way she smelled just before she got manically high to be a "worse" (nastier? More disturbing?) smell than before she went into a depressive episode. Unfortunately I didn't really do anything to document, although a couple of times I contacted her mother when the smell made me think she was going into a particularly bad period (in my memory, at least, I was right about it every time but once).
Steve -- the reference to H.P. Lovecraft, purple-prose author of "At The Mountains of Madness", creator of the entire Cthulhu genre? You don't get this? Oy...culturally deprived, you are...
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | June 15, 2007 11:36 AM
ohh I get the reference. The Smell of Madness is entirely to far away from The Mountains of Madness to be funny.
Posted by: Steve Higgins | June 15, 2007 11:43 AM
...It could be based on the Necronomicon description:
By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; ...
'S a thought, anyway. It would fit with the kind of things Lovecraft wrote. I suspect that Rob Jase was probably reading Lovecraft far too recently.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | June 15, 2007 12:45 PM
ahh.... evidently Dennis Miller is reading Lovecraft then?
Posted by: steve higgins | June 15, 2007 12:56 PM
Dear R.J. Jase - I protest your misattribution of this article to Steve and not me, who wrote it.
I've never read Lovecraft and did not have it in mind when I wrote the title. Also, it's a bit silly to expect to see long-lost Lovecraft prose in a science blog, hmm?
Posted by: Sandra Kiume | June 15, 2007 3:19 PM
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=6&articleID=0000D334-FF3E-1FAB-BF3E83414B7F0000
for more information. Apparently, pentane builds up in patients with schizophrenia.
Posted by: Chui Tey | June 16, 2007 5:00 AM
My former spouse, who is mentally ill, has a very strange odor--it has nothing to do with hygiene. I have a friend whose former husband was also mentally ill; she told me her ex-spouse too, had a strange odor. It is hard to describe, but I can tell you, it is not pleasant. Neither of these men were on any kind of medication.
(please do not use my name or e-mail in this posting!)
Posted by: anonymous | December 23, 2007 1:24 PM