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Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

psyche.co

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Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#331

Post by taurath »

bobbiechen wrote: post #304
DavidVoid wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of what Martin Luther King, Jr., had to say about the word "maladjusted" [1]. “You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word maladjusted. This word is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is a good word; certainly it is good that in dealing with what the word implies you are declaring that destructive maladjustment should be destroyed. You are saying…

And from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Which is a distinctly western sort of thought, that insists on a person being somehow outside and not of the world in which he inhabits.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#332

Post by kortilla »

danans wrote: post #278
PaulHoule wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tigers were not somewhat dangerous it wouldn't be much harder than breeding housecats, except they are larger and eat more. Every so often they catch somebody breeding tigers in shockingly small cages. How can society not be "a cage" in some respects? How about the arguments from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Disconten...

> How can society not be "a cage" in some respects? Calling it a cage is reductio ad absurdum. The presence of social norms does not invalidate the agency of humans or groups of humans in the way a cage does. Characterizing it as a cage is a strawman, often used by those who would simply like to destroy it and erect a "cage" of their own preference.

There are countries where women cannot drive, cannot show their faces, etc. Their agency is very much invalidated by the social norms.

In other countries the social norms will have you killed for being gay. This is just as bad or worse than a cage in many respects.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#333

Post by allworknoplay »

pugz wrote: post #329

I agree in general that prescription antidepressants are over-prescribed. Unfortunately there are few medications that can ameliorate shit life syndrome. That said, some people do have genuine chemical imbalances. I've had bipolar disorder all my life. My cocktail of medications has allowed the last 11 years of my life to be the most productive, stable and happiest. There are of course side effects - and I can unders…

The author wasn't discussing overprescription, they were talking about an apparently common impression that mental illness is different from something called a "chemical imbalance".

Their point was that neither someone for whom a little bit of adderall or antidepressants, nor someone like yourself for whom a full compliment of medications has helped is understood to simply have a "chemical imbalance", and certainly not one that's 1-to-1 corrected by drugs.

Instead, it's the case that through some medications many people with mental illnesses of varying severities are helped in coping with or reducing symptoms of their illness.

The point is that people "other" themselves from people with mental illnesses, telling themselves that it's just a chemical imbalance they're correcting. This change in many peoples' understanding of how therapy or their own brains works has unfortunately not reduced the stigma of mental illness, it's just something people have been telling themselves (as the authors studies show) to substitute for an admission that mental illness is ok and can be worked on.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#334

Post by garbagetime »

mrkurt wrote: post #300
yomly wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally a doctor friend confirmed this same observation to me after doing a psychiatry rotation - they suggested that most people with depression were just sad but wanted a magic pill to cure the unpleasant emotion.

Depression isn't "sad". Depression _can_ be a function of the environment, but it's still not "sad". Sad is a healthy, appropriate emotion. Depression is a numbness that makes it difficult to even feel sadness.

Depression as you mean it is a proper state for a person to be be in when his life and the world about him seem to be very wrong.

To delete depression rather than addressing the root causes seems strange and inhuman.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#335

Post by amake »

sva_ wrote: post #29
aantix wrote: post #7

Magnesium is used by the body to cope with stress. I've noticed in the past, that when I've been under a ton of stress, I drink coffee, soda, ruminate a ton, and things get worse, much worse. I've started taking magnesium l-threonate the past few months and it's literally made me a better person. Thoughts come and go. The rumination, the "voices" are much less. One scoop, three times a day during stressful periods (1…

Although it is probably not a cure in severe cases as that described in the article, I would also recommend paying attention to one's magnesium intake. However, I found that taking supplements is not necessary. Just find a mineral water that has a high magnesium content (100mg/L +), and it should get you covered as water has a pretty high bioavailability for Mg.

Sorry to reply off-topic, but I wanted to let you know that in response to your request here (which I can no longer reply to): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23677225

I’m about to release an update to Orgro with LaTeX support powered by KaTeX. More info here: https://reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/hsa3ik/orgro_update_inli...

I don’t use LaTeX much, so if you would be willing to test with the kinds of documents you write, or even send me a file to test with, that would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#336

Post by chc »

minerjoe wrote: post #253
toomanybeersies wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter point, being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication was one of the best things to have ever happened to me. Everybody is different though, medication is beneficial for some and detrimental for others. It's important to be aware of your mental state and how treatment (whether drugs or other) affects it, and to be able to make informed choices regarding treatment. A good doctor/shrink should take in…

> deadset against prescribing stimulant medication to children I've seen it first hand. Child is beautiful and active and happy and sad and angry and living and the Mother just can't handle it and BAM - drugs. Child grows up, becomes a teenager. Prescription drugs stop. Teenage moves to Methamphetamine, start cooking. Eventually is busted and jailed. The connection, for me, is clear. I feel very very lucky that I gre…

It seems like you're conflating accurate diagnoses with misdiagnoses here. Nobody thinks being medicated based on a misdiagnosis is a good thing, and especially not as a substitute for parenting.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#337

Post by Dahoon »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #109

To whatever degree a mental health issue is treatable with drugs, it genuinely is a medical issue. But that's not the only element of actual insanity. Real insanity almost always involves a sick social fabric as well that lies to you about critical information, often blaming you for problems over which you have no real control. They know that schizophrenics often get better with in patient treatment, then go home to…

>My sister took graduate courses in psychology for a time. She once said to me "We clearly don't have the genes for schizophrenia in the family or someone would have it because the family would have driven them crazy by now."

Hogwash! You cannot "drive someone schizophrenic" no matter if they have it in their genes or not. I can't even begin to try and correct this. It's like saying "dad is such a jerk that he drove me to become blonde instead of brunette!"

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#338

Post by dragonsngoblins »

taurath wrote: post #331
bobbiechen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Which is a distinctly western sort of thought, that insists on a person being somehow outside and not of the world in which he inhabits.

I disagree that it insists on that. You can be part of the world but the world is still external to you.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#339

Post by chadcmulligan »

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #338
taurath wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a distinctly western sort of thought, that insists on a person being somehow outside and not of the world in which he inhabits.

I disagree that it insists on that. You can be part of the world but the world is still external to you.

I always say the world doesn't care about humans, what people call the 'real world' is just a bunch of made up rules people have decided on so we all get along, and a (different, smaller) bunch of people can make money out of.

Re: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’: it’s people in distress

#340

Post by jkhdigital »

razakel wrote: post #264
seesawtron wrote: post #106

It reminds me of what Aldous Huxley wrote (about people in distress): “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are…

Some more food for thought - occasionally doctors will privately admit that many of their patients aren't really depressed, they're in fact suffering from "shit life syndrome" - in other words, their mood is the normal and natural response to the circumstances they are in. Here's an FT article about Blackpool, a deprived seaside town in the north of England. It has the highest unemployment rate, some of the lowest li…

This is a gross oversimplification, but crude measures of self-reported well being can be correlated to three factors: genetics 50%, controllable life circumstances (e.g. habits, hobbies, voluntary social engagement) 40%, uncontrollable life circumstances 10% [source: The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky]. In other words... a “shit life” for someone who hit the genetic lottery for happiness could look quite similar to a “golden life” for someone with terrible happiness genetics. The same objective life situation can result in profoundly different levels of self-reported well-being.
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