The paradox being that SSRIs have been shown to be beneficial for social phobia ...
Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
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Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#22I don't usually have any problems with social events- I just don't sleep the night before, so I am exhausted on the day. Does anybody have any tips/ suggestions how to deal with this?
Sleep deprivation is one of the most reliable and strong antidepressants, but also one of the least practical. Some clinics actually make patients stay awake for a period of time. I don't recommend "self-medicating" on purpose, though... In many case this makes everything worse.
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#23In biology a single causation is almost always wrong, especially in correlation between such distant phenomena - neurotransmitter and conditioned behavior. Well, excess of serotonin could lead to "anxiety" and physical discomfort from a slightest external pressure, as it seems to be with Asperger's, but it is a mere correlation, if correct at all, not a causation. Socially conditioned behavior is way more subtle and…
Yes, the paper [1] is fairly careful to point out that this is studying a neurotransmitter pathway's association with social anxiety disorder, which might be useful information in later establishing etiology, but doesn't do so on its own. Their causal hypothesis is actually (if I'm reading it correctly) the reverse of the direction people are assuming from the headline: [other physical features of] social anxiety disorder may cause excessive serotonin production, which may in turn produce additional symptoms, rather than excessive serotonin production being the root cause. That is, unusual upregulation of some pathways involving serotinin sits more towards the end of a causal chain than at its beginning. (Some of these causal chains are more like feedback loops, though, which makes it extra difficult to sort out what constitutes a root cause.)
From the paper:
> Although we cannot test causal effects in the present study, we speculate that, because raphe nuclei serotonin 1A autoreceptors exert inhibitory feedback on serotonin synthesis and firing, downregulation of inhibitory raphe serotonin 1A autoreceptors previously reported in social anxiety and panic disorder leads to increased serotonin synthesis, and augmented reuptake may be a compensatory mechanism.
[1] http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=23197...
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#24social phobia = psychiatric disorder, in case i can't speak in public? do i have to speak in public? i'd be very careful with that kind of judgement. in general, having experience with how "modern medicine" and society in general handle such proclaimed "problems", psychology is a great deal of bullshit.
i myself don't like masses of people. i embrace this preference. and i love it. most amassment of people aren't even useful.
to everybody who's eating chemicals because some say you don't fit in: STOP IT. tell them to fit in. don't sell yourself and everybody like you to pharmaceuticals and others.
btw: did they actually disable copying of text (on iOS) on this site?
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#25The paradox being that SSRIs have been shown to be beneficial for social phobia ...
What if those with social phobia are creating those serotonins to counter-act other social-phobia-causing stuff?
IMHO, this article really shouldn't say serotonin causes social phobia based on 'social-phobiacs have lots of serotonin'
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#26Being a person diagnosed with social phobia I thought that myself many years ago. All the SSRIs and SRNIs actually made whole thing worse.
honest question: is that phobia a real problem for you? or did somebody tell you it is?
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#27social phobia = psychiatric disorder, in case i can't speak in public? do i have to speak in public? i'd be very careful with that kind of judgement. in general, having experience with how "modern medicine" and society in general handle such proclaimed "problems", psychology is a great deal of bullshit. i myself don't like masses of people. i embrace this preference. and i love it. most amassment of people aren't eve…
No, an important aspect of mental diagnosis is that the patient is actively troubled by the problem but is unable to change on his own; otherwise it is more of personality. If you just hate socializing, you don't have social phobia. If you sincerely believe that washing your hands every ten minutes make you cleaner and do so, you don't have OCD.
Psychologists are not as eager to judge as you might imagine.
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#28social phobia = psychiatric disorder, in case i can't speak in public? do i have to speak in public? i'd be very careful with that kind of judgement. in general, having experience with how "modern medicine" and society in general handle such proclaimed "problems", psychology is a great deal of bullshit. i myself don't like masses of people. i embrace this preference. and i love it. most amassment of people aren't eve…
When an irrational fear prevents you from doing something, that's basically a definition of psychiatric disorder.
It doesn't matter if you have no great desire to do it in the first place. If someone thinks an activity isn't useful then that can mitigate a phobia, but it's orthogonal to the actual existence or not of a phobia.
Nobody is judging you for your preferences. "won't" and "can't" are different things.
So if you're calling the overuse of chemicals bullshit, fine. But don't call a clear diagnosis bullshit.
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#29I find this hard to believe when considering raves and MDMA.
If anything people with too much serotonin and a social phobia probably do not have enough serotonin receptors, and the extra serotonin is the body compensating.
Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely not, it's not the same mental state, one is pleasant the other one not.
There is no disagreement, that is what I said. Mental state is perception, and this can change from one moment to the next but the excitement/ fear being a hormonal state takes time to subside.
You can use excitement as a broad category that includes good and bad, but there are definitely different hormonal mixes, some that are pleasant and some that are painful, and the difference is not perception.