Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin • Hacker News Board

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#51

Post by glasz » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

tvm wrote: post #40

glasz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks. crazy situation. don't get me wrong, i'm just naive, but would using headphones (listening to music), not looking at people and closing the eyes in the elevator work?

Well, it's more complicated than that. Your hand will start to tremble uncontrollably when someone looks at you. Your face will blush, your legs will start to shake. You might eventually go and vomit. Elevator filled with people is of course extreme case. But I was in the elevator alone. I just couldn't open the doors of the office, take a sit in my corner and greet all these great guys that I've worked with for many…

the last sentence is particularely intetesting to me. from the other things you've told i would have thought (and i don't know shit, really, so please bear with me) that the management stuff wasn't really what you loved which you wouldn't realize but subconciously you've got burned out.

but again, i basically have no idea. however, i honestly whish you all the best.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#52

Post by jcroll » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

They don't even know what serotonin does. Every antidepressants action mechanism is just a shot in the dark, trial and error and it's questionable whether any of them work at all. Yes Tom Cruise is right on this one.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#53

Post by pfortuny » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #42

Eduard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still get bouts, but I have a mechanism in place to handle the symptoms and they mostly dissipate. Can you tell me about the mechanism that helps you?

Not OP, but here's my story: I did not enjoy being on any SSRI or NRI so all my work has to be behavior. In general, all the approaches that have worked for me when it comes to changing behavior follows a pattern of: Perceive -> accept -> insight. This is in the context of a reaction to a stimulus. 1. Perceive the feeling and its reaction. First step is actually recognizing that I feel something and that I have a rea…

Yep: being able to tell the difference between feeling, perception and will is essential to my life.

And acceptance: that is crucial as well. This is the fact: "I feel bad. OK, now what was I about to do with my classes today?" (This is a very simplified figure obviously).

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#54

Post by sramsay » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

I really think we're dealing with some very complicated biochemistry here. I have never seen a single psych drug, the PI sheet for which did not begin, "The exact mechanism of action is unknown" (or words to that effect). And that includes very old drugs like Lithium.

Obviously, these drugs can provide relief for people suffering from various kinds of mental disorders. Most of them target serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, and a laundry list of receptors. Yet it still amazes me that no one can seem to draw a clear line between these chemical interventions and relief from symptoms.

Given all that, every piece evidence becomes potentially significant. But it also means a long, long slog through inferential statistics, patient self-reports, placebo effects, and targeted studies like this one that may fail to account for a thousand other factors.

I'm not a biochemist, but I think I would find this work both fascinating and very frustrating.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#55

Post by TallGuyShort » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

sjtrny wrote: post #50

phkahler wrote: post #48

>> Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder or social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. It's stuff like this that is destroying the reputation of science in general. I know it's one thing to "lead to believe" and another to "show that", and perhaps that's what happe…

Drugs are in a totally different category than peer reviewed articles. They go through rigorous testing that works the vast majority of the time to weed out unsuitable drugs. On the other hand peer review (having been through it a few times) is extremely sloppy and reviewers do not do due diligence. Often the reviewers can't even if they wanted to (no raw data released etc) and they have to blindly accept the authors…

The problem is that things go from being talked about as a statistical correlation with a probability of error, to being a "link", to being the thing people base their diets and other philosophies on. The anti-vaccine movement resulted in a lot of people touting science as the reason you should trust vaccines, conveniently ignoring the fact that it appears to have started from a phony scientific study. The fact that the phrase "a new study ... has found exactly the opposite" can be published by serious researchers is exactly why we shouldn't be going around proposing that people be legally forced to inject themselves with things because they're considered scientifically illiterate. As Scott Adams said in his piece on the subject, "Science isn’t about being right every time, or even most of the time. It is about being more right over time and fixing what it got wrong." [1] That should be kept in mind by people who are publishing, reporting on, and reading these studies.

[1] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-f...

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#56

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #45

glasz wrote: post #24

social 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…

The article was certainly a bit casual with its terms, but as a human being, you shouldn't be generally nervous about mere socialization with others. You may be specifically nervous, if you need to impress the others, or if you're in a foreign land for the first time, but you should not generally be nervous about all social interaction. If you are, you have a problem. It may not be something that we should necessaril…

[deleted]

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#57

Post by sramsay » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

ajarmst wrote: post #8

hndude wrote: post #2

I've spent lots of time studying neurotransmitters and their relationship with various mental illnesses and amino acids. It has been my understanding for a while now (from the book 'The Mood Cure' by Julia Ross) that too much of a neurotransmitter can have the same symptoms as too little. That book also seemed to indicate that dopamine and serotonin have an antagonistic relationship with each other, so too little (or…

One thing that has become increasingly clear is that the simplistic "too much x" or "too little y" theory of Mental illness as a "neurotransmitter imbalance" is flawed to the point of uselessness. Neurotransmitters certainly do mediate synapse growth and activity, but the brain is a complex adaptive organ, and it will adapt to modifications to neurotransmitter levels. This is why antidepressnts become less effective…

I have often wondered if the adaptive nature of the brain is what's confusing things. In other words, if someone is suffering the systems of major depression or bipolar disorder, and you "shock" that system with a change in brain chemistry, you're going to get change, and that often the change is enough to snap people out of whatever depressive/manic rut they're in. Problem is, that's not a cure.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#58

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 3:09 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #48

>> Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder or social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. It's stuff like this that is destroying the reputation of science in general. I know it's one thing to "lead to believe" and another to "show that", and perhaps that's what happe…

Reversals based on further evidence are part of science, inherently. Science shouldn't have a magical reputation, because it's not magic. Like all other means of explaining there material world, it's guesswork. There only difference is that science is guesswork with systematic effort to find holes in the guesses and improve them and reject there ones that don't work, while every other approach to explaining material phenomena had some form of guesswork and some method of closing which guesses to accept that is not based on what demonstrably works or fails.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#59

Post by sramsay » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

glasz wrote: post #36

tvm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest answer: Yes a serious problem. Two years ago I've had panic attack in the elevator and I was just technically unable to go into office where I worked (I've had a good job and I was content there). Doing ordinary things like groceries, etc. was terribly hard. Went through brain CT, EMG and some other tests and after some months psychiatrist gave me F40.2 (social phobia) stamp. Went through various medications t…

thanks. crazy situation. don't get me wrong, i'm just naive, but would using headphones (listening to music), not looking at people and closing the eyes in the elevator work?

An actual panic attack is completely and totally devastating. The entire fight/flight system goes haywire, and people think they're about to die. It's even possible to start hallucinating. Lots of sufferers wind up in the ER absolutely convinced they're having a heart attack.

What's worse, this can lead to a whole range of phobias (I'm in the middle of this theater. What if I have an attack? Then you start having one. Now you're afraid of theaters and theater-like spaces).

It can take many, many years for people to learn how to "talk themselves down" out of this (or, more accurately, to endure the onset of one without letting it get full blown). It's not life threatening, but it's a very serious illness indeed.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#60

Post by jgroszko » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #48

>> Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder or social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. It's stuff like this that is destroying the reputation of science in general. I know it's one thing to "lead to believe" and another to "show that", and perhaps that's what happe…

I think a lot of the harm comes from people treating science as some sort of monolithic entity. Science says X! Science says Y! When really it's more like some scientists over here have found some evidence for X, some over here did some work that points to Y.

It's neat that mainstream enthusiasm for science has grown so much in the last few years, but it seems like a lot of times this kind of treatment oversimplifies things.