Aren't we all somewhere on the spectrum of disease?

Post by KerryJones » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

Skgqie1 wrote: post #32

KerryJones wrote: post #6

It's weird that we consider mental illness to be a disease, in my opinion -- none of the drugs have been linked to physical/chemical shortages in the brain or the like. We're able to mask symptoms but have absolutely no proof about underlying reasons, and so we create names of things and put it in the same classification of a medical disease... but that's very different. Bipolar cannot be identified by any physical m…

I'm not sure where you get your information, but mental illnesses certainly can be identified by physical (neurochemical) differences from a statistical baseline. Probably one of the easier ones to identify is dopamine deficiency and dysthymia. Drugs can certainly mess up someone's life (see my earlier post). But untreated mental illness can literally end your life (either directly, via suicide, or indirectly, via me…

I've studied it extensively. Please provide evidence to the contrary.

Here's one of mine about ADHD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1518691/

Post by KerryJones » Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #33

KerryJones wrote: post #6

It's weird that we consider mental illness to be a disease, in my opinion -- none of the drugs have been linked to physical/chemical shortages in the brain or the like. We're able to mask symptoms but have absolutely no proof about underlying reasons, and so we create names of things and put it in the same classification of a medical disease... but that's very different. Bipolar cannot be identified by any physical m…

While this may be true for Bi-Polar disorder (I'm not as familiar with this), there are some mental disorders that do display as differences in the brain (such as ADHD). However, while these differences can't be rectified with medication or other therapies (yet), the side effects of these differences can be ameliorated by medication.

ADHD has not had any proof about differences in the brain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1518691/

Re: Aren't we all somewhere on the spectrum of disease?

Re: Aren't we all somewhere on the spectrum of disease?