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Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

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Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#81

Post by safety1st »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #66
Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an allowed opinion in Western thought, regardless of its obviousness.

Psychiatry is the gift that keeps on giving. The strangest part of some of these mental diseases is how they're defined in terms of other people. You're ill because you fail to adapt to society. They diagnose a person with attention defict because he can't tolerate the government's mass education system. Can't sit still and that disrupts class and gets the guy sent to the principal who calls their parents and refers…

The therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist cannot make society conform to the patient. They may, however, be able to convince the patient that conforming to society is not so bad. In my experience therapists are genuinely attempting to alleviate the suffering of their patients, and reducing the conflict between the patient's expectations and society's may very well be a route to that.

They are not there to teach you how to live a successful life, or find your purpose, or be your own amazing snowflake self, or code more. They have been trained to diagnose specific disorders and treat those disorders with a particular set of tools, which mainly boil down to drugs and a couple of talk therapies. If you experience remission of your symptoms they were successful at their job. Considering how time and expertise intensive the existing non-drug forms of therapy are, there is no realistic version of this discipline where they can personalize the therapy in the manner you seem to be suggesting. In many cases the only realistic option is to drug the patient because they have a high case load, this will reliably make the patient suffer 20% less and that may be enough to prevent suicide.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#82

Post by matheusmoreira »

austin-cheney wrote: post #69
squidgedcricket wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what medications impact gambling behaviors? I have some addictive/compulsive behaviors that have been hard to shake. GLP-1 agonists look promising, but I'm not sure how to get a prescription since I'm not overweight.

This article explains it well: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9825131/ My suggestion, and I am not doctor or providing medical advise, is to make the addictive stimulus inconvenient. Each iteration must include more steps to increase labor of effort and each iteration must also take much longer to complete. This will re-balance the brain from prior established condition. The more painful, disconnected, or c…

> make the addictive stimulus inconvenient

Assumes there is a limit to the amount of effort addicts are willing to put into getting their next dose. Easily disproved by the experience of caring for opioid addicts. Lesser drugs, even. Once upon a time, a seemingly rational benzodiazepine addict got so frustrated with my attempts to get him off of it he rose up from his seat ready to punch me in the face.

There are addicts out there who would sell their own mother for a dose. And I'm not just saying that. One of my former neighbours turned into one of these guys. People wouldn't believe the stories if I told them.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#83

Post by airstrike »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #74
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

Humans are antifragile. They survive disease, famine, loss, death of kin, all sorts of horrible abuse and still manage to build a great life afterwards. Look at all of the people who survived German concentration camps and still were able to live lives worth living after the fact. Not everybody, but it's clearly possible.

There's a real difference between surviving and thriving.

I don't think we're claiming life isn't "worth living" after adversity. Just that it's somewhat obvious that they will make similar mistakes due to the challenges they face, at least more frequently than those who do not face such adversities.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#84

Post by crowcroft »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #74
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

Humans are antifragile. They survive disease, famine, loss, death of kin, all sorts of horrible abuse and still manage to build a great life afterwards. Look at all of the people who survived German concentration camps and still were able to live lives worth living after the fact. Not everybody, but it's clearly possible.

This is extreme survivorship bias.

The way you say 'look at all the people' implies that a lot of people survived and had good lives, but this needs to be weighed against the number of people total that entered concentration camps to know if this is actually a meaningful number of people to validate your assertion or not.

My guess is that someone who went into a concentration camp were much less likely to live a life worth living than people who did not simply because a large number of them lived a life of torture and then death.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#85

Post by lelandbatey »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #74
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

Humans are antifragile. They survive disease, famine, loss, death of kin, all sorts of horrible abuse and still manage to build a great life afterwards. Look at all of the people who survived German concentration camps and still were able to live lives worth living after the fact. Not everybody, but it's clearly possible.

Humans as groups sure are, but only because one succes in a population tends to look like it makes up for all the quiet struggle. For the folks living those quiet struggles though, life and joy is fragile and temporary.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#86

Post by airstrike »

taeric wrote: post #61
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

I mean, maybe? They experience that life is completely unpredictable, sure. They learn whatever they are taught along with it. Consider, life was far more unpredictable just a few hundred years ago. Literally stubbing your toe in the forest could go septic and then you were dead. Violently so. Bad harvests could happen with no forewarning at all.

The fact that stubbing your toe meant death in the past doesn't mean that facing massive adversity doesn't have real negative long term impact on one's mental well being.

You're equating psychological harm and learned patterns of behavior that are unresourceful with physical accidents, without explaining why we should see them as comparable.

Even if they were comparable, who's to say Neanderthal younglings with badly stubbed toes didn't also have skewed reward processing as adults?

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#87

Post by airstrike »

taeric wrote: post #45

I'm growing stronger in a belief that teaching/indoctrination matters more than just general experience. Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that life experiences are their own teaching. However, it seems clear that a coach/teacher added to the exact same experiences can lead to different learning. Curious if folks have any links to studies that disprove that?

One such life adversity can be having bad teachers and unhelpful indoctrination in early life. If anything you're corroborating TFA's argument?

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#88

Post by p_j_w »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #74
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

Humans are antifragile. They survive disease, famine, loss, death of kin, all sorts of horrible abuse and still manage to build a great life afterwards. Look at all of the people who survived German concentration camps and still were able to live lives worth living after the fact. Not everybody, but it's clearly possible.

>They survive disease, famine, loss, death of kin, all sorts of horrible abuse and still manage to build a great life afterwards.

That doesn't mean that such factors don't DRASTICALLY reduce the odds of this happening. Moreover, some people being able to build a good life after such trauma doesn't mean that said trauma isn't a hinderance.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#89

Post by naming_the_user »

SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there lat…

It's as simple and as difficult as you want it to be really.

The main thing is that people have to learn that, paraphrased for brevity, life in the "ends" requires a different set of skills to life in the more civilised parts of society.

You have to relearn how to function. Some don't.

Re: Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

#90

Post by matheusmoreira »

safety1st wrote: post #81
matheusmoreira wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychiatry is the gift that keeps on giving. The strangest part of some of these mental diseases is how they're defined in terms of other people. You're ill because you fail to adapt to society. They diagnose a person with attention defict because he can't tolerate the government's mass education system. Can't sit still and that disrupts class and gets the guy sent to the principal who calls their parents and refers…

The therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist cannot make society conform to the patient. They may, however, be able to convince the patient that conforming to society is not so bad. In my experience therapists are genuinely attempting to alleviate the suffering of their patients, and reducing the conflict between the patient's expectations and society's may very well be a route to that. They are not there to teach you…

"Alleviate the suffering of their patients". Yeah, I know.

I'm still not a fan of telling patients that their world view is all wrong, that their brains don't think right and that they need to be fixed. That invalidates their lives and their experiences.

These aren't Alzheimer's patients whose brains are slowly degenerating. Many of these neurodivergents are very capable people when the conditions are right. Society's conditions just aren't right for them.

You simply cannot tell a hyperactive person to sit down and listen to lectures on subjects he couldn't care less about for 5 hours. It's done because things just are that way. Because the government has decreed that children shall be sent to the mass education system we call schools. How do you educate a whole nation? One to many broadcast. One teacher broadcasting knowledge to an infinite number of students. Giving people standardized tests. It's a machine designed to produce educated human beings. Keeps the kids safe and occupied while the adults are working their jobs too, isn't it convenient? It's a system.

Well these patients just aren't compatible with the machine. They get chewed up by it all the same. Then they get treated for ADHD and depression and anxiety.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the ones who need these patients fixed who are in need of some serious fixing of their own. Once I get that out of the way and I make sure they understand this, then I may offer them treatments and medicine. Not before.

You're right, there isn't much freedom to personalize the care we give these people. Truth is health care is yet another machine. A machine that wants to help as many people as humanly possible with the limited resources at its disposal as efficiently as possible. That means standardization. It also means doctors don't have time for this because of "high case load". There must be about a dozen billion humans on this earth by now, you cannot hope to help them all even if you were superman himself.

There's always something that they like. That's always been my experience with these patients. There's always a signal. Always something that just engages their brain like nothing else ever does. One of my patients is on the spectrum and has ADHD. She likes music and plays multiple instruments. Last week her mother was telling me how impressed she was because she just kinda taught herself to play piano out of nowhere. She's nine.

Could we find the right conditions for these people to develop if we used 100% of our will power? I have no doubt in my mind. Whole books could be written about why it is not done.

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