Point of order - I hate the "whocares?" id, and won't use it again. I thought it would be a little more anonymous, but multiple personalities suck and I'm not afraid of the big bad wolf anyway. Speaking of sucks, my daughter was diagnosed yesterday with Bi-Polar disorder. She is 20 years old, and she has cycled through depression for years, but never like this. For the last few weeks she has lost all regard for her personal safety. She is in Nursing school, is a great kid, but she just repeatedly placed herself in danger for the past month. They even talked about hiospitalizing her for her safety until she is stable. I don't know why I am telling all of you this. I guess it is not something that my "perfect" neighbors and "perfect" friends in our "perfect" little American neighborhood give a flip about. Damn this knocked the wind out of my sails. I work with mentally ill children everyday, but it is so different when it is one of your own. I don't know what medicine will eventually be used, but I suspect it will be lamotrigine (Lamictal). This is a new medicine in the US, but has been in the UK for years. Anyone know anything about it? I'm with Nursey on one thing - drug companies are not going to print the truth about side effects in their carefully controlled "case studies reports". Please don't make jokes about this. I just wanted your thoughts. Barry
Just because a doctor diagnoses something doesn't make it iron clad. From what you say it sounds like it might be probable. I wonder if she has any boyfriend or interested in someone who doesn't reciprocate or some other explanation rather than the bipolar diagnoses. Twenty is pretty young and kids go through all kinds of ups and downs as they are growing up. Might be better to err on the safe side though.
All bullshit and animosities aside, I always wondered, you are a doctor, are you allowed to diagnose your own family, or yourself? I am Diagnosed with Anxiety disorder with major depression... along with a broken back, and Now, recnetly testicular cancer, and migrane headaches. In your personal opinion, do you think medications help Bi/polar, or major depression? Or am I over medicated? What is the difference between Bi=polar and major depression? Will I ever be "normal?", or what is the defintion of normal anyway?
In reply to Dwaines post - I don't know where people got the idea that I am a Doctor. I am a Licensed Mental Health Therapist. I can diagnose certain mental disorders, but I cannot prescribe medicine or give medical advice. I can share my opinions on the questions you asked, but please understand that it is just my personal opinion and not medical instructions. 1. It is a bad idea for any professional to diagnose and treat themselves or their family. I have a Doctor I see, and I have been treated for years for AD/HD. Ritalin helps me tremendously. I have occasional bouts with depression, though none have been severe (yet). I do not even try to do anything with family members, other than tell them what Doctors I trust, etc. 2. Depression, Anxiety, Bi_polar, etc are really just different names used to describe different manifesations of the same problem. The underlying problem with them all appears to be that neurotransmitters in the brain are not regulating themselves properly. 3. Medicine seems to really help with these disorders. The problem is that the wrong medicines, or interactions between medicines, can make the problems even worse. My advise is simple. Find a competent Psychiatrist, and work with him/her to find what is the right medicine. Problems occur when more than one Doctor is involved , or if the Doctor is really not an expert on issues of mental health. 4. VERY IMPORTANT - See a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. A psychologist is not a medical doctor. They are the "shrinks" you hear about, and are primarily concerned with non medical intervention such as psychotherapy.A psychiatrist is a medical doctor that specializes in disorders of the brain. The brain is an organ in the body just like the liver, kidneys and lungs. The brain can have problem just as easily as the other organs in your body, and it needs treatment from someone who specializes in brain disorders. If your foot hurts, you see a foot doctor. If your eyes hurt, you see the eye doctor. Allowing a general practitioner to treat mental problems makes about as much sense as seeing a gynecologist for an ear ache. 5. No, you will never be "normal" and neither will I. (or anyone else in this forum probably.) "Normal" is just a word used to describe the median average of a random sample. If being "normal" means being "just average" I want no part of it. 6. If by normal you mean "happy, healthy, stable, feeling good about things" than yes, I thing that normal is within the grasp of all of us. I know this for sure -no one can feel ok as long as they are poisioning themselves with drugs, risky behaviors (adrenaline), junk food, and sleep deprivation. We have to take care of our body in order to feel Ok, and it is never to late to start. Hope this helps a little. Don't give up on treatment. Sometimes it takes a while to get it right. Barry
I think the boyfriend thing is what triggered it. She has mild Borderline symptoms, but in my experience you can say that about all 20 year old females. (I'll pay for that one!) She has had problems since she was 11 years old with serious depression and risky behaviors. I can see now that it follows a pattern. She was treated of AD/HD for years, but it appears to be more than just that. I think the Doctor is on the right track this time. Her symptoms this time were near classics for Bi-Polar mania. She responded immediately to the medicine the Doctor gave her yesterday, which is another good indicator that he is right. (Risperdal) we are going back next week to start looking for the right long term medication. BiPolar is treatable, and I know she will be Ok in the long run. It is just another of those things in life that just suck. Barry
I think I have a mild form of OCD. I check my wallet for my check card like 40 times a day, sometimes not 3 seconds after I check it for fear it fell out before it reached my pocket again. I don't have a fear of germs or anything just I check things repeatedly and sometimes still aren't sure of the results. Nothing I can't live with it is just annoying checking my wallet over and over. Maybe it is just Paranoia.
Interesting. (strokes his chin in his best imitation of Freud) Ever tried leaving the check card at home on purpose? I would be interested to know if another compensory ection occurred, or it diminished. Barry
You can be OCD w/o having a fear of germs. It's fear in general. It's kind of a phobia. I suffer from obsessions more than compulsions. When I was a kid, I was both. I had nightly rituals that would take close to an hour. I had to do them no matter how tired I was or "something bad" would happen. One was to write in my diary, in the same order everything I did that day. I couldn't really write about school because I would not allow myself to write about non-family members in my diary, because my family members were special and the only people I cared about and classmates were not worthy of my diary. If you look at my diaries, you'd be bored to death. It was basically the same thing everyday! They started and ended the exact same way. The second was to pray. The prayer was always the same. Said in the same order. The third was to sit at the edge of the bed and sing a song. The forth was to listen to a particular song and flip through a photo album forwards and backwards and recite two poems. Same order every night. The fifth thing was to flip on and off the porch lights 5 times. Then I was allowed to go to sleep. I did the nightly rituals for several years starting at around age 12. (The porch light thing lasted until I was 22) I had more things that I did throughout the day. I had to do them or something bad would happen. I didn't really know what, but the fear made me do it. One time, I took an AC/DC adapter, turned the voltage up, plugged it in and put it in my mouth. It kinda burned (naturally) and I didn't want to do it, but I had to. I also couldn't throw away my trash at school because I didn't want anything of mine to be mixed with the kids at school. I remember field trips were the worst because I would have to carry my smashed-up paper bag in the waistband of my pants until I got home. I have this thing about sitting on public seats. I used to sit on paper at school and I got seriously made fun of for it by teachers and students. At work even today, I have a cushion that I sit on because it kills me to sit on those chairs where other people have sat. I have certain clothes I wear in the outside world and certain clothes I wear around the house. It also kills me that my bf doesn't take a shower before going to bed. I'm weird about hygiene. I've never been diagnosed OCD, never told a DR about it, but I still suffer from it today. Not so much the compulsions, but I can't get rid of the obsessions. The obsessions are the worst, because it's hard to control what you think before you actually get a chance to think it. It's shitty because simple things will send me into a panic and people who know me well talk shit to me because they don't understand my logic. But it all has a reason. They just don't get it. I could go on forever about things I think and things I've done, but I'll stop for now. I've been working on a paper (off and on) about myself to give to a shrink one day. It's easier for me to write it because you have more time to articulate your thoughts and you can be more honest because you don't have to give it to anyone. Maybe then I can have a label.
Nauseous, No kidding man, that many symptoms and rituals need some attention! Don't be afraid to talk to a Doctor about it. OCD is like the "common cold" of psychiatrist illnesses. You would be amazed how common it is. A couple of the most basic medicines are available to put a stop to obbsessive/compulsive thoughts. You might be amazed how much nbetter you feel. I consider OCD one of the easiest things to treat. It can be dangerous if left untreated. Remember the time you just "had" to stick the AC/DC converter in your mouth? The danger is that the next irrisistable urge may involve something really dangerous like high voltage or a gun. Your family doctor will treat it if you prefer. I swear, it is so common that he won't even raise an eyebrow when you tell him what is going on. Barry
Don't tell me that SSRI's are going to help it because I know better. I have tried: Paxil Luvox Lexapro Celexa Zoloft Non SSRI's Wellbutrin Effexor Buspar Again, never been diagnosed OCD, only with major depression and anxiety. Who the fuck doesn't have something wrong with them though, you know?
Did any of them make you sick? If you quit one because it upset your stomach or made you feel weird the first few days, it probably was the right one. Celexa and Lexapro are like that. If they make you sick a first, they usually work well eventually. Maybe try small doses and gradually raise the amount. (Not medical advice, just an opinion do what the doctor says.) Lay off the caffeine too. And stop huffing gasoline! :lol: .....and yeah you are right. We all got something. Barry
What do you expect when we are living so out of sync with nature? All around us are 'jarring energies' in the form of the industrialised society. We are bombarded from all directions with hazardous chemicals that put an enormous burden on our immune systems. We constantly encounter or are surrounded with powerful force fields which interfere with our own subtle electromagnetic balance. Before we are able to even lift our own heads and then regularly til adulthood and beyond, we are injected with a variety of highly toxic substances ( mercury, formaldehyde, aluminium, phenoxyethanol - which is anti-freeze...to name just a few). vaccine ingredients. Our modern 'medicine' is accountable for millions of deaths each year, and has its roots in the blood letters and mercury prescribers of the Victorian 'dawn of enlightenment'. These outrageously arrogant little white men, in assuming the role as GOD decided that women giving birth should not move around and utilise the force of gravity in order to help ease the baby out, but should be made to lie down on their back, which is about the worst position to give birth in next to standing on your head. And it's only fairly recently that hospitals started to revise this as being the 'default'. Did you know that during the Inquisition, a large number of those condemned, tortured and killed were the medicine folk, herbalists (usually women) who passed on their knowledge through the generations to the benefit of the populace, and those doing the Inquisitions were they themselves the ones involved in 'the dark arts', as this provided the perfect cover. We are psychologically bombarded with extremes of every sort imagineable in a culture that is moulded by corporate exploitation and instant gratification of base impulses. We are so arrogant in the west, forgetting that what we represent in terms of the whole of human civilisation is a miniscule slice, one page in a hefty tome, and not the be-all and end-all as our small limitive scopes inform us. It's time to come down a peg and start taking a look at how humanity survived the past 10 000 years, and admit that we are in a screaming insane plunge into a toxic hell hole. And our 'solution' to the ailments we suffer as a result? Take more chemicals. By doing this, you are altering the surface result, but getting further and further detracted from the imbalance's source. You have to take things right down to their lowest common denominator in order to address the root of a fault, or you are only making the problem more complex and difficult to solve.
Q. I have heard some where on the news that world health organization (don't quote me on that)classifies psychological disorders as the as the third leading disease type in the world and at the rate that is is growing that these types of diseases might actually take the lead in twenty five years time. What is your take into why this epedemec is growing and what ways can we use to curb it? A. Thanks for the question. You are right, the World Health Organization has paid a lot of attention lately to mental illness. One study found that the incidence of schizophrenia has increased 45 percent in developing countries since 1985, and another study found that women suffered from depression on average twice as often as men, with ratios in some places as high as 9-1. These studies, in addition to a lot of other recent research, have prompted the WHO to predict that depression will become one of the most disabling disorders on a planetary scale by the year 2020, second only to heart disease. What is interesting is that, unlike other debilitating illnesses of the past, the top two of the future while not be microbial or viral; they are essentially cultural diseases. Heart disease is more prevalent where people smoke, eat fatty foods and live a sedentary lifestyle, and depression is increasingly being linked to identity crisis and other cultural factors, despite the psychology industry insisting upon the genetic basis of such diseases. Some psychologists and psychiatrists have taken heed of these warnings, and are beginning to reorient their work toward cultural and social factors in the prevalence of mental illness. Several studies have made connections between culture and psychological dysfunction. For example, a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1998 found that among Mexican immigrants to the US, the incidence of mental illness increased the longer they stayed. These, and many similar studies are fascinating and alarming at the same time. I think before we can talk about prevention or curbing the problem, we have to better understand it, and understanding mental illness in the modern world entails grasping two issues: 1) how mental illness is defined over time and across cultures and who does the defining, and 2) accepting the recent evidence that the causes of many mental problems lie outside a person's head, e.g. in the realm of culture and society. Q. Human societies have always had people with mental illnesses among themselves, but they lived among other people. It is just in modern world that we see special places for them to keep them far from others. I wonder if it has really been a cure, or it made the problem worse. Do you have any idea on this? A. You are onto an important point that needs to be centralized in this discussion: the definition of mental illness, as well as its treatment, has changed over time. As you suggest, there was a time in the West, for examples that "fools" and others what might be called mentally ill people today roamed the streets and were part of society. At some point, basically with the rise of rationalism and the Enlightenment, these people were suddenly seen as a threat, and then we see the birth of institutionalization and confinement, with the earliest attempts being setting to see the strange in behavior, in what was known as a "Ship of Fools" that would endlessly float about the canals and seaports of the west world with their unwanted cargo, who would not be taken off the ship until they were "cured" or until they died. Soon, more efficient means of confining people were developed with the birth of the asylum. Several fascinating books detail this history, but the point is that there is no objective or consistent definition of what it means to be "crazy" or "insane" or "psychotic," and that taken as a historical question these terms tend to define people who did not fit the social order of the day. How and why these people were confined is an interesting story, but the point to remember is that there is not really a "cure" for something about which we do not really have an objective diagnosis, that rather than a medical problem, what we are talking about is a social and cultural problem, that of order and conformity. Now, different societies deal with disorder and non-conformity in different ways, and in some societies they choose to diagnose these people as ill and in need of confinement or treatment. An interesting research project needs to be done that takes these questions and runs them across cultures, over time, since most of the work that has been done in this area is on the history of mental illness and insanity in the West. Q. Salam dear professor! I have always this question in my mind that how we classify some people to have mental illness. Is it the same in all cultures and societies? A. I addressed some of this in the last answer, or one of the answers, I am not sure of the order in which they will appear. But basically, yes, you are correct, there is no single consistent definition of mental illness, even within the Western world, where with the birth of modernity it has increasingly become a preoccupation. As I said before, it seems bound up with notions of social order and cultural conformity, more so than any objective scientific definition. And, in recent times, with the rise of multi-billion dollar psychiatric drug industry, it is even more difficult to really know who is sane and who is not, since doctors and drug companies stand to profit immensely from larger numbers of "sick people." And, you are correct to ask this as a comparative question, since it does differ significantly across cultures. Take, for instance, the resent malady inscribed upon children: "attention deficit disorder." It is a dis-order, a lack of order, and comes primarily from the inability or unwillingness of children to sit still for hours of excruciatingly boring schooling for years on end, among other factors. On any given day in the United States and Canada, there are over five million children taking powerful psychostimulant drugs to treat ADD, with Ritalin being the most commonly proscribed, and the US and Canada account for a staggering 95 percent of Ritalin consumption world wide. This problem began to receive some public scrutiny, and some investigations revealed collusion between drug companies and medical researchers, while evidence of "cures" were based on subjective data from, you guessed it, teachers, who of course will say it works, since their "problem" students now sit in a stupor and are no longer hyperactive. This is an immense issue and all I can do now is urge you to read widely on this problem, and to ask questions like, why are so many Americans on drugs, like Ritalin, Prozac and others, and are these treating ailments or are they just creating ailments. Mental Illness in the Modern World: The Cultural Connections.
Q. In spite of all claims of developing sciences, it seems that the modern world has made the problem of mental illnesses more complicated. Have human history had the kind of mental illnesses we see in modern world? A. I'm glad everyone is asking historical questions, since the first thing you will find when you study this history is that there is no consistency in how societies defined or understood what we are calling mental illness. The only consistency seems to be that it was applied to people who some how did not "fit in," who were saying or doing things that were seen as "abnormal," and the innovation with the birth of modernity is that these abnormalities became criminalized. More recently, they have become medicalized, so we only lock up the really crazy people, whoever they are, and give drugs to the rest. It is a complicated issue because societies are complicated, and they change over time in regard to values and beliefs, as well as diagnoses and treatments. What is new in modernity is the large-scale industrial diagnosis and treatment of these people, and whenever you have an industry and an attending bureaucracy, you tend to find an increase, or a perpetuation of the issue that it is supposed to be treating or controlling. Pre-modern societies did not have these industries, so they had "less" mental illness. However, I do believe it is not simply an issue of definitions, since there do seem to be a lot more unhappy and depressed people in recent years, and many have begun to look, as I have said earlier, to modernity itself as a causal factor in some of the more prevalent mental illnesses, such as depression. Q. What is the relationship between stress and materialistic view to the world? A. There are many ways to pursue this line of inquiry. In short, it seems pretty clear that the materialistic lifestyle is stressful, what has been called the "rat race" in some places, working to make money to spend on possessions. Modern humans are feeling more and more dead, though they still walk around, eat, procreate and work. But inside they are dead. Look at the alarming rate of suicide in the affluent and modern societies. People are unfulfilled, and the kind of fulfillment being foisted off by consumer culture is a material fulfillment, which can never be satisfied, the desire for the pleasures of this world can never be satisfied, so one will always want more, if that is one's sole goal. But even if one could fulfill all one's desires, there end result is still emptiness, since we are talking about a spiritual emptiness here. To feel alive, many people are turning to last ditch efforts, like sex and drugs, which give a quick rush of being alive, but which do not satisfy the inner emptiness, which then leaves the ultimate attempt at feeling alive, which is bringing about one's own death by one's own hand. Most people who commit suicide, or attempt it, in the West say they do so because of social or cultural factors, they are ugly, fat, unpopular, lonely, unfulfilled. Does this count as mental illness? Again, I ask you to consider the question, "is it possible for a society to be sick?" Q. Is there any connection between capitalism and the many mental problems that many in the West struggle with? A. Many scholars have made such connections, that the work and spend rat race brings mental illness of one sort or another. In fact, studies by the World Health Organization and those published in major journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association are beginning to agree with what historians and sociologists have said for a while, that the modern lifestyle causes illness of various kinds. One study, published in JAMA in 1992, found the rate of depression increased in countries that were modernizing, despite dramatic improvements in medical infrastructure. In other words, as a nation adopts the modern lifestyle, its people getter sicker, both mentally and physically, and the two major debilitating diseases predicted for the next two decades are essentially lifestyle ailments -- heart disease and depression -- which increase with the increase of the trapping of modernity. Some have been prompted to label the modern Western lifestyle, and especially its American consumerist variant, as a "toxic culture."
In Nurseys post above it mentions the "Rat Race." I think this is very much a problem. If you believe in creation, it is easy to believe that the human body and mind was not created to live in the high pressure, fast paced, over stimulated world of today. If you believe in evolution, it is easy to see that technology and science have exploded in the last 100 years, and there is no way adaption can adjust the brain in such a short evolutionary period. Either way, we are somewhat screwed by our own "success" as a species. I intend to take control of my life by selling everything and moving to a hydropod community deep in the ocean. If you visit, my Pod will be the one with the T1 cable strectching back to the shore. Oh, and bring cheese dip. I like cheese dip. Barry
Ok, last one: Q. Is it true that the more advanced the world becomes, the more mental illnesses occur? Does complex technology cause such illnesses? Or is it the absence of close human interaction? A. Your questions are somewhat rhetorical, aren't they? They contain their own answers. Yes, of course, there is a correlation between forms of mental illness and the technological lifestyle, the research supporting that is extensive, and I have mentioned some of it already. But you and another useful dimension here, that we may get sick from the absence of close human contact. This is worth looking in to, and several psychologists have suggested the modern birthing practices, for example, separating the baby from its mother and medicalizing the birthing experience, have set humans on the path to mental illness and alienation, that lack of breast feeding and other physical contact between mother and infant in those early years is psychologically destructive, that the various forms of institutionalization we subject our youth to are creating alienated people deprived of close contact. There is quite a bit of literature on this, and it is convincing. I would only add another facet to this, that alienation from the natural world is also a causal factor in madness, that the more we isolate ourselves from the creation of which we are apart, the more alienated we become from reality, from ourselves, and from each other. This is less extensively discussed, which reflects the anthropomorphic tendencies of modernity that plants and animals only matter as food. But what does it mean when we grow up in plastic cribs, wandering through concrete mazes and eating frozen food? Surely this cannot be good for mental or physical health. It seems obvious, yet we continue to isolate ourselves.
I like the post above..... So Nursey, and others, how right on target was the first observation that God made about the human race - Genesis 2:18 (King James Version) ....And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. Just asking. I find that isolation is a really bad thing. People need people. Barry
