Posted by SLS on August 19, 2008, at 8:11:07
The stakes are too high for us to think we can manage our illnesses based upon our own personal theories or biases.
This really calls for a longer post, but this is where I'm at right now. I am losing hope that the majority of people posting on Psycho-Babble will begin to look at scientific data rather than try to theorize their way into believing they have accomplished more than our researchers have. The NIH has pleaded that the details of investigation become public knowledge.
It is very dangerous to think that we know more than doctors and that we are well beyond the point of accepted medical science. As of August 19, 2008, medicine has huge amounts of data, but little understanding. The jigsaw puzzle has not been assembled yet.
Why bother with a post like this?
I see too many people aborting drug trials early, only to plead with their doctors to try something else that their simplistic theories encourage. I see too many people become cynical towards doctors and drugs, developing a global opinion that drugs don't work and doctors are clueless. This is tragic.
One will almost never get well if each drug trial is aborted before 6 weeks. Why would someone even consider taking drugs if they have the opinion that drugs don't work? That seems very odd to me.
When treating depression, it increases the rate of success by being positive and constructive. Why sabotage your treatment with an armament of negative thoughts? Not smart.
Belief systems have an impact on mental health. It is imperative that someone learn to manage psychosocial stress so that the same old depressive pressures prevent them from responding to drug treatment or relapsing during the course of remission.
Is it fun to be a skeptic or a cynic? I think that for some people, it is. Some people love drama. It seems that provocation and debate can have its emotional rewards. I know I have involved myself in ongoing contraversy. It is stimulating.
What good is stating a contraversial opinion without doing the investigation on Google or Medline to substantiate it? Even these two resources do not provide a consistency of data and conclusions. Citations are often more persuasive than personal conjecture. They certainly help provide a basis for belief.
Bottom line: Spend more time trying different treatments and less time expounding their worthlessness. Begin to focus more on clinical observation than choosing drugs based on personal theory. Maybe here lies the problem. Some people consistently sabotage their treatment and will never get well.
The stakes are too high to invest ourselves in theory and self-medication rather than the treatment by professonals, whether guided by heuristics or algorithms.
Take your medication as prescribed and stop worrying about being "med sensitive". You are supposed to be sensitive to these powerful drugs. Try lower and slower if necessary. Some of this sensitivity are startup side effects that often mitigate after a few months on a drug. If you are med sensitive, then spend some time theorizing how you might best establish a clinically therapeutic dosage and stay on the drug long enough for a clinically therapeutic period of time.
I think I project a great deal of my recent success using drug therapy onto the majority. It is wishful thinking, I know, but sometimes wishful thinking leads to success.
Don't stop.
You have only one chance at life. Don't waste too many ticks of the clock thinking that you are smarter than man's current compendium of knowledge.
By the way, drugs work.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:847169
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080814/msgs/847169.html