Posted by SLS on March 30, 2001, at 13:53:34
In reply to Re: New theories of mental disorders needed (longer), posted by Eric on March 29, 2001, at 11:27:47
Dear Eric,
I guess I am left with but a question and a few comments.
> >I share your frustration and anger that medical science has not been able to adequately treat me.
>
> No, you dont sound well to me to be honest.Thanks. I wasn't sure there for a moment.
I could really use some feedback here. Please. What exactly is it about me that doesn't sound so well to be honest? Please don't be bashful about being perfectly so.
I guess what I need to know is if the ways in which I don't sound well to you have impacted so heavily on my judgment and perspective along this thread as to make questionable my contributions to it.
Perhaps I am too defensive...
> > I find the word "joke" to be personally insulting.
> Why would the term "joke" be personally insulting to you Scott? I wasnt directing the word towards you.
It doesn't really matter who you directed it toward. It targeted a whole lot of people, including me. Your statement necessarily makes me a part of the joke. At the moment, I find it difficult to express how empty I find your statement. I hope I didn't spend a few hours a day in the Rutgers medical school library for five years, sharing the results of my literature reviews with investigative physicians, just to aid in the synthesis of a joke. You are telling me that I vehemently believe in a joke.
In my opinion, anyone who comes to the conclusion that the research being conducted in biological psychiatry is a joke doesn't have a clue. Not a clue. This was not directed toward you personally.
I think there is often a lack of appreciation for which organ is being researched so intensely. It is the most complex object in the world. The brain is being studied feverishly. Tons of data are being produced from every yet conceived direction. Neuroscience. Tons. What is painfully slow for everyone is the process of putting this data together to produce what we call understanding. Neuroscience is fully cognizant of how much greater its resolution needs to be. The technology necessary to resolve the detail of intracellular structures and mechanisms is one of the most limiting factors. Even the measurement of macroscopic phenomena is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish, with different experiments conducted on the same function yielding conflicting results.
I guess the brain is the most notoriously difficult organ in the human body to understand.
Let's give neuroscience the credit it deserves. Let's give it the appreciation for the difficult task it has set out to accomplish. If anyone would like to determine for themselves whether or not research in the areas of neuroscience and psychiatry is a joke, I recommend going to a medical school library and pulling out some of the journals from the shelves. If you don't have access to such a library, the federal government has established an online compendium of citations and abstracts of all of the articles to be found in those medical journals dating back to 1966. Read them. I doubt too many people will come back thinking that our research has been a joke. This database is administered by the National Library of Medicine, and is known as Medline. It is free to the public. Enjoy.
I hope my previous post did not give people the impression that most of the cases of mental illness appearing on this board are anything other than psychobiological, for which somatic treatment is necessary and sufficient. I also hope that people retain the impression that not all mental illnesses are of biological origin, nor even perpetuated by systemic dysregulation. I hope the impression resides in each of us that for many people, the biological and the psychological are inextricably linked dynamically, and that the best chance for someone with a biological depression to remain biologically well is to address adequately the psychological that is not. Continued psychosocial stress, whether coming from an internal milieu of depressive or other maladaptive psychology, or an external milieu of depressive or other dysfunctional influences, must be addressed to reduce the risk of medication breakthrough and relapse.
Why the term mental illness?
Because these illnesses manifest as changes in mental state or function, and are idiopathic rather than secondary to another condition.
Oh no, I've said too much. I haven't said enough.
One of the most striking biological markers of depression is an increase in REM.
Dumb, I know.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:5334
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010324/msgs/5384.html