You can control who you hang out with, where you live, what activities you participate and what you do for a living. Being able to control those things gives you a LOT of control over culture and “firings, crime, etc.” You won’t be able to completely control them, in the sense that you’ll always be able to prevent bad things from happening to you, but you’re certainly able to drastically increase the probability that things will work out well for you.
Admittedly, you can’t control what genes you have; but what evidence there is merely indicates that some people are more vulnerable to depression. They still have a great deal of control over the rest of their lives, and I think the best solution is to excercise that control and overcome any vulnerabilities rather then throwing up your hands, saying it’s hopeless, and taking psychoactive drugs that can have some very serious side effects.
Two different people reacting differently to a similiar event does not mean that the basis for their behaviour is genetic. People are way to complex for a conclusion like that to be drawn: their environment and the choices they make in how they deal with things differ greatly. The person who reacted poorly is ultimately still capable of controlling his own life.
Spend some time on an adolescent psych ward. Getting people to be happily oblivious to utterly shitty lives WAS the goal for the psychiatry that I experienced
Yes you can. However some people will be happy when things don’t work and some will be unhappy when things do work out.
And again, why is spending your life trying to live a certain life to experience emotional rewards automatically a good idea? What is wrong with rewriting the rules to fit reality instead of rewriting reality to fit the rules? Who makes ‘the rules’ anyway? The answer is culture and biology. Doing your best to obey these things out of fear of punishment and hope for reward is not a very rewarding life.
This seems to be based on a mentality I don’t agree with, that the mind is some etherical thing that is above biology. It is not. If you stick electrodes in one area you get intense rage, in another area and you get unconditional love. There is nothing wrong with an individual taking control of their own emotions rather than blandly accepting them as callous control mechanisms that only work a little bit (there are still people who are happy no matter what and some who are sad no matter what).
And sometimes those scars last for a lifetime. There are alot of victims of violence who suffer for life as a result of that. No amount of therapy will change the past.
There was some info on the news about things like cranial implants working on a large percentage of seriously depressed people. Many of them are probably depressed due to bad life experiences like abuse which activated bad genetics. But when the abuse happened they had no control, and were too young/naive to control the situation. However by taking control through surgery they are getting positive moods back. They still live exactly the same life, they are just more competent to handle life now.
None of this changes the fact that if those kids were happy that they’d be better able to deal with their problems than if they were depressed. Happy people have better relationships, more emotional/social support, are more productive at work and face problems better.
At the end of the day what is wrong with being happy with a life that is unacceptable on some level or another that hurts no one else? Depression, unlike bad lives, hurts other people. Depressed people make worse friends, worse employees, worse parents, and are less likely to be charitable.
Wow. Take drugs that blunt your emotions so that your family, friends, and co-workers won’t have to deal with your unhappiness; there’s nothing wrong with an artificial feeling of “happy” even when your life sucks, because we’re all just biology. :eek:
This being MPSIMS, I’m just gonna do a {{{Wesley Clark}}} and leave this at that.
Thanks. You still didn’t answer what is so wrong with being happy even if the biological & cultural rules that create happiness are lessened a bit so more people can feel happy. Would you rather live in a world where people have no control over their minds, they follow genetics & culture w/o question and feelings that harm everyone run rampant? Sounds like a darwinists paradise but in practice it’d be a shitty place to live.
Blunt is a loaded term. You can believe it if you want but drugs do not ‘blunt’ your emotions anymore than genetics blunt your emotions. Drugs can make you more competent to handle life. I just don’t share that division between psychology and biology that you and the other critics do. psychology only exists due to biology. What do E. Coli think of Freud? They don’t their biology isn’t wired that way. If not for biology we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If you want to give up control of your own brain to ‘keep it real’ be my guest, but some of us would rather not.
You are framing this debate. You are assuming ‘valid’ emotions only occur when individuals exert as little control as possible over their own minds outside of psychology. I don’t agree with that assessment that validity is a result of giving up control over biology. I used to have anger problems, but after practicing mental & nutritional supplementation I can face and deal with the problems that gave birth to the anger better. Was the anger ‘valid’ when I didn’t manipulate my brain chemistry and ‘fake’ now that by taking control I can deal with the issue better? Why exactly is that, and why is that different than someone whose genetics builds his brain to be able to do what I needed to practice nutritional therapy to accomplish? Is taking omega-3 fatty acids to have more fluid neuron functioning fake? Is taking a methyl donor that comes from beets fake? Are vitamins fake? What is the definition of ‘fake’ and ‘real’ to you? It seems like you define them based on how much control the individual gives up.
LSD, or the pharmaceuticals the psych profession pushes? If the latter, why not the former? Would you look askance at me if I made the above-quoted claims for the efficacy of LSD? MDA? Psilocybin? Ecstasy? PCP? Opium? Heroin?
Anyone want to move the “to medicate or not to medicate” debate to Great Debates? It’s definitely worthy of discussion, and I’d love to jump in, but I’d feel more comfortable if it had its own thread, since it’s only tangentally related to the OP.
As far as dealing with mental illness while in college - well, I wasn’t really dealing with mine when I was in college - it took me several years to face up to the fact that I had real problems that I needed to buckle down and deal with. But on a general level, support groups can be a wonderful thing, whether they’re an official support group or just a collection of friends who’ve been through similar things. As this thread demonstrates, everyone’s going to have a different experience. It’s important to not get locked into a rigid thought pattern, and talking to people with radically different viewpoints is the best way to open yourself up to it.
At the end of the day, you need someone you can talk to who understands what you’re going through. I do think a really good therapist is ideal, someone who is interested in doing what’s best for you and has the tools at their disposal to do what’s best for you, whether it be meds or cognitive therapy or any of the other approaches that exist. But in order to make sure that you’re with someone who knows what’s best for you, you need to keep yourself informed. Talking to other people who know what you’re going through is an excellent way of doing just that.
Oh for the love of-anti-depressants do not “blunt” your emotions. If anything, DEPRESSION does. Anti-depressants just treat it. It means you’re able to experience ALL of your emotions. When I was depressed, I was either numb (most of the time), or in extreme emotional pain that was like boiling oil to my soul.
I started therapy and meds, and things started to change. I was able to be ME again. Due to an anxiety disorder, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be off meds. You know what? I don’t give a shit. And the picture AHunter3 paints of happily mentally ill people who ENJOY their illness isn’t the same for everyone. If taking drugs means I won’t be up all night, worrying over some imaginary fear, then I’ll choose the drugs.
Yes, I’m SORRY you had a bad experience with psychiatry-and many people do. And yes, the system needs to be reformed. But you seem to have this belief that mental illness is some how a part of who we are, and we’re ashamed of it, and trying to conform.
What the hell, do you people tell diabetics not to take their insulin? Tell a man in a wheelchair to get up and walk?
I don’t get what you mean. Are you saying these drugs can make you more competent to handle life? There is evidence that extacy can help make psychology more effective as it builds trust and lowers defenses. The other drugs probably just screw up perception for a temporary time.
I’m actually something of a radical (esp. relative to the posters here). I have no problem with legal, responsible use of exctacy to promote mental health.
There have been studies showing beta blockers given right after a traumatic event can prevent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from occuring because they block adrenaline, which ‘burns’ the memory into the mind.
PTSD symptoms can be lessened with forgiveness, but it can also be lessened with beta blockers. Some people are genetically designed to produce more adrenaline, some less and as a result some people suffer severe PTSD, some minor PTSD even if the events are identical for both people. Are those who take beta blockers to obtain the same physiology of people who don’t get PTSD cheating?
Yeah. Don’t be like me and wait until you’re 28 to start getting treatment for your mental illness. I started feeling better literally within a week of going on meds, and I kick myself for not speaking up ten years earlier…
No, because unlike mental illness diabetes and broken legs (or whatever) have a well understood physical etiology and the available treatments have well-understood effects that directly treat the condition.
Mental illness is not like physical illness. There’s no strong evidence that it’s caused by an infectious agent or some sort of physical malfunction and strong evidence that they’re caused by environmenal conditions. Compared to diabetes and most other physical ills, very little is known about the physiological changes that accompany mental illness. Unlike diabetes, the available drugs do not have specific, well-understood effects that directly treat the causes and symptoms–they all have fairly broad effects, in some cases permanent neurological damage is a very common side effect, in others cases little is known about the side effects–especially the long term ones–and it’s safe to say that the drugs tend to work by impacting a broad range of mental processes, not just the specific ones that are failing.
Yes, LSD was used in psychiatry in the '50 and '60s and was thought to give doctors insight into the inner thoughts of the schizophrenic mind. Anyone who has done X will tell you that it gives you a feeling of well-being and euphoria.