Well, technically speaking, most of not all mental health issues have a root cause in some kind of neurological dysfunction. We just don’t know how to treat the brain specifically so we treat the individual as a whole by interrogating him and dosing him with neurotransmitter inhibitors or enhancers, a move that gives moderate relief to a significant percentage of sufferers while making a new multibillion dollar pharma market where makers don’t have to justify their claims.
Agreed that the proposal of the o.p. is lacking in merit and would be unworkable in practice regardless. However, I would totally sign the petition for a Village Idiots forum, and I think there would be a broad consensus on the designated posters.
If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding! How can you haveny pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
You know–and I’m only saying this because I care–there are a lot of decaffinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.
What about drunk posting? I’m sure the technology exists that could take a pinprick of blood from every poster at log-on and use it to test their blood-alcohol level. A beer stein next to their name would show anywhere from empty to full based on each poster’s respective tipsiness.
If it’s called autism, it should originate in a structural problem with the brain. If it’s something we can call a mental illness, then it’s a problem with neurotransmitters. Supposedly. At any rate, that’s why there is no medication to treat autism.
No, the reason that we don’t have a pharmaceutical treatment for autism is that despite your assertion that is “should originate in a structural problem in with the brain” we don’t really have a good understanding of the neurophysiological cause or causes of autistic spectrum disorders. There is substantial if inconclusive evidence that it is a result of dysfunction in the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic system that is due to poor regulation of norepinephrine. There are trials of various neuropharmaceutical therapies in the ‘off-label’ treatment of ASD conditions (see a summary here) as well as some evidence that dietary modification can reduce symptoms of anxiety and aggression while improving sociability. There is no single treatment regime that has been rigorously shown to provide complete relief across the spectrum of conditions that fall under ASD, but that speaks more to our very limited understanding of brain disorders than to the fundamental treatability of the condition. For that matter, depression (about which we understand somewhat more) can be regarded as a structural problem with the brain insofar as it is, from a neurophysiological standpoint, a result of excessive reuptake of certain neurotransmitters associated with a sense of well-being, hence why some people are prone to cyclic depression even in the absense of external stressors.
