The part about "chemical imbalances" being bogus is a good one. I've heard/read that the thinking was (though it was really more about marketing), "Prozac 'increases' serotonin, and Prozac 'cures' depression, therefore, depression is caused by a 'lack' of serotonin." The reality is that no one truly knows what depression is on a chemical level, or why antidepressants do what they do. There is even a drug that biologically does the exact opposite of SSRI's (Tianeptine; serotonin reuptake enhancer), and yet also functions as an antidepressant. Go figure.
As far as antidepressants for depression not being analogous to insulin for diabetes -- I don't see that as a reason not to use antidepressants, though. I'd argue the analogy is "antidepressants are to depression as morphine is to severe pain." Pain is not due to a lack of morphine -- it corrects no chemical imbalance -- but we give it anyway, because as natural as pain is, we don't like it (and for a utilitarian argument, pain also makes people less functional).
I've only seen the first segment, and while I appreciate their view, I think they go a little too far. There is a part where bipolar disorder is equated with having "ups & downs." Some people with bipolar get manic enough to think they're Jesus and can leap from building-tips and fly. I have little doubt that there are people with just "ups & downs" who are (mis)diagnosed and medicated for bipolar (likely BP II) disorder, but to say that all such psych conditions are actually just common experiences of life, is going too far.
Interesting, though. Looking forward to the next segment about neuroleptics.
Essay by a former pharmacologist: "There are No Chemical Imbalances"
Quote:
Contrary to popular belief, stories in the popular media, and pharmaceutical industry advertising, there is no evidence at all that serotonergic transmission is impaired in depressed persons. Neurons use serotonin as their substrate for a myriad of mental phenomena, both conscious and unconscious. There is no reason to believe that what we call "mood" is controlled by one specific neurotransmitter; and in fact, there is every reason to believe that it is not. Pharmacologic disruption of serotonin re-uptake appears most unlikely to selectively impact mood.
Quote:
The Origins of Biopsychiatry
Some decades ago -- through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s -- psychiatric theory fell essentially into one of two camps. There were the psychodynamicists, who encompassed psychoanalysis, depth psychology, "client-centered" theory, existential psychology, and a host of other approaches that had as a common denominator the (now radical) idea that a person's experiences in the world, with his or her family, and with his or her fellow persons, shaped and perhaps even determined the personality that was formed, as well as its derangements. Today, incredibly, the idea that one's experiences in life have an impact on who one becomes is an idea that is not taken seriously, and which one needs to defend if one wants to hold.
The other camp, tiny at the time, were the biopsychiatrists. Biopsychiatry first appeared when someone noted how close the chemical strauctures of a couple of neurotransmitters were to those of certain psychedelic drugs (which, at the time, were called psychotomimetic drugs, meaning drugs that produced effects resembling psychosis). LSD-25, an indolamine, resembled serotonin to a certain degree, and with DMT (dimethyltryptamine) the resemblance was striking: it differed from serotonin (also called 5-HT, or 5-hydroxytryptamine) by only a couple of atoms. Then there were the catecholamine neurotransmitters, norepinepherine and dopamine. These molecules were extremely similar in structure to mescaline and amphetamine. Amphetamine-induced psychosis was well-known to physicians. Although not a psychedelic per se, amphetamine overdose produced extreme paranoia and delusions that were remarkably similar to those seen in paranoid schizophrenics.
So an hypothesis naturally arose: what if schizophrenics were producing "psychotomimetic" drugs in their brains naturally? Then, medicine would have determined the etiology of schizophrenia, and psychiatry, never quite accepted by the rest of the profession as "real" medicine, would have to be taken seriously, even by surgeons. A relatively slight derangement of the metabolic pathway that produces serotonin might result in DMT being produced instead. This was the 1950s, and very little neurochemistry, let alone neuropharmacology, was understood at the time. Research-oriented psychiatrists began a furious race to find what was being called the "M" factor ("M" for mescaline). The blood and urine of mental hospital inmates was being subjected to every test that existed at the time, and after the inmates died, their brains were sliced up and examined for any hint of deviation from "normal" brains. It was a very exciting time. In all the excitement, it seems that everyone forgot that tolerance develops to the effects of psychedelic drugs in a matter of days, while the course of schizophrenia was measured in years and decades. Even if mental hospital inmates were producing DMT or mescaline, or some analog of these drugs, in their brains, it could not possibly account for their condition anyway. But research in this direction snowballed, like the stock market frenzy that drove the prices of Internet companies that had never made a dime to astronomical levels. At one point, someone found a " pink spot" present in chromatograms of the urine of mental hospital inmates that was not seen in the general population, and the frenzy reached even greater heights. Eventually, the spot was shown to be the result of the administration of Thorazine ® rather than the result of any disease, but the biopsychiatry frenzy didn't even slow down.
What was behind this frenzy? Of course, there were some researchers who were positive, almost religiously so, that everything about the human mind and personality had to be reducible to molecules. But at the time, such people were few in number, and the originators of the "endogenous psychotomimetic" hypothesis were not among them. However, biopsychiatric theory and research resulted in a tidal wave of sales for the makers of Thorazine®, the first neuroleptic drug (meaning lobotomizing or brain-disabling drug – modern biopsychiatrists prefer to call this class of drug "antipsychotic") and the increasing number of drugs like it. These companies, in turn, funded such research, for money invested in biopsychiatry was virtually guaranteed to result in ever-growing sales of psychiatric drugs. Drugs for depression, mania, and other "mental illnesses" followed; each made a fortune for the company marketing it; and those companies funded further research in biopsychiatry. This unholy alliance between corporations and scientists continues to the present day, giving us drugs for everything from nervousness to PMS to kids that are difficult to manage. No other medical specialty is underwritten by the drug industry to a degree even vaguely approaching that of psychiatry. And with each new drug brought to market for some condition, the list of types of consciousness that are deprecated as "mental illness" grows. (continues, see link, above)
25 Oct 2010, 12:32 am
and then they made up a new one for people who can't eat around others, shy eating. I mean god how many other conditions are they going to make up by taking issues from other conditions and making it of their own like they did with eating disorder and they also made up shy bladder where you can't pee in public restrooms.
