Posted by baseball55 on January 25, 2019, at 16:31:41
In reply to Has anyone read the book Lost Connections, posted by radish on January 22, 2019, at 19:50:46
Haven't read it. But I'm not sure how much capitalism has to do with mental illness. Sounds a little too Thomas Szasz for my taste.
But I do agree that depression/anxiety have strong psycho-social components better treated with therapy and self-care than with drugs. Social anxiety, in particular, seems to me entirely a psycho-social disorder (and I say this as someone who had very bad social anxiety). However, there is a biological component as well, at least in my experience. Sometimes there is no trauma, no unhappiness, no trigger that cause people's mood to plummet. That certainly is the case for me. Something just goes awry in whatever networks in the brain affect mood.
So drugs are needed to alter the dysfunction in the brain. Maybe not the drugs we have available today, but finding something that lifts depression reliably and in most people and is not addictive is the holy grail of psychiatry.
Glen Gabbard calls mood disorders bio-psycho-social disorders. I think that sums it up.
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34921573-lost-connections
>
> The writer who is not a medical professional purports that anxiety and depression has overwhelmingly social and environmental causes related to modern life/late capitalism/past traumas/negative life circumstances instead of the brain chemical model.
>
> And he is of the opinion that antidepressants are no better than placebo and cannot and have never worked for people. He thinks depressed and anxious people need to change their lives, or more broadly, that society must change, for these illnesses to improve on a mass scale. I agree, however. He does not discuss the many other numerous classes of drugs that genuinely help people. It's rather glib to imply masses of people don't have endogenous brain issues because it implies they need not seek medical care/treatment. There can be an endogenous brain issue as the intermediary mechanism between a cause (say, genetics or life factors) and the presenting symptoms.
poster:baseball55
thread:1102912
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20161002/msgs/1102952.html