Depression - TalkSport Diagnosis

[worm]

Can I ask how old the version of things you're giving is?

Edited April 19, 2012 by worm

[kaosmark2]

I'm not sure if depression can be caused by life not living up to our expectations, like people are suggesting in this thread (unless I've misunderstood?)

To me it is purely a medical condition, if you suffer from it then it doesn't matter what your expectations for life are or how you view things, you will still be depressed because you suffer from a condition which you have no control over.

The main reason I think like this is because I was only 4 when I was diagnosed with depression. At that age, I don't see how you can have any expectations or views on life, for me it was obviously just something I would suffer from no matter how my life turned out.

Someone (Katster?) gave an example of someone who might exercise regularly and not feel depressed, but then go through a divorce and become depressed. In situations like this, I believe that the person would always have had depression, but it has just taken a certain event in their life to trigger their illness.

[eFestivals]

There is evidence that every single delusion and other symptom associated with schizophrenia is due to a brain abnormality, such as a legion? I'm sorry Neil, there simply isn't.

There is however evidence that certain brain abnormalities trigger symptoms that are commonly associated with schizophrenia. But this is very different from saying that brain abnormalities are the cause of schizophrenia, given that many schizophrenics have been shown to have perfectly normal brain functioning.

Nope, incorrect.

Current.

Avoids the question, why don't you? .... anyone would think you're trying to hide something.

Of course you believe it's current (unless you're trolling), otherwise you wouldn't be saying it.

Let's try asking the question a different way. When did you learn that version of things? A week ago? A year ago? Five years ago? Ten years ago?

[worm]

When did you learn that version of things?

[eFestivals]

1999 was the first time I studied Schizophrenia. Today was the latest time I looked at the causes, of which none have been verified.

It's something much newer than 1999, which is why you're out of date.

And you're looking today was clearly in the wrong places, otherwise you'd have found it. You might have to look in not-the-normal unexpected places to find it tho, because of precisely what I've been saying about this, that established practice wants to pretend this evidence doesn't exist and instead prefer to stick with their non-evidence based dark-ages mumbo jumbo.

[worm]

It's something much newer than 1999, which is why you're out of date.

[worm]

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Causes.aspx

'Brain Development

Many studies of people with schizophrenia have shown that there are subtle differences in the structure of their brains or small changes in the distribution or number of brain cells. These changes are not seen in everyone with schizophrenia and they can occur in people who do not have a mental illness, but they suggest that schizophrenia may partly be a disorder of the brain'

[eFestivals]

You're perpetuating myth.

Nope, I am imparting a new fact that's passed you by and not perpetuating an old myth. Just cos I'm unable to point you at it doesn't make it untrue.

If you don't wish to take it on board it bothers me not a jot. You could be ahead of the game but would rather cling to dark age hunch and presumption. That's your choice, and the choice of so very many like you. It's extremely sad for those that get to bear the consequences but it impacts on me personally not a bit.

Edited April 19, 2012 by eFestivals

[Purple Monkey]

I think the point we can all agree on, is that it isn't being investigated enough. I personally believe our society in general is in denial and ignorance about most of its problems (economy, moral values, religion etc) and that's where a lot of frustration bubbles under the surface and then gets triggered into depression as the various stresses of life mount up on top of us, some of us are just more unfortunate than others in how their life experience plays out.

What I find kinda funny is that an alarming amount of people often take a sociopathic/psychopathic attitude towards depressive people - why is that attitude not considered with the disgust it deserves? Maybe because in our society it's acceptable, often encouraged, to be a totally heartless dick.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Purple Monkey

[Rufus Gwertigan]

I think the point we can all agree on, is that it isn't being investigated enough. I personally believe our society in general is in denial and ignorance about most of its problems (economy, moral values, religion etc) and that's where a lot of frustration bubbles under the surface and then gets triggered into depression as the various stresses of life mount up on top of us, some of us are just more unfortunate than others in how their life experience plays out.

What I find kinda funny me is that an alarming amount of people often take a sociopathic/psychopathic attitude towards depressive people - why is that attitude not considered with the disgust it deserves? Maybe because in our society it's acceptable, often encouraged, to be a totally heartless dick.

[Purple Monkey]

It is the attitudes of our society that has devalued concern for depression. To many depression is simply the lack of happiness or just feeling melancholy, something you pop to see the GP for a little pill and bang a few months later it is all fixed. The myth is then perpetuated by people that it is a relatively innocuous illness and those suffering for years and years are just making shit up. We still live in a world of "pull yourself together man" and "cheer up".

I have been to a few support groups and it amazes me the number of people that are claiming to be severely depressed yet have none of the major symptoms. They confuse sadness in their life for depression, they feel that they should be happy all the time, yet lead do nothing to make that happen. The system then gets swamped with these folk and the knock on effect is that helth professionals may become very cynical of those that come to them with a real problem. I know of one GP that if someone turns up with symptoms of depression he automatically turns then away and asks then to come back in a few weeks time. How fucking mad is that? His claim that only those suffering a real depressive episode will return and few do. Well too right few do I would be off to see a new GP myself.

There is the issue that people feel uncomfortable around a depressive and they take a depressives behaviour personnally. A few years back I attended a festival a few years back on I was on the cusp of a major depresive episode. Some people where quite understanding when I explained what was happening on how I was feeling, and how I would cope with it. Others however were just plain c**ts. It just got to the point were I just stayed in my tent. After seeing a bouncing Rufus throughout the festival season they could not cope with the quiet and melancholy Rufus. I nearly punched someone when they said, yet again "Cheer up", never mind giving me fucking advice even after I had told them that I lived like this and I had more insight into my "condition" then they did. "Have a few beers to cheer you up", really? Alcohol is a depressant and could probably make me worse.

One of the symptoms of depression is isolating yourself, yet most the time been around people is the worst thing for you.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Purple Monkey

[feral chile]

where have I made an absolute statement about brain chemistry?

As far as I can remember, all I've said around that is there's stuff to suggest the problems could be more the physical/chemical than they are the social/mental.

And I'm not even saying that the hunches should be abandoned, I'm saying that those with the hunches need to be willing to drop those hunches and go with evidence when there is evidence.

Edited April 19, 2012 by feral chile

[worm]

Nope, I am imparting a new fact that's passed you by and not perpetuating an old myth.

Edited April 19, 2012 by worm

[worm]

[feral chile]

No you aren't. There is no link between the symptoms of schizophrenia and brain abnormality. I can prove it right now. Watch........

I can be deluded and I have no brain abnormality. I can speak in tongues and I have no brain abnormality. I can have abnormal cognitive processes and have no brain abnormality. What are you failing to understand?

Schizophrenia is diagnosed on the basis of symptoms such as the above and their prevelance in patients. Fact. Without these symptoms you cannot be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Fact. It is a completely observable diagnosis based upon the prevelance of certain behaviours. Fact. Many of the people diagnosed with schizophrenia have nothing wrong with their brain functioning - this is an absolute fact, for which I can provide evidence.

I've written on 3 case studies in which there were absolutely no signs of brain abnormalities associated with the condition. Thereby disproving your ridiculous claim. The people led perfectly normal lives and felt that they were victimised by the social labelling that came with their condition. They felt that the term schizophrenia did more harm than their symptoms because people assumed there was something wrong with their head.

[kaosmark2]

One of the symptoms of depression is isolating yourself, yet most the time been around people is the worst thing for you.

[kaosmark2]

I've been there. I stopped going to parties because I hated them (hated the falseness, the fact there's too many people to have any satisfying conversation, I hated the "scheduled fun", the fact there's always someone who wants to play some shitty drinking game, and the fact they always require alcohol abuse to be in any way bearable) but also because I'd bump into people like you describe and I just couldn't be arsed with their "advice". Whenever I'd meet these people, all I wanted to do was scream as loud as I could, it felt like my insides were on fire, and at the same time I wanted to go to sleep. These people were doing me in.

The worst thing in the world if you're depressed is having someone say something like "just enjoy yourself!" or "cheer up". I usually find these people to be very, very ignorant in general - I find (this is just an observation) there's a good correlation between those who say shit like this and people who are astoundingly ignorant in other aspects of their life; political/scientific ignorance, unable to hold rational discussions, are heavily judgemental, hypocritical and hold all sorts of ridiculous superstitions close to their heart, and for all their smug smily glad-hand "live life" can-do bullshit they are afraid of truth in all its forms and actively run from it. Gits, basically.

I'd have a pint with a depressive any day.

[worm]

When you say no brain abnormalities, are you talking brain chemistry or structural abnormalities?

[Rufus Gwertigan]

I was a little confused when I read that schizophrenia is caused through brain abnormality. The first question that I thought of was if it was how come a third of people can recover without treatment?

Back in the 80's I was taught about the Double Bind Theory and that was accepted by many institutions. Essentially the cause is through family and conflicting messages to the child during childhood. The premise also says that psychotic episodes are not meaningless ramblings but a demonstration of internal conflict (that could be supported somewhat by Ferals biological basis for thoughts). Psychotic episodes were something to be engaged and worked through. Given people can recover through such therapys without medication such a theory can still stand up.

[eFestivals]

But you're looking at brain function in isolation.

Nope, I'm just looking at it. Which is more than the head nutters* will do because the very existence of that evidence scares the shit out of them. It's the start of a path which could see them declared an irrelevance, of being exposed as the fakes and not scientists they've actually been up to this point. If it turns out from further investigation that mental illnesses and the like are strictly medical, huge numbers of people are suddenly out of a job.

(* not the treated, the treators).

[eFestivals]

Schizophrenia is diagnosed on the basis of symptoms such as the above and their prevelance in patients. Fact. Without these symptoms you cannot be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Fact. It is a completely observable diagnosis based upon the prevelance of certain behaviours. Fact.

And all facts that are able to have something further behind them. In themselves they prove nothing about what I've said.

Many of the people diagnosed with schizophrenia have nothing wrong with their brain functioning - this is an absolute fact, for which I can provide evidence. I've written on 3 case studies in which there were absolutely no signs of brain abnormalities associated with the condition.

and there's medical doctors who can provide the evidence of what I've said. As you're no medical doctor, no doctor full stop, not very much at all in fact, guess who I'm going to believe over this?

You keep saying "I've proven it" but all you've done is delivered some words same as I have. The words you've delivered don't address anything about what I've heard of, so it's a more than fair presumption that that knowledge is outside of what you know and what you're repeating because those words offer nothing back against that knowledge they just say there isn't that knowledge.

Edited April 20, 2012 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

I was a little confused when I read that schizophrenia is caused through brain abnormality. The first question that I thought of was if it was how come a third of people can recover without treatment?

I'd guess for much the same reason that many who have the 'abnormality' don't suffer from (or at least, are never diagnosed as having) schizophrenia - in that so little is known about what goes on in the mind that there's little more going on than scratching around in the dark and coming up with hunches.

[Purple Monkey]

Thing is, what's defined as medical and what's mumbo jumbo is a grey area. Social engineering influences the physical aspects of the brain. It's all holistic. Politics gets in the way of social science so much.

Pills and medicine designed as a patchwork "cure" to social problems sounds like a concept from a nightmarish dystopia. Prescribing people pills so they become numb to the daily damage inflicted on their brain is really ridiculous. If it's got to the point where we need to set up production lines to manufacture such things, shouldn't bigger questions be answerred?

Of course, there's no industry or profit to be made from fixing a problem, is there?

GO CAPITALISM!

Oh and to lighten the mood a bit, here's Doug Stanhope with a truck of wisdom delivered straight to your face.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Purple Monkey

[eFestivals]

Thing is, what's defined as medical and what's mumbo jumbo is a grey area. Social engineering influences the physical aspects of the brain. It's all holistic.

Pills and medicine designed as a patchwork "cure" to social problems sounds like a concept from a nightmarish dystopia. Prescribing people pills so they become numb to the daily damage inflicted on their brain is really ridiculous. If it's got to the point where we need to set up production lines to manufacture such things, shouldn't bigger questions be answerred?

Of course, there's no industry or profit to be made from fixing a problem, is there?

GO CAPITALISM!

What's defined as medical and what's 'mind sciences' is a grey area on one side of the issues. But it's very definitely not within the broad scope of the area of medicine, because within that there's no cross-over - you're either a physician who knows a solid evidence version of physical medicine, or you're not. And that is where the problem I'm getting at lies.

And where it pans out to is the last bit you say, where a whole industry has grown up around 'mind sciences' but which has very little within it that is solid evidence based. If they have to start deferring to physical medicine, then they end up with very little of their own. 'Go capitalism' indeed.

[worm]

and there's medical doctors who can provide the evidence of what I've said.