merlin
Avatar changed - Town names deemed offensive.
I have to say that I sense in your posts a continuing reluctance to just accept that conditions such as depression and anxiety states really exist beyond what might be considered 'normal' reactions to life's challenges.
Mull,
thanks for sharing that. You have my sympathies. I feel I owe you something of an explanation.
What you sense is not what I am trying to say. My initial interjection concerned the cost implication of the huge increases in anti depressant prescriptions and the numbers of people being diagnosed as being candidates for pharmaceutical treatments.
I am not suggesting that illnesses such as depression do not exist - let alone the likes of bipolar disorders or schitzophrenia. I am however questioning the current thinking that the cause behind a depressed mind is to be found in chemical imbalances in the brain. I have yet to see any evidence that convincingly shows this to be the case - especially given the numbers being diagnosed after a cursory "examination". I'm also at a loss to understand how a psychiatrist can deduce that someone has a chemical imbalance when they have no way of detecting it save for a selection of behavioral patterns.
I don't share most people's confidence in NHS consultants' infallibility when it comes to diagnosis I'm afraid. I tend to want answers that make sense.
As you may or may not be aware, it has taken me the best part of two years to get the NHS to finally put me in front of a consultant who understands my own issue and has provided the diagnosis that I had suggested at the beginning. I have seen five separate consultants in the meantime, all of whom seemingly had far too bigger egos to consider that they were ill equipped to deal with a particular patient.
Now finally I have had it confirmed that I "suffer" from exercise induced acute autonomic failure. Admittedly I am the first non diabetic to be properly identified as such but it has taken me a year of doing my own research, consulting experts in other countries and carrying out my own tests to produce sufficient evidence for the NHS to organise the correct tests and to confirm the diagnosis.
To explain, the condition actually IS a failure of the very hormones that are at the center of the depression debate, which leads to a lack of fuel to the brain and sudden collapse. I have been unconscious 40 times this year to date, in an ambulance to A&E 15 times, and suffer the ongoing cognitive impairments as well as neural death and all kinds of fun and games in the brain department.
Obviously this leads to irrational (or possibly rational ) anxiety and mood issues. I'm not complaining though. There are plenty of fifty somethings with worse problems than this as you see when you visit any hospital.
I am not unfamiliar however with the fields that some have suggested I am which is why I took exception to claims that my scepticism is borne out of ignorance.
With regards to psychiatry in general, I know that the autonomic failure is down to reduced levels of circulating plasma norepinephrine and I have a good idea as to why there are reduced levels in my case. The problem is psychiatrists simply don't seem to understand that so I find myself facing the same lack of attention to the cause that I saw with endocrinologists. They are seemingly uninterested in the cause, merely preoccupied with applying a big brush to go over the commonly seen symptoms.
My attitude is simply this. If Mr or Mrs Psychiatrist is saying that condition A is because of a chemical imbalance then show me the evidence. We are being told that this is the case but there is AFAIK a lack of compelling evidence to back the assertion up. The same goes for the pharmaceutical companies.
If the psychiatrists however are saying condition A is the result of past events then I need to be sure that they know more about the relevent history than they would get from a 20 question questionnaire filled out on line or with a biro. I would consider diagnosis based on such brief exposure to be very compromised at best and of questionable validity.
The real problem is that there are young people with mental illness dying every month because of shortages of beds and care facilities in the NHS. We all know these people need help. I'd like to see some evidence that the fortune being spent on SSRI's and NDRI's is a necessary cost of health care in the 21st century. Prescriptions in the UK have doubled in the past decade. Is someone going to tell us why twice as many people suddenly have chemical imblances?