Posted by Meri-Tuuli on January 20, 2007, at 13:00:50
In reply to Re: Bipolar depression, posted by chiron on January 19, 2007, at 20:21:22
> > Negative thoughts and pessimism don;t help, but its certainly not "just in your mind" , b/c the few times I have had remission because of medications, not just positive circumstances, my thinking changed also, for the better.. so I think you have to fix the "hardware" before you can truly completely fix the "software".
> Definitely. Good analogy.
> It must be difficult to understand if you don't have hardware problems.Yes I agree with this also. Of course, I think that there is an infinite variety of depressions etc. I said that I believe all depression and mental illness are completely unique. So I agree with what you're saying too. I think some depressions are biological and I think some depressions are entirely psychological and there is alot of overlap between. But my point was that, for me, I believe my mental problems to be entirely psychological, and I was just trying to get people to question themselves. (My pdoc agrees with me, BTW, on this so its not just some anti-med sentiment I dreamed up). And I wanted to make the point that I think the psychological aspect of mental illness if often down played and not treated enough, well in my opinion.
And I think that there are different types of remission. I wouldn't call an absence of negative symptoms true remission either.
And yes, of course your thinking is going to change if you're experiencing a chemically induced flood of pleasure or a discontinuation of symptoms. But I think thats just trying to mask the underlying root cause of things. Like taking a paracetamol for a hangover headache - you still have a hangover headache, but the paracetamol just masks the pain. And obviously there's something to be said for just masking things until you're at a place when you can work on your problems. Sigh. I'm obviously a very small minority in my thinking here....and no shrink I might add!
Essentially, I wanted the people who are striving for a chemical solution to their problems to sit up and think and see if they think they could be helped by a more psychologically oriented approach, or if they really feel that the solutions to their problems lie in a drug. Because I was one of those medication people a couple of years ago, and really, it was a waste of time.
Oh well.
Meri
poster:Meri-Tuuli
thread:723718
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070119/msgs/724447.html