Neurosis and/or depression

[masta247]

Anybody here suffering?

 

[hizzle?]

I'd bet on Eric...

 

[Jeremy]

^^lol. I guess I'm pretty happy right now.

 

[S O F I]

I always wondered how depression is really diagnosed. I know that "real" depression stems from changes in brain chemistry and I'm pretty sure that there are ways of measuring serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain, but I doubt that's how it's always done. Usually...

"Hey, doc, I broke up with my girlfriend i feel really shitty i feel like i'm in a hole that i can't get out of i keep thinking about death a lot"

"Oh, son, you're depressed. Here's some Welbutrin for you!!"

 

[Tha_Wood]

no im happy

 

[Preach]

I always wondered how depression is really diagnosed. I know that "real" depression stems from changes in brain chemistry and I'm pretty sure that there are ways of measuring serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain, but I doubt that's how it's always done. Usually...

"Hey, doc, I broke up with my girlfriend i feel really shitty i feel like i'm in a hole that i can't get out of i keep thinking about death a lot"

"Oh, son, you're depressed. Here's some Welbutrin for you!!"

depression and anxiety cause abnormalities in behaviour and induces certain thought cycles. studies over the times have provided statistics for which to compare these abnormalities and thought cycles against.

for example, if a person has experienced something that altered his or her behaviour to become more reserved in the immediate aftermath (first few days), and the person insists he or she is fine while declining to talk about it any further; with the knowledge of what the person experienced, you can make many assumptions about what is going on in said person's head. what separates a good shrink from a bad one is which assumption he thinks is the actual diagnose. psychologists essentially have to work on intuition and guesses/experience. therapists who issue medication work with different types of patients, where different types of tests are done. you don't need to read off dopamine levels to tell whether somebody's a schizo or not lol.

anyway that was a very basic example, but having a bunch of negative experiences consecutively can cause a more severe imbalance, as well as having no anchor in the "real" you. you become bipolar, and every emotional impulse brings out a new personality in you. happy times are euphoric, sad times feels like the end of the world, when you're in between you start walking on walls. again, a psychologist talks to you, and based on your words as well as your history, he sets a diagnose, all based on whether your thoughts fit certain patterns that are common for people who suffer from the same condition.

the thing with depression is that it's not a fixed condition. in a sense you can say that every human is born with a depression. every human being is born with anxiety. every human being is born with social phobia. it's just how we deal with it that's different. so a "depression" is not a one thing that's the same for everyone. arguably, the whole idea of psychology brings an awareness of a problem to us that might not even have been experienced as a problem if we lived in bliss. but that's a different discussion.

 

[S O F I]

That's inefficient.

edit: ineffective, to be more accurate.

 

[Euphanasia]

I know very little about this topic so I will pose a question. If certain types of depression can be diagnosed in terms of a chemical imbalance in the brain, what can be said about people whose lives consist of a perpetual feeling of pain?

Not physical pain, of course, but mental/emotional/psychological pain that overwhelms them every single day of their lives? Perhaps derived from loneliness, anxiety, frustration, traumatic past experiences, et cetera?

Does this prevalence of pain cause such chemical imbalances that can be diagnosed as depression or is this something separate entirely?

 

[S O F I]

I know very little about this topic so I will pose a question. If certain types of depression can be diagnosed in terms of a chemical imbalance in the brain, what can be said about people whose lives consist of a perpetual feeling of pain?

Not physical pain, of course, but mental/emotional/psychological pain that overwhelms them every single day of their lives? Perhaps derived from loneliness, anxiety, frustration, traumatic past experiences, et cetera?

Does this prevalence of pain cause such chemical imbalances that can be diagnosed as depression or is this something separate entirely?

What can be said about them? It can be said that they are lonely, anxious, frustrated, traumatized, etc. LOL and doctors will prescribe them shit to cope with that. But, I would say that there's no reason to think that loneliness would alter the ways of how the brain works, but just that when you're lonely, traumatized, etc, the pleasure center in the brain is seldom activated. Jokerman can say more about this, probably.

Now, are they depressed or not? Again, as I was trying to point out, diagnosing depression is a big joke. Half the world would be on anti-depressants if they went to the doctor and told him/her how they feel. Most people who go to the doctor screaming depression really mean to say that they're unhappy because they're not dealing with their problems. Now, of course, I'm not going to judge a person if they resort to drugs to achieve that happiness. For the people that really do have chemical imbalances that prevent them from experiencing happiness no matter what, that's just fucked up.

What Preach is talking about is that a psychologist can "sense" if a person is depressed or not due to certain behaviors and symptoms that people who were said to be "depressed" exhibited. I think that's not a good way of going on about things.

 

[masta247]

I know very little about this topic so I will pose a question. If certain types of depression can be diagnosed in terms of a chemical imbalance in the brain, what can be said about people whose lives consist of a perpetual feeling of pain?

Not physical pain, of course, but mental/emotional/psychological pain that overwhelms them every single day of their lives? Perhaps derived from loneliness, anxiety, frustration, traumatic past experiences, et cetera?

Does this prevalence of pain cause such chemical imbalances that can be diagnosed as depression or is this something separate entirely?

it's a separate thing.
Chemical unbalance mostly causes you to not receive melatonin, endorphine etc. which leads to depression.

Depressions and most anxieties are also caused by our own brains and I mean our subconsciousness or some other undiscovered areas in our brains.
For example many anxieties (for example the one I'm sometimes suffering from) doesn't occur untill I think about it or something related happens that could "trigger" it.
That's why usually intelligent and sensitive people suffer from them - they tend to analyse everything too much.
Also anxieties lead to depression and there are also different depressions classified fe. on their level etc.
Some people want to kill themselves why other are just sad all the time or they don't see any reason to live but they don't think about death etc.

I wouldn't say that we are born with anxieties.
Real anxieties or real depression is something so terrible that I wouldn't wish it to anyone, and fortunately enough most people won't ever suffer from it.
People tend to say "oh I'm so depressed" or "I suffer from an anxiety lately" but it's all bullshit.
The "Real deal" feeling of depression or anxiety as "illness" is uncomparably much more terrible than the feeling when you feel sad after you brake up with your girlfriend or when you have a bad day.
For example picture a situation when you have a heart attack and you know that you will die within few seconds/minutes - that's how people with serious anxieties feel.. during each "attack", everyday.
It's just a hardcore panic within your brain.
Now picture a situation when you get fired, your gf brakes up with you etc. etc. and you see everything really really damn grey at that very moment - that's how a seriously depressed person feels all the time with that difference that you will feel better within few seconds/minutes and your brain will defend from the terrible situation you're in, you will feel slightly better. Trully depressed person won't.

That's why some sad bullshiting of totally healthy people who had a bad day because something stupid happened is really annoying to me.

 

[keco52]

There is situational depression that does not really need to be medicated AT ALL. It can be fixed with cognitive behavioral therapy.

 

[Preach]

What can be said about them? It can be said that they are lonely, anxious, frustrated, traumatized, etc. LOL and doctors will prescribe them shit to cope with that. But, I would say that there's no reason to think that loneliness would alter the ways of how the brain works, but just that when you're lonely, traumatized, etc, the pleasure center in the brain is seldom activated. Jokerman can say more about this, probably.

Now, are they depressed or not? Again, as I was trying to point out, diagnosing depression is a big joke. Half the world would be on anti-depressants if they went to the doctor and told him/her how they feel. Most people who go to the doctor screaming depression really mean to say that they're unhappy because they're not dealing with their problems. Now, of course, I'm not going to judge a person if they resort to drugs to achieve that happiness. For the people that really do have chemical imbalances that prevent them from experiencing happiness no matter what, that's just fucked up.

What Preach is talking about is that a psychologist can "sense" if a person is depressed or not due to certain behaviors and symptoms that people who were said to be "depressed" exhibited. I think that's not a good way of going on about things.

That is what I'm talking about, and I agree. I don't know if I made that clear or not, but you are completely right.

I'll speak for myself. I've smoked pot so long that normal everyday things bore the shit out of me. I was just sitting out in my living room with my mom and dad, my dad was doing some work and me and my mother put together a tv table while he put up a wall. It struck me that I don't ever want to do this, ever, for the rest of my life. Had I been high, I could have sat there for hours. Right now I'm in a state of withdrawal, so I'm gonna be a little but more pessimistic. In time it will even out, but I have gone for up to five months sober and even towards the end before i got high again (and in turn started smoking again) there was something not quite right.

There is no chemical imbalance, just memories, experiences, and most of all thoughts, so embedded in my head that I can't seem to get them out of my head. I will most likely be displeased, or "okay" at best, with a sober life and that is very sorry. Unless I make a fundamental change. You know, like, quit your job, tell all your friends you never really liked how you really feel about them, fuck your girl in the mouth and move to Kuala Lumpur-fundamental change. I'm not ready for that yet, so for me it's like.. I know that my everyday is worse than a lot of people. I will speak now within the domain that I live in. I could give a fuck about starved kids in Africa in the context of how I feel about myself on a day to day basis, and thus is human nature. I know that I suffer more than most of the friends in the group of people I hang out with. I often opt to sit alone at home vs. going out with a bunch of friends to see a movie or get a few beers. Now anybody who felt a little down and wanted some time for themselves know what I'm talking about, but this occurs every damn day... unless I get high.

However, I know exactly what's wrong with me, I know exactly what to do to fix it, I'm just too selfish/have too much on my plate/i'm out of excuses but i just don't feel like it yet. I do see a shrink, and I don't know what shrinks are like around the world but the clinic I go to impressed me. I go with this group, we go skiing once a week. There's a bunch of different people, different sex and ages, different problems. For me, the idea is to structure myself, to do something over time and hopefully experience that something I at first resented really isn't so bad. So I'm not getting a bunch of prescriptions and I'm not lying on some shrink's couch crying my heart out about how my mommy doesn't love me enough. We NEVER discuss personal shit in the group (unless someone suddenly brings something up, unlikely considering it's a group for people with mild emotional/mental instabilities). It's like a bunch of strangers coming together and just talking lol. But it's working so I'm not giving up on psychology and diagnosis entirely.

 

[Jokerman]

If certain types of depression can be diagnosed in terms of a chemical imbalance in the brain...

Never happened. There are no studies or evidence that has ever shown a chemical imbalance in the brain. None. It's all based on assumption. Most people don't know this. There is no medical test to prove that there's something wrong with the brains of people diagnosed as depressed, bipolar, schizophrenic, and so on.

The diagnosis of a brain-biochemical imbalance is simply psychiatry's way of saying, "We don't know the cause. But we're going to give drugs with bad side effects, and we thought people would go along with it if we pretend to know and say something scientific sounding." And they're right.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/Biochemical-Imbalance.htm

"In psychology and psychiatry there is a phenomenon called "theory begging" which can explain the notion of "chemical imbalances." Theory begging is the reporting of a scientific theory as "fact" so often that it becomes accepted as fact within the profession despite having never been proven. For example, it is taken for granted by psychiatry that patients said to have "mental illness" have a "chemical imbalance" in their brain. The "chemical imbalance" is taken for granted, not actually found and verified by medical test."

 

[Jokerman]

If certain types of depression can be diagnosed in terms of a chemical imbalance in the brain, what can be said about people whose lives consist of a perpetual feeling of pain?

What can be said is that they are clinically depressed. And, as I said above, no test can determine a chemical imbalance. Do anxiety-producing events in one's life affect the biochemistry of the brain? Absolutely, which can then lead to a perpetual feeling of pain. But depression must be viewed as a mind and body disorder, and the relationship between depression and genetic, physical, or mental factors is a complex one. Everyone's situation and needs are unique.

 

[masta247]

Never happened. There are no studies or evidence that has ever shown a chemical imbalance in the brain. None. It's all based on assumption. Most people don't know this. There is no medical test to prove that there's something wrong with the brains of people diagnosed as depressed, bipolar, schizophrenic, and so on.

yeah but I've heard that sometimes depressed people have something about hormones (fe. endorphine) absorbtion in their brains or something like that.
I guess it's impossible to confirm too.

 

[Euphanasia]

I could give a fuck about starved kids in Africa in the context of how I feel about myself on a day to day basis, and thus is human nature.

That's true isn't it? I suppose it's hard to sit and sympathize with starving kids on another continent when you can't even rid yourself of the turmoil and pain in your own life.

 

[Chronic]

That's inefficient.

edit: ineffective, to be more accurate.

Mental healthcare is a joke but I don't see a better way. It's a physical condition but I don't think you can diagnosis it in a physical manner. Feeling like shit is only one of many symptoms of a depression, so the therapists do have more to go on. I think (good) therapists can differentiate between someone who's feeling depressed at the moment and someone who's clinically depressed. The real difficulty is in the type of depression, the cause, the severity and the treatment (anti-depressives can be a a big help but it should always be in combination with therapy)... and in finding good doctors.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

some people may also feel under-challenged in their lives. If they take up activities and participate in them, they might find themselves to be more confident and calm in situations where they may usually become rather anxious and depressed later on.

Partaking in activities/challenges can help take their mind off things and then can deal with problems later, knowing that the stress can be eased.

However, some people may be reluctant to go out and socialise or participate in sports and activities by already having low self-esteem. They need to identify barriers to being social and look at how they can overcome them to improve confidence and do more things. This will inevitably increase their morale and give them a feeling that they can succeed and be triumphant in given situations.

It is proven that most if not all people who are under-challenged are not motivated enough and therefore become depressed.

I know some people think of the worst that could happen.
My brother tells me im too negative and i need to be a lot more positive in life. Actually, that is the way he sees it, but i think im a positive person who only thinks of the worst that can happen just to try to avoid it happening in the first place.

 

[S O F I]

Never happened. There are no studies or evidence that has ever shown a chemical imbalance in the brain. None. It's all based on assumption. Most people don't know this. There is no medical test to prove that there's something wrong with the brains of people diagnosed as depressed, bipolar, schizophrenic, and so on.

The diagnosis of a brain-biochemical imbalance is simply psychiatry's way of saying, "We don't know the cause. But we're going to give drugs with bad side effects, and we thought people would go along with it if we pretend to know and say something scientific sounding." And they're right.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/Biochemical-Imbalance.htm

"In psychology and psychiatry there is a phenomenon called "theory begging" which can explain the notion of "chemical imbalances." Theory begging is the reporting of a scientific theory as "fact" so often that it becomes accepted as fact within the profession despite having never been proven. For example, it is taken for granted by psychiatry that patients said to have "mental illness" have a "chemical imbalance" in their brain. The "chemical imbalance" is taken for granted, not actually found and verified by medical test."

David Satcher said that depression can be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. And he also said what you're saying, regarding how one shouldn't distinguish between mind and body when talking about mental illness.

 

[Preach]

^^
truth, lack of sleep and proper nutrition could induce or strengthen negative emotions.

the whole idea with psychological treatment, for it to work most efficiently, is to plant seeds in your head by merely commenting and questioning your methods of thinking. the old make-you-think-it-was-your-idea routine.