quote:
think that's a bit disingenuous AH. The ibuprophen is merely treating the symptom, pain, in a case where the condition is unkown.
My point exactly (i.e., I'm NOT being disingenuous). Psychopharmaceuticals are prescribed because they treat symptoms. That is all that they are known to do. If there is an actual medical condition causing the symptoms, its existence remains hypothetical, its causes unknown, its etiology no more than unresolvable conjecture, and its direct treatment--as opposed to symptom management--equally so.
Many of the theories regarding the etiology and mechanisms of "mental illnesses" were historically derived by latching onto a pharmaceutical because it did a good job of addressing symptoms; studying what the heck it is that the pharmaceutical does in the brain; and then reasoning backwards that the "mental illness" must consist of an insufficiency of that activity, or of a general disposition in the opposite direction.
I don't mean to imply that nothing can be learned from the process of saying, in essence, "But when we give her Advil (or Navane), the headaches(or affective disorders) go away, so SOMETHING that the Advil (Navane) is actually doing may be key to our understanding of what is causing her headaches (affective disorders) in the first place".
But it is important to realize that the original condition may be caused (or precipitated) by things other than the condition of the body. When I say "there is no such thing as 'schizophrenia'", it is a shorthand way of saying "we don't know that the set of behaviors and felt experiences that we call 'schizophrenia' are in fact due to a physiological condition, and we need to cease to proceed on the assumption that it must be, that it has to be." The girl with the headaches could have chronic headaches because her kids yell and scream, which leads to calls from the downstairs neighbors which gets her upset, and the kids don't obey her because her boyfriend beats and belittles her in front of them.
Even though the Advils really do address her symptoms rather nicely.
Original SDMB thread - The Role of Culture in Mental Illness
See my next post on this same thread
See my previous post on this same thread