Oracle Goddess writes "According to the US National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people. Previously schizophrenia and depression were assumed to be two separate conditions, but the new research shows for the first time that both have a common genetic basis that leads people to develop one or the other of the two illnesses."
"You're glib. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."
BadAnalogyGuy, judging from your other posts on this thread, you sound like you've probably got more drugs in you than Amy Wine-warehouse on a "I've just forgot the world getting high day" (Its a national holiday in Amsterdam), so I guess you were probably there when they opened Bethlem as a hospital in the 13th century.;)
You seem to have the same faulty knowledge of Schizophrenia as most. What you are talking about is something like Dissociative identity disorder. Being Schizophrenic doesn't mean you have multiple personalities. I should know as I'm Schizophrenic myself.
I just wish the summary were better. The title and summary use Depression [wikipedia.org] and Manic Depression [wikipedia.org] interchangeably, which is just dead wrong.
That would be CLINICAL depression. As in, the type caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; as opposed to the type caused by your wife leaving you.
That would be CLINICAL depression. As in, the type caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; as opposed to the type caused by your wife leaving you.
Despite the drug company propaganda, there's no objective test to distinguish the two. In general the levels of neurotransmitters in a patient's brain aren't measured anyway... and even if they were, there's no available way to tell if the levels were what they were because of some physical issue, or if they're that way because your wife left you.
However, TFA is talking about bipolar disorder, which is not the same as clinical depression.
The type cause by your wife leaving you is called "adjustment disorder with depressed mood", and they'll prescribe the same drugs as they prescribe for depression (SSRIs like Paxil and Zoloft).
Exactly. Especially in times, where people prefer to take meds, instead of healing their problems, it should always be made very clear, that there is a huge difference between genetic disorders, and environment-based disorders. And that there also is a huge difference between intoxication (bad food, toxic waste, polluted nature, etc) and purely psychological influences (evil people, mind-boggling events, wars, extreme mobbing, and especially bad parents).
Because the last one can't be cured by and medicine at all! At least not in your lifetime. It can only be partially overlayed, and numbed down, having more bad than good effects. That kind has to be treated with a proper psychotherapy. With the help of someone, who does not fear to take you at the hand and help you go to the deepest and darkest place in your soul, to face it. Luckily this has a very good chance of really healing you.
But the genetic kind of course can only be treated with meds.
It is very important to make this distinction, for sure.
When I on lithium (~15 years ago) I found my creative spark had gone. Sure, the window of emotion had narrowed considerably, but the super-fast mental edge was lost. That made me even more depressed when the time came. Spoke with my doc, dropped all the meds (but can get lithium if I become Superman again)
If you can harness it, manic depression is wonderful thing.
Posted non-anonymously because it's not embarrassing or a big stigma.
Kudos to you for posting w/ your name. I agree, IF you can harness it then yes, it can be a wonderful thing. The sticky point is being able to harness it.
When I spoke with the doc I told her my concerns. Things/answers/analysis/even jokes which would have come to me in a flash actually took mental work. Maybe it's parallel to how Alzheimer's patients start to feel, hope I never know.
In any case, the high end isn't usually the problem, it's the bottoming out that comes. I take reasonable care of myself and overall it's worked out well. Hey, I've just had the past 15 years virtually med
Not to be glib, but couldn't it just be part of the disease to feel that the medicated state is unnatural? Whereas you feel muted when on the medicine, it is actually the way most people feel all the time?
Not to be glib, but couldn't it just be part of the disease to feel that the medicated state is unnatural? Whereas you feel muted when on the medicine, it is actually the way most people feel all the time?
Well, the medicated state is unnatural. And there are certainly people who feel 'muted' much of the time and the tolerance to mood swings is quite varied among folks. Lots of bipolar patients like the "up" when the can handle it. Everybody seems to hate the down part and it can be rough to cycle up and down quite a bit. The differences between monopolar (clincal, classical, typical depression) and bipolar disease aren't all that great and there is no strict line between "normal" and a "disease" state. Sometimes it's really obvious and much of the time it isn't.
IMHO (and IAAMD) the term "antidepressant" is a big misnomer. They are really mood stabilizers, ala lithium. They do flatten both the ups and downs and they do interfere with creative energy and ability. If you look at the personal lives of many creative people, both in the sciences and arts and in fact in much of the religious sphere, you can discern clear DSM-IV diagnoses. They are 'mentally ill' by our current definitions. And if you look at their often short lived, self destructive lifestyles it's easy to believe that.
There currently is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to neuropsychiatric drugs - they're really more like hand grenades then rifle bullets. They hit the target, but often cause collateral damage. Whether and how much and what you should take is often a long term, complicated dance between the patient, the physician and occasionally the courts.
The summary seems to confuse being depressive with being bipolar (i.e., manic-depressive). Clinical depression is a common problem, and is generally treatable to some extent with drug and cognitive therapy. Last I checked, bipolar was much less common and a lot less treatable.
So, it isn't going to lead to new treatments for two common problems. It may well lead to new treatments for two problems, one of which is distinctly less common. Those who are clinically depressed but not bipolar may well not benefit at all.
With three comments, this article has already been tagged with "nutjobs".
Grow up. Chances are you know someone who has (or will develop) one of these conditions to some degree, even if you don't know it (which is likely if you are that much of a jackass, they probably wouldn't tell you).
I don't normally do angry rants, but sometimes I'm surprised by the juvenile and compassionless attitudes of some people on/.
poor impulse control, disinhibition, lack of concern for others, overly aggressive emphasis on one's own pleasure
this is the mental condition known as "internet troll"
familiarize yourself with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders entry for this particular disorder, and show some sensitivity to those affected
your anger doesn't help in the care and treatment of the mentally altered. more compassion next time please for these poor suffering souls. thank you
In order to treat these conditions, ECT [wikipedia.org] is the tool of choice these days. It has its own detractors (me inclusive) for I do not see how inducing a seizure helps an individual.
Worst of all you could lose all your memory. There was a story of a lady who did not remember anything about her clothes and wondered who had put "foreign" clothes in her closet. In another case, a former doctor could not remember who the hell he was after the procedure. Scary indeed.
Just to put this in perspective, this is not a gene, but just a region of a chromosome. And the association with any particular locus is weak, so it doesn't look like it is strong enough for diagnosis or prenatal testing. Even when the gene is identified, going from a gene to a treatment tends to be very difficult. We've know of genes for Huntington's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease for years, and while this has inspired a lot of promising research, so far this knowledge has not yet resulting any major improvements with respect to treatment or prevention.
Moreover, finding that the same genes are involved does not necessarily mean that the diseases are the same, because genes can be "broken" in multiple ways.
The idea that there is a relationship between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not actually new, as there are some people who exhibit characteristics of both disorders, and some people diagnosed with one respond to drugs that are commonly used to treat the other. So this basically adds a bit more evidence to a long-standing suspicion.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 02, @10:58AM (#28558673)
I hope this brings things closer to a more reliable form of treatment. I grew up with three (yes, 3) women with schizophrenia, and the drugs only muted the symptoms. I (amazingly) don't have the disease myself. My mom and grandma, who I lived with the first ten years of my life, had noticeable symptoms...I'd get told to do things that didn't make sense to me. I'm a rather geeky and analytical girl, and it is very frustrating when the adults in your life tell you things that *make no sense*, and there's nobody around *without* the disease to talk to. They tried to "protect" me from the "ghosts" on one hand, so I'm sure they cared for me in their own way, but on the other hand my mom would attack my grandma because my grandma (who was a heavy smoker and had issues with her lungs) was "talking under her breath". (She wasn't.) Pretty terrifying to see when you're five years old. I wasn't allowed to go to friends' birthday parties if they were in a certain town that, some hundred years ago, had been the former county seat, because apparantly folks from that town were still pissed off at our town and would try to hurt me (this is the paranoia part of paranoid schizophrenia showing). I wasn't allowed to wear the color red, eat strawberries, or get ice cream from the ice cream man truck. My mom would randomly become enraged at my friends dads simply since they were male, so I'd be cut off from friends randomly. My aunt had less noticeable symptoms, but the disease made her a target for an abusive husband, and of course I was exposed to that when I went to live with them as an 8th grader (my mom went back into the mental hospital, and my grandma had died when I was 10). I finally ran away at 16 and went into the state ward system, which was much, much better since I could make decisions for myself, instead of having to obey people who made no sense.
Schizophrenia sucks. It sucks for the person having it, since you can't hold down a job, and it sucks for the family that has to put up with it.
Anybody who has had long association with a manic-depressive already knew this. I'm related to one. The first time, he went completely manic. Didn't sleep for a week, etc. The last time he went around the bend, he DIDN'T go manic-depressive. He went paranoid schizophrenic. I can't believe any competent clinician hadn't already noticed that the same patient can easily exhibit symptoms of both, even at the same time. Given that both are caused by imbalances in brain chemistry, and given that the same patient can be both, how big of a leap is it to notice that they're really just different manifestations of the same problem?
He's much better now, though he still prefers his own flights of fancy to reality. But at least he's capable of distinguishing the two again. After over a decade of on-again off-again lunacy, he's finally decided to take his meds regularly, and he, his therapist, and his mother have found an effective dosage (of Depacote, for the morbidly curious. The stuff works very well, IF, and I repeat IF the dosage is precisely correct. Too little does nothing. Too much ruins the patient's ability to stay awake, let alone function.) It is perhaps telling that regardless of whether he was manic, depressive, paranoid, or schizophrenic, his therapist wanted him to use Depacote. Practitioners already know that the same drug can treat a patient with any of those symptoms.
Back before psychopharmaceuticals, schizophrenia and depression were thought to be very similar or even the same thing. It was only once we had Thorazine (first antipsychotic) and then later tricyclics (first antidepressents) that in the clinical settings schizophrenia and depression began to be sorted much more distinctly, essentially based on the kinds of patients that got better with antipsychotics versus those that got better with antidepressants.
It's pretty common for diagnostic definitions to align with successful treatment methadologies, since "what will help" is the fundamental answer that diagnosis hopes to lead to.
Sounds like we're now getting back to the perspective of a half-century ago.
... how would you determine how they are related in the first place if you dont RTFA? Especially given the complexity of these issues in their relation to your understanding of them.
... how would they determine how they are related in the first place? Especially given the complexity of these issues in their relation to the central nervous system.
Same way they diagnose people. They guess.
Psychiatry is the only industry where someone can present the same affect to 10 shrinks and get 10 different diagnoses. Trust me on this.
...and no, no Dianetics, e-meters, or Xenu for me, thanks for asking.
Indeed, the disease is no longer called "manic depression". It's "bipolar disorder" now. And BTW, schitzophrenia is not multiple personalities, that one is called "disassociative identity disorder". Schitzophrenics experience delusions, like changing their memories of a movie or TV show into memories of their own life experience; or hallucinations, like hearing voices in their heads telling them what a terrible person they are.
Depression is a completely different disease and often leads to suicide and usually leads to drug or alcohol abuse, although the metal health industry usually blames the substance abuse for the depression that started before the substance abuse did.
You meet a lot of crazy people in bars. One guy I saw in a bar said "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy".
schitzophrenia [sic] is not multiple personalities, that one is called "disassociative identity disorder"
Yeah but hillbillies want to be called 'Sons of the Soil', but it's never going to happen....
I'm not sure where you're going with that one... Sure, in general usage a language is defined by the whims of the people who speak it. But when it's technical jargon - in this case medical jargon - the technical definition, as opposed to "what everyone calls it" is rather important! I've had friends who call a CRT monitor "the computer", yet my CRT is still unable to function without the part that the geeks refer to as "the computer". Sometimes the commonly used phrase can be technically wrong and therefore misleading, despite the fact that it's popular.
There's also a wider point at stake here: in general, we reserve the right to change the generally accepted meaning of words in the English language (presumably ditto for most other living languages) according to what most people understand them to mean. This typically does not happen in the same way within technical disciplines; physicists draw a distinction between "speed" and "velocity" and show no signs of changing. Usually what terms the techies appropriate to mean something very specific does not affect the rest of us - there's not much point in me labouring the distinction between monitor and computer with my friends, since the misunderstanding doesn't really hurt anyone. This is not the case for medical terminology, where the name of the disease tends to become a label for the sufferers in discussion, as well as a convenient way for a sufferer to explain their condition to an interested third party. The names of diseases have specific technical meanings to a Doctor but are often also used in everyday conversation between people explaining their health situation.
Doctors aren't going to alter the names of diseases just because common usage often confuses a couple of them - it's technical jargon and there's no sense creating confusion in the medical community by changing that around. So it's up to the rest of us: do we want to stick the wrong label on an ill person because it's a generally accepted misunderstanding, or do we attempt to clarify the differences between disorders, knowing that a greater understanding and better use of the terminology is the only way the confusion will ever be resolved.
I'm sticking with the latter approach since it raises public awareness of important issues, even though I know there will always be people who remain confused about the distinction.
This is a very interesting finding (Score:5, Funny)
No it isn't, you moron. These people are lying. They're all lying.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
BadAnalogyGuy forgot to take his lithium today.
Warning (Score:3, Funny)
BadAnalogyGuy (945258) is a scientologist.
If he contacts you about a free personality test, firmly refuse him.
Re:Warning (Score:5, Funny)
You're glib. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
BadAnalogyGuy, judging from your other posts on this thread, you sound like you've probably got more drugs in you than Amy Wine-warehouse on a "I've just forgot the world getting high day" (Its a national holiday in Amsterdam), so I guess you were probably there when they opened Bethlem as a hospital in the 13th century.
(Bethlem as in i.e.
(See humor and a relevant educational his
Re:This is a very interesting finding (Score:4, Funny)
We are very happy that a solution has been found. REALLY HAPPY!!!!!!!!!! JOY AND BUTTERFLIES OH THE WORLD IS WONDERFUL ...
oh what the heck, there is no point, I might as well just give up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I used to be schizophrenic (Score:3, Funny)
But we're all better now.
I know, I know, that's dissociative identity disorder, but you still laughed. Maybe.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know, I know, that's dissociative identity disorder, but you still laughed.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic,
And so am I.
Re:I used to be schizophrenic (Score:5, Funny)
I was until I shot myself in the head after destroying the nations credit system.
Parent
It's Not a "Disease" (Score:3, Funny)
It's an Orientation.
Get with the program.
Re:It's Not a "Disease" (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Downside (Score:5, Funny)
This could be very bad for the tin foil hat industry.
Need to slow down when reading the article titles (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Need to slow down when reading the article titl (Score:5, Insightful)
The title is a bit misleading. There is a big difference between Depression and Bipolar/Manic-Depressive disorders.
Parent
Re:Need to slow down when reading the article titl (Score:4, Insightful)
Awesome. I have saidf for a while that will be the killer app for future devices. uilt in achievments, as well as achievements that can be added.
Achievement unlocked! you ahve walked 1,000,000 steps.
Achievement unlocked! You have run a 10 minute mile! next achievement, 8 minute mile.
You have listened to your 10000 th minute of music.
And so on.
Parent
Science for the win! (Score:3, Insightful)
More articles like this one, please.
Re:Science for the win! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
manic depression is biopolar disorder (Score:5, Informative)
... it is not the 'depression' you may be lead to believe.
Clarification (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Clarification (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Despite the drug company propaganda, there's no objective test to distinguish the two. In general the levels of neurotransmitters in a patient's brain aren't measured anyway... and even if they were, there's no available way to tell if the levels were what they were because of some physical issue, or if they're that way because your wife left you.
However, TFA is talking about bipolar disorder, which is not the same as clinical depression.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The type cause by your wife leaving you is called "adjustment disorder with depressed mood", and they'll prescribe the same drugs as they prescribe for depression (SSRIs like Paxil and Zoloft).
Re:Clarification (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Especially in times, where people prefer to take meds, instead of healing their problems, it should always be made very clear, that there is a huge difference between genetic disorders, and environment-based disorders. And that there also is a huge difference between intoxication (bad food, toxic waste, polluted nature, etc) and purely psychological influences (evil people, mind-boggling events, wars, extreme mobbing, and especially bad parents).
Because the last one can't be cured by and medicine at all! At least not in your lifetime.
It can only be partially overlayed, and numbed down, having more bad than good effects.
That kind has to be treated with a proper psychotherapy. With the help of someone, who does not fear to take you at the hand and help you go to the deepest and darkest place in your soul, to face it. Luckily this has a very good chance of really healing you.
But the genetic kind of course can only be treated with meds.
It is very important to make this distinction, for sure.
Parent
Manic Depression is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
When I on lithium (~15 years ago) I found my creative spark had gone. Sure, the window of emotion had narrowed considerably, but the super-fast mental edge was lost. That made me even more depressed when the time came. Spoke with my doc, dropped all the meds (but can get lithium if I become Superman again)
If you can harness it, manic depression is wonderful thing.
Posted non-anonymously because it's not embarrassing or a big stigma.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The sticky point is being able to harness it.
Yep, that's the kicker.
When I spoke with the doc I told her my concerns. Things/answers/analysis/even jokes which would have come to me in a flash actually took mental work. Maybe it's parallel to how Alzheimer's patients start to feel, hope I never know.
In any case, the high end isn't usually the problem, it's the bottoming out that comes. I take reasonable care of myself and overall it's worked out well. Hey, I've just had the past 15 years virtually med
Re:Manic Depression is awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to be glib, but couldn't it just be part of the disease to feel that the medicated state is unnatural? Whereas you feel muted when on the medicine, it is actually the way most people feel all the time?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
it is actually the way most people feel all the time?
and he should really care how "normal" people fell why????
fuck normal... give me bat shit crazy and totally happy any day....
Re:Manic Depression is awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the medicated state is unnatural. And there are certainly people who feel 'muted' much of the time and the tolerance to mood swings is quite varied among folks. Lots of bipolar patients like the "up" when the can handle it. Everybody seems to hate the down part and it can be rough to cycle up and down quite a bit. The differences between monopolar (clincal, classical, typical depression) and bipolar disease aren't all that great and there is no strict line between "normal" and a "disease" state. Sometimes it's really obvious and much of the time it isn't.
IMHO (and IAAMD) the term "antidepressant" is a big misnomer. They are really mood stabilizers, ala lithium. They do flatten both the ups and downs and they do interfere with creative energy and ability. If you look at the personal lives of many creative people, both in the sciences and arts and in fact in much of the religious sphere, you can discern clear DSM-IV diagnoses. They are 'mentally ill' by our current definitions. And if you look at their often short lived, self destructive lifestyles it's easy to believe that.
There currently is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to neuropsychiatric drugs - they're really more like hand grenades then rifle bullets. They hit the target, but often cause collateral damage. Whether and how much and what you should take is often a long term, complicated dance between the patient, the physician and occasionally the courts.
Parent
Depression vs. Bipolar (Score:5, Informative)
The summary seems to confuse being depressive with being bipolar (i.e., manic-depressive). Clinical depression is a common problem, and is generally treatable to some extent with drug and cognitive therapy. Last I checked, bipolar was much less common and a lot less treatable.
So, it isn't going to lead to new treatments for two common problems. It may well lead to new treatments for two problems, one of which is distinctly less common. Those who are clinically depressed but not bipolar may well not benefit at all.
Nice to see the worst elements of /. are here (Score:3, Insightful)
With three comments, this article has already been tagged with "nutjobs".
Grow up. Chances are you know someone who has (or will develop) one of these conditions to some degree, even if you don't know it (which is likely if you are that much of a jackass, they probably wouldn't tell you).
I don't normally do angry rants, but sometimes I'm surprised by the juvenile and compassionless attitudes of some people on /.
Re:Nice to see the worst elements of /. are here (Score:5, Funny)
That was your angry rant? Man, you need some practice~
Parent
Re:Nice to see the worst elements of /. are here (Score:5, Funny)
He would probably give an angrier rant if not for the meds.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not me of course since the voices told me I wasn't.
DSM diagnostic criteria: (Score:3, Informative)
poor impulse control, disinhibition, lack of concern for others, overly aggressive emphasis on one's own pleasure
this is the mental condition known as "internet troll"
familiarize yourself with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders entry for this particular disorder, and show some sensitivity to those affected
your anger doesn't help in the care and treatment of the mentally altered. more compassion next time please for these poor suffering souls. thank you
This is what is being done now... (Score:3, Informative)
In order to treat these conditions, ECT [wikipedia.org] is the tool of choice these days. It has its own detractors (me inclusive) for I do not see how inducing a seizure helps an individual.
Worst of all you could lose all your memory. There was a story of a lady who did not remember anything about her clothes and wondered who had put "foreign" clothes in her closet. In another case, a former doctor could not remember who the hell he was after the procedure. Scary indeed.
In perspective (Score:5, Informative)
Just to put this in perspective, this is not a gene, but just a region of a chromosome. And the association with any particular locus is weak, so it doesn't look like it is strong enough for diagnosis or prenatal testing. Even when the gene is identified, going from a gene to a treatment tends to be very difficult. We've know of genes for Huntington's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease for years, and while this has inspired a lot of promising research, so far this knowledge has not yet resulting any major improvements with respect to treatment or prevention.
Moreover, finding that the same genes are involved does not necessarily mean that the diseases are the same, because genes can be "broken" in multiple ways.
The idea that there is a relationship between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not actually new, as there are some people who exhibit characteristics of both disorders, and some people diagnosed with one respond to drugs that are commonly used to treat the other. So this basically adds a bit more evidence to a long-standing suspicion.
I hope this brings things closer to a treatment. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this brings things closer to a more reliable form of treatment. I grew up with three (yes, 3) women with schizophrenia, and the drugs only muted the symptoms. I (amazingly) don't have the disease myself. My mom and grandma, who I lived with the first ten years of my life, had noticeable symptoms...I'd get told to do things that didn't make sense to me. I'm a rather geeky and analytical girl, and it is very frustrating when the adults in your life tell you things that *make no sense*, and there's nobody around *without* the disease to talk to. They tried to "protect" me from the "ghosts" on one hand, so I'm sure they cared for me in their own way, but on the other hand my mom would attack my grandma because my grandma (who was a heavy smoker and had issues with her lungs) was "talking under her breath". (She wasn't.) Pretty terrifying to see when you're five years old. I wasn't allowed to go to friends' birthday parties if they were in a certain town that, some hundred years ago, had been the former county seat, because apparantly folks from that town were still pissed off at our town and would try to hurt me (this is the paranoia part of paranoid schizophrenia showing). I wasn't allowed to wear the color red, eat strawberries, or get ice cream from the ice cream man truck. My mom would randomly become enraged at my friends dads simply since they were male, so I'd be cut off from friends randomly. My aunt had less noticeable symptoms, but the disease made her a target for an abusive husband, and of course I was exposed to that when I went to live with them as an 8th grader (my mom went back into the mental hospital, and my grandma had died when I was 10). I finally ran away at 16 and went into the state ward system, which was much, much better since I could make decisions for myself, instead of having to obey people who made no sense.
Schizophrenia sucks. It sucks for the person having it, since you can't hold down a job, and it sucks for the family that has to put up with it.
Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody who has had long association with a manic-depressive already knew this. I'm related to one. The first time, he went completely manic. Didn't sleep for a week, etc. The last time he went around the bend, he DIDN'T go manic-depressive. He went paranoid schizophrenic. I can't believe any competent clinician hadn't already noticed that the same patient can easily exhibit symptoms of both, even at the same time. Given that both are caused by imbalances in brain chemistry, and given that the same patient can be both, how big of a leap is it to notice that they're really just different manifestations of the same problem?
He's much better now, though he still prefers his own flights of fancy to reality. But at least he's capable of distinguishing the two again. After over a decade of on-again off-again lunacy, he's finally decided to take his meds regularly, and he, his therapist, and his mother have found an effective dosage (of Depacote, for the morbidly curious. The stuff works very well, IF, and I repeat IF the dosage is precisely correct. Too little does nothing. Too much ruins the patient's ability to stay awake, let alone function.) It is perhaps telling that regardless of whether he was manic, depressive, paranoid, or schizophrenic, his therapist wanted him to use Depacote. Practitioners already know that the same drug can treat a patient with any of those symptoms.
So, at the risk of repeating myself... duh?
A return to the pre-Thorazine days (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting.
Back before psychopharmaceuticals, schizophrenia and depression were thought to be very similar or even the same thing. It was only once we had Thorazine (first antipsychotic) and then later tricyclics (first antidepressents) that in the clinical settings schizophrenia and depression began to be sorted much more distinctly, essentially based on the kinds of patients that got better with antipsychotics versus those that got better with antidepressants.
It's pretty common for diagnostic definitions to align with successful treatment methadologies, since "what will help" is the fundamental answer that diagnosis hopes to lead to.
Sounds like we're now getting back to the perspective of a half-century ago.
I find it highly dubious (Score:4, Informative)
There, fixed it.
Parent
Re:I find this highly dubious... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I find this highly dubious... (Score:5, Informative)
Recommended.
Parent
Re:I find this highly dubious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just becasue they are complex doesn't mean the information can't be found.
Just becasue something is unknown doesn't mean it's unknowable.
Parent
Re:I find this highly dubious... (Score:4, Informative)
Similarity of some symptoms, medication that is effective for both conditions, a history of one or other condition in a person's ancestry...
Parent
Re:I find this highly dubious... (Score:5, Insightful)
... how would they determine how they are related in the first place? Especially given the complexity of these issues in their relation to the central nervous system.
Same way they diagnose people. They guess.
Psychiatry is the only industry where someone can present the same affect to 10 shrinks and get 10 different diagnoses. Trust me on this.
...and no, no Dianetics, e-meters, or Xenu for me, thanks for asking.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
i'd like to thank Steve Ballmer for making himself available for this important breakthrough.
Steve says, "show yourself, human! [crunchgear.com]"
Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, the disease is no longer called "manic depression". It's "bipolar disorder" now. And BTW, schitzophrenia is not multiple personalities, that one is called "disassociative identity disorder". Schitzophrenics experience delusions, like changing their memories of a movie or TV show into memories of their own life experience; or hallucinations, like hearing voices in their heads telling them what a terrible person they are.
Depression is a completely different disease and often leads to suicide and usually leads to drug or alcohol abuse, although the metal health industry usually blames the substance abuse for the depression that started before the substance abuse did.
You meet a lot of crazy people in bars. One guy I saw in a bar said "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy".
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Re:So what is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but hillbillies want to be called 'Sons of the Soil', but it's never going to happen....
I'm not sure where you're going with that one... Sure, in general usage a language is defined by the whims of the people who speak it. But when it's technical jargon - in this case medical jargon - the technical definition, as opposed to "what everyone calls it" is rather important! I've had friends who call a CRT monitor "the computer", yet my CRT is still unable to function without the part that the geeks refer to as "the computer". Sometimes the commonly used phrase can be technically wrong and therefore misleading, despite the fact that it's popular.
There's also a wider point at stake here: in general, we reserve the right to change the generally accepted meaning of words in the English language (presumably ditto for most other living languages) according to what most people understand them to mean. This typically does not happen in the same way within technical disciplines; physicists draw a distinction between "speed" and "velocity" and show no signs of changing. Usually what terms the techies appropriate to mean something very specific does not affect the rest of us - there's not much point in me labouring the distinction between monitor and computer with my friends, since the misunderstanding doesn't really hurt anyone. This is not the case for medical terminology, where the name of the disease tends to become a label for the sufferers in discussion, as well as a convenient way for a sufferer to explain their condition to an interested third party. The names of diseases have specific technical meanings to a Doctor but are often also used in everyday conversation between people explaining their health situation.
Doctors aren't going to alter the names of diseases just because common usage often confuses a couple of them - it's technical jargon and there's no sense creating confusion in the medical community by changing that around. So it's up to the rest of us: do we want to stick the wrong label on an ill person because it's a generally accepted misunderstanding, or do we attempt to clarify the differences between disorders, knowing that a greater understanding and better use of the terminology is the only way the confusion will ever be resolved.
I'm sticking with the latter approach since it raises public awareness of important issues, even though I know there will always be people who remain confused about the distinction.
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