Just a heads up, Mr. Appel. I am a psychiatrist, and your assertion that Adderall can induce 'careless, erratic behavior' in the mentally stable is in error: generally, if taken orally, it increases focus and energy. And frankly I have never seen, nor ever read a case report, of a women in severe post partum depression who had 'periods o…
Just a heads up, Mr. Appel. I am a psychiatrist, and your assertion that Adderall can induce 'careless, erratic behavior' in the mentally stable is in error: generally, if taken orally, it increases focus and energy. And frankly I have never seen, nor ever read a case report, of a women in severe post partum depression who had 'periods of delusions, impulsiveness, paranoia' directly due to the use or abuse of Adderall. Sadly, severe post partum depression in itself can be associated with delusions and paranoia, without the addition of the stimulant.
...your assertion that Adderall can induce 'careless, erratic behavior' in the mentally stable is in error: generally, if taken orally, it increases focus and energy."
Well, that's great. How about when Adderall is abused by dosage and frequency as well as the manner of administration (likely snorted) by some one who is mentally unstable?
Your comment completely ignores two factors which can make a critical difference. Which, renders it pointless.
But what I'm to take away from your final comments is that even if she's emotionally unstable and abusing the drug cannot be regarded as a cause for any of her bizarre behavior?
That's a relief! I mean, say I suffer from a variety of mental diagnoses, I can be comforted knowing that when snorting 50mg (or more with each hour)/hour that adderall will not be the reason I drive really fast and make foolish and dangerous decisions.
I can say first hand that I was in a group project with a mentally healthy student that took Adderall to "focus and be productive", and it, indeed, made her careless and erratic. She thought she was being productive, but really, she was so wild that I couldn't even read her notes and she was useless in the group.
This wouldn't show up in a self-reported survey, because she thought she was being studious and productive. I know this is anecdotal, but that doesn't mean it's not true in some cases.
One other thing, psychiatric drugs do not work the same way in each person. The same drug will be amazing for one person and do nothing for another person. You cannot determine if a drug is effective by just looking at a few isolated cases.
Was the Adderall proscribed by a psychiatrist? Was the Adderall taken as proscribed? If someone is mentally health, they would not need Adderall and should not be taking it. Self-medication does not work (i.e. a person cannot decide to just take a psychiatric drug because it leads to harm).
It definitely was not prescribed, but that's the original comment's point, that Adderall doesn't cause mentally healthy people to become erratic (ever). In my friend's case, it definitely did.
The author did suggest that abuse of Adderall combined with underlying issues is epecially problematic. Psychosis seems to be a possible side-effect: https://www.drugs.com/adderall.html
It's not for me to judge whether an autobiography reveals the full truth, but we know that musicians in the USA have often taken many, many drugs in dangerous amounts and combinations.
Perhaps if the parents of other well-known musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and others had been able to be more involved, those legends would have lived past 27 years old.
The tremendous loss of opportunity, happiness, and health caused by drug abuse in the West cannot be overstated. Our major cities are clogged with the endgame results.
I’m honestly baffled that you, as a psychiatrist, don’t know this about Adderall. You don’t need case studies to be observant of the world around you, let alone read the “serious side-effects” on the back of the bottle. I know several people who have taken Adderall for ADHD, including members of my own family. Many have reported significant changes to their emotional state, most predominantly “numbness” or an “inability to care.” For some, this is a horrible side-effect that induces a depressive state—that was the case for my brother who begged my mom to get off the stuff. For others, it’s euphoric, suppressing their depression and anxiety symptoms. (And I think it’s this effect that gets some people hooked.)
In all my years I've always assumed that psychiatry, medication, etc. were perfect and that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. surely knew all the answers about our mental health. I hate having to accept the reality that there are not necessarily answers for every person, and that some things can't be fixed.
A lot of people assume that about all doctors, and it's far from true. Psychiatry is probably a tougher discipline to get right most of the time, less exact and more trial and error needed. I think the first time a parent or older loved one goes into the hospital is a moment of strong disillusionment for many smart people about how poorly our healthcare works. When people say "you need an advocate", i.e. a smart person in your family working on your behalf, that's because healthcare administration is poor. The family usually are the ones telling the doctor who's new that day what the patient has actually gone through in the past 24 hours, what actually happened, etc. Sad that there is virtually no accurate debriefing from well-educated doctor to well-educated doctor when responsibility shifts based on their time schedules, and that no one really cares. If the doc makes a mistake because the system sucked and they weren't well-informed, their take is simply that the system sucks and they can't be blamed, and few try to fix it.
What an odd faith so many of you have in psychiatrists! To me, in is par for the course for a psychiatrist not only to not know common side effects of drugs, but to confidently "correct" those more knowledgeable.
I'm not a psychiatrist but I think Spears has untreated bipolar disorder. When she was in the conservatorship (and being forced to take her meds) she was much more stable than we are seeing now.
Because you are mental health doctor- I wonder if you know what is being done to curb the incessant use of mental drugs that are prescribed like candy to children in our country. At least half of my kids friends have been on mental medications- HALF. And most do not receive what I would deem REQUIRED mental health counseling. I have a friend who is 35- she was on Reddlin for 15 years as a young teen well into adulthood- she finally took herself off because she realized she couldn’t live her whole life like that. I wonder if the constant prescriptions are actually making mental health outcomes worse?
Let’s not forget how the fields of psychiatry and psychology flip flop all over the place throughout the years. To say there’s some sort of permanent understanding of drugs and treatments courses in this field is laughable. These are the people that support life altering hormone suppression therapy to undeveloped children who on a whim declare they’re a different gender. Not that all of medicine isn’t this way, but this field especially so.
My mother was told I had adhd when I was in 1st grade. My teacher told her I just look out the window when she’s talking and suggested medication (which I’m sure psychiatrists everywhere would have been giddy to prescribe). My mother suggested she was a boring and uninspiring teacher, refused medication, and I went on to have a perfectly successful academic path. I’m now a physician. Not a psychiatrist, thank god.
I hope this attitude towards mental health doesn’t prevent you from referring your patients with mental health issues to us psychiatrists. I don’t know what your specialty is, but I am pretty sure if I heard it I wouldn’t disparage it. We all need to work to advance our understanding together. Do you really think *any* doctor goes into medicine to gleefully diagnose crippling disease so they can force-medicate it?
Disparaging psychiatry is not to disparage you, of course, so don’t take my comments to heart. No, I don’t think anyone goes into medicine to force medication on people to a hopeless outcome. But, I think a lot of physicians convince themselves they are doing good, when really they are not. To me the litmus test is often that the most difficult thing is usually the most correct. And in psychiatry, isn’t that true? The easiest treatment for depression is for you to prescribe an SSRI or whatever the sexiest new medicine is at the time. The most difficult thing would be to insist that patient eat healthy, exercise regularly, find fulfilling employment, work hard, achieve things. Studies even have shown that regular exercise is an equivalent to antidepressant medication, without all the side effects and risks. So why aren’t you pushing for that, every single time? Because you are convinced that medication is good, and because the latter is easy. It’s the institutional gold standard. But it’s wrong.
Dasha, I too am a physician, older than you for sure as ADHD didn’t exist when I was at school. I don’t even remember children behaving badly. Parents and teachers didn’t put up with it. Looking out the window was alright if one was quiet about it 😂.
Absolutely! I fear the direction of the mental fortitude of this country. Every time there is one of these psychopaths that shoots up a public place, the first thing everyone brings up is how the state of the mental health care system is in crisis and we need more services. But I can’t see how that would be true. There’s a therapist hiding behind every blade of grass. There’s online therapy, inpatient, outpatient, meditation, medication, clubs, groups, you name it. It’s the biggest bubble in healthcare I’ve been alive to witness. No other field exploded with on ground accessibility the way the mental healthcare system has, and yet everyone seems to be mentally worse off than they ever have been. Looking at patient charts, the whole of my state suffers from anxiety, depression, and GERD. So clearly the treatment isn’t curing the condition.
A couple of comments. First, psychiatrists and psychologists help a lot of people. I would not be typing this comment if I had not gotten help. Second, therapy and medication can really help people who are struggling. Third, while both professions have made mistakes and are imperfect, there really is no better option. The reason is a lot of mental health problems are hard to fix and it is really hard for humans to change their behavior.
I am glad you did well without medication, and it would not surprise me if some doctors unneeded medication. At the same time, your distain for psychiatrists and psychologists is not helpful nor warranted because they really do help people and they are the best solution we have right now.
I respectfully disagree. My feeling is that what most psychiatrists offer is a slew of pills meant to “cure” mental illnesses that in the past were remedied by upholding familial and friendly connection, exercising, eating well, doing work that is fulfilling and you are proud of. Over time, big pharma, self righteous psychiatrists, and patients who didn’t want to hear the old “eat well and exercise” began to lubricate the market with meds. Like anything in life, health takes a lot of work. Mental health takes a lot of work. Pills are not replacements for that. They may be adjuncts, but far too many physicians have given up altogether on even trying to suggest these medications are tools meant to supplement healthy choices and work, not replace a lifetime of bad habits.
Secondly, there is an expectation, especially in developed western societies, that the default should be constant happiness. When people aren’t happy, they seek therapy, and those therapists insist they are victims or defective or push the agenda that people need help. But we aren’t meant to be happy all the time. The rest of the world population expects to be unhappy and suffer - and if they can find a little bit of joy, they feel fortunate for that. Here it’s backwards.
And lastly, the explosion of therapists, online therapy, the gargantuan growth of this sector, leads me to believe something is wrong. People are “unhappy” and anxious, and there is a long line of others who found a way to capitalize on that, by coddling the masses. In reality, people are much more resilient than that. But you have to put the work in. That’s just one opinion, of course.
I think you have a lot of misconceptions about mental illness, psychiatrists, and therapy. First, eating well, taking care of yourself, spending time with heathy family members, spending time with friends, etc. are good ideas. However, these things cannot fix delusions, trauma, bipolar, panic attacks, moderate or severe depression, eating disorders, etc. In fact, a lot of moderate and severe mental illnesses prevent people from taking care of themselves. They can also make it hard for other people to be around the mentally ill individual. Second, I have never met a psychiatrist who thinks they can cure mental illness by just prescribing medication. They understand the benefits of medication and medication's limitations. That being said, most people who need medication do better on it. Third, a good therapist does not tell a client they are a victim or defective. Just the opposite, they are trying to help their clients be independent and not need a therapist.
I have been in therapy for decades and I can tell you I am not there because I think I should be always happy. I am there because I struggle with a lot of difficult issues which I cannot fix on my own.
Reading your comments, I really don't think you understand mental illness or what mental health professionals do. Mental illness is very hard and unpleasant. No one wants it. Fixing it is very hard and right now, the best a person can do is get help and find something which works for them.
Again, respectfully, thank you for responding and I appreciate your engagement in this conversation.
In one sentence you say therapist are trying to help their clients be independent and not need a therapist, and in the very next one you say you have been in therapy for decades and you have issues you cannot fix on your own.
My point is, maybe you can, and therapy is not the answer. If it were, don’t you think decades of this treatment would have helped? It may feel good or feel like progress, but like you pointed out, the end point of treatment is the obsoletion of its need. If you need it for decades, maybe it has failed to give you the tools you need to deal with this on your own.
The way I see it, mental illness is a spectrum. On the extreme side there are severely mentally ill individuals whose mental issues create a lifetime of debilitation. Disorganized schizophrenics who end up homeless, bipolar people with manic episodes that destroy their entire lives, violent people who destroy the lives of others. And such people have existed since the dawn of time, continue to exist now, and they will never be properly treated because there is no cure. Even management of symptoms is somewhat of a farce in my opinion - these floridly psychotic people may respond to one drug or another after weeks or months of experimentation, but they eventually have another relapse or trigger to psychosis and they’re back where they started. Ultimately, they’re psychotic people who occasionally get some control, but they will always be psychotic people. I think psychiatrists really overestimate their role in these peoples treatment - if temporary control is ever attained, it’s fleeting and the majority of these people don’t live normal productive lives.
On the other end of the spectrum are people with occasional anxiety or depression. Things literally everyone experiences. The therapy and psychiatry culture will encourage these people to get help. It used to be such problems would be solved by talking to family, leaning on your community, church, synagogue, friends, whatever. But therapists will encourage them to replace those connections with therapy. Psychiatrists will immediately offer medication, many with side effects. And the message is always, you need help. So if one could be enabled to deal with these feelings and overcome them, through perseverance, and come out the other side better for it - therapy and psychiatry encourages people not to do that.
The proof to my hypothesis is that we have more therapists and psychiatrists and mental health awareness now than at any other stage in human history. And yet… it seems we also have record mental illness. The treatment is not working. The culture of therapy is facilitating, normalizing, and encouraging the pandemic of mental illness.
My own children and some of my grandchildren have been diagnosed with ADHD. I have seen how they function with and without medication. All are intelligent people, but without medication they’re not only disorganized messes, but a couple of the youngest ones have significant problems with behavioral control. It’s not just a focus thing and medication doesn’t cure it. Medication is more like a pair of glasses that allow them to function more consistently on par with their intelligence. They still have to learn other ways to cope with the ADHD. The newer medications are extremely subtle in how they work, better than Ritalin. However, like many psychotropic drugs, some work for an individual better than others and it may take awhile to find the best one. I have seen mental health of my family members IMPROVE with medication when they finally had a fighting chance to be their best selves. ADHD is genetic, which may explain why your friends have more than one child with that brain architecture.
Thank you so much for this comment, Caryl. I have ADHD - as does my mother, who wasn't diagnosed until her sixties - and you said everything I wanted to say.
The real question to be asking here is why so many children are having these foundational mental problems nowadays. This was unheard of only a few decades ago, and is not normal.
Check out Harald Blomberg Rhythmic Movements that Heal, or Sally Goddard, or Sonia Story, ADHD as motor neuron immaturity. Based on what I've read and experienced, I don't think it is genetic, I think it is caused by prenatal/early life stress, and lack of movement. That is what is causing the increase in ADHD (and other learning disabilities). Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic suggests that the psych meds themselves are responsible for the increase in severe mental illness.
Today the demands on students are much more. There used to be ample recess for students and fewer academics at early ages. Increasing scholastic demands on today’s students necessitates more seat-work in the classroom. Many children no longer walk to school. Physical activity helps a lot of people with ADHD and now students have less of it. I think there was just as much ADHD in the past, but society and education has changed in ways that are less helpful to those with ADHD. Additionally, many people with ADHD have comorbid conditions such as anxiety. My understanding is that it has to do with brain architecture. The reason why some of the behaviors and symptoms are singled out and labeled as “ADHD” is 1) insurance needs a diagnosis and 2) remedies which help people with certain behaviors can be grouped together to help others with similar symptoms and behaviors.
It was unheard of because no one talked about it as such. Everyone older than 40 likely remembers the kids in grade school who lashed out, didn't pay attention, caused most of the trouble, etc.
Its like 1 in 5 adults are on mental meds. Long term maintenance; not crisis intervention.
And the kids? We can’t put garbage in and not expect garbage out. If GMO foods and sugar in everything is safe; why is 70% of the US obese or overweight? And yes it’s genetic for some- but there’s a reason they feed corn to cattle and pigs and chickens- it’s quickly and cheaply fattens them up. They feed this stuff to newborns in formula. Americans would be shocked if they read the labels on food and knew what they all meant. Or know that everything is covered in chemicals in the corporate fields. You can’t wash off a season of pesticides and herbicides in the sink.
The digestive system is known as our “2nd brain”…..perhaps the collective WE need to address the gut and not the brain for the learning issues and demand the FDA and CDC actually do their job or get rid of their useless jobs.
You have a good point here. I'm really health conscious in terms of what I eat but not a fanatic (I'll eat a big piece of pie *IF* it's homemade and I recognize the names of all the ingredients and none of them are dye or preservatives). EVERY food commercial on TV is for some godawful "meal" and each company seems to try to outdo the others into how much sugar, fat and salt they can stuff into whatever they're serving. Deep-fried pizza with stuffed crust and quadruple cheese! And this food is cheap because the government subsidizes corn but not, say, broccoli.
And in France for example (bc that I have first hand knowledge AND their lifestyle is often used to promote universal/socialized medicine) they subsidize locally produced food and are highly protective of family farms and “clean” foods.
Just a heads up, Mr. Appel. I am a psychiatrist, and your assertion that Adderall can induce 'careless, erratic behavior' in the mentally stable is in error: generally, if taken orally, it increases focus and energy. And frankly I have never seen, nor ever read a case report, of a women in severe post partum depression who had 'periods of delusions, impulsiveness, paranoia' directly due to the use or abuse of Adderall. Sadly, severe post partum depression in itself can be associated with delusions and paranoia, without the addition of the stimulant.
sudden withdrawal from Adderall can cause psychosis.
...your assertion that Adderall can induce 'careless, erratic behavior' in the mentally stable is in error: generally, if taken orally, it increases focus and energy."
Well, that's great. How about when Adderall is abused by dosage and frequency as well as the manner of administration (likely snorted) by some one who is mentally unstable?
Your comment completely ignores two factors which can make a critical difference. Which, renders it pointless.
But what I'm to take away from your final comments is that even if she's emotionally unstable and abusing the drug cannot be regarded as a cause for any of her bizarre behavior?
That's a relief! I mean, say I suffer from a variety of mental diagnoses, I can be comforted knowing that when snorting 50mg (or more with each hour)/hour that adderall will not be the reason I drive really fast and make foolish and dangerous decisions.
Bro, it's in the Prescribing Info.
I can say first hand that I was in a group project with a mentally healthy student that took Adderall to "focus and be productive", and it, indeed, made her careless and erratic. She thought she was being productive, but really, she was so wild that I couldn't even read her notes and she was useless in the group.
This wouldn't show up in a self-reported survey, because she thought she was being studious and productive. I know this is anecdotal, but that doesn't mean it's not true in some cases.
One other thing, psychiatric drugs do not work the same way in each person. The same drug will be amazing for one person and do nothing for another person. You cannot determine if a drug is effective by just looking at a few isolated cases.
Was the Adderall proscribed by a psychiatrist? Was the Adderall taken as proscribed? If someone is mentally health, they would not need Adderall and should not be taking it. Self-medication does not work (i.e. a person cannot decide to just take a psychiatric drug because it leads to harm).
It definitely was not prescribed, but that's the original comment's point, that Adderall doesn't cause mentally healthy people to become erratic (ever). In my friend's case, it definitely did.
The author did suggest that abuse of Adderall combined with underlying issues is epecially problematic. Psychosis seems to be a possible side-effect: https://www.drugs.com/adderall.html
It's not for me to judge whether an autobiography reveals the full truth, but we know that musicians in the USA have often taken many, many drugs in dangerous amounts and combinations.
Perhaps if the parents of other well-known musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and others had been able to be more involved, those legends would have lived past 27 years old.
The tremendous loss of opportunity, happiness, and health caused by drug abuse in the West cannot be overstated. Our major cities are clogged with the endgame results.
I’m honestly baffled that you, as a psychiatrist, don’t know this about Adderall. You don’t need case studies to be observant of the world around you, let alone read the “serious side-effects” on the back of the bottle. I know several people who have taken Adderall for ADHD, including members of my own family. Many have reported significant changes to their emotional state, most predominantly “numbness” or an “inability to care.” For some, this is a horrible side-effect that induces a depressive state—that was the case for my brother who begged my mom to get off the stuff. For others, it’s euphoric, suppressing their depression and anxiety symptoms. (And I think it’s this effect that gets some people hooked.)
Yes, baffling! From the Presceibing Information for Adderall: "Psychiatric Adverse Events: Stimulants may cause treatment-emergent
psychotic or manic symptoms in patients with no prior history, or
exacerbation of symptoms in patients with pre-existing psychosis."
In all my years I've always assumed that psychiatry, medication, etc. were perfect and that psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. surely knew all the answers about our mental health. I hate having to accept the reality that there are not necessarily answers for every person, and that some things can't be fixed.
A lot of people assume that about all doctors, and it's far from true. Psychiatry is probably a tougher discipline to get right most of the time, less exact and more trial and error needed. I think the first time a parent or older loved one goes into the hospital is a moment of strong disillusionment for many smart people about how poorly our healthcare works. When people say "you need an advocate", i.e. a smart person in your family working on your behalf, that's because healthcare administration is poor. The family usually are the ones telling the doctor who's new that day what the patient has actually gone through in the past 24 hours, what actually happened, etc. Sad that there is virtually no accurate debriefing from well-educated doctor to well-educated doctor when responsibility shifts based on their time schedules, and that no one really cares. If the doc makes a mistake because the system sucked and they weren't well-informed, their take is simply that the system sucks and they can't be blamed, and few try to fix it.
What an odd faith so many of you have in psychiatrists! To me, in is par for the course for a psychiatrist not only to not know common side effects of drugs, but to confidently "correct" those more knowledgeable.
I'm not a psychiatrist but I think Spears has untreated bipolar disorder. When she was in the conservatorship (and being forced to take her meds) she was much more stable than we are seeing now.
You cannot diagnose her with bipolar disorder because you are not a psychiatrist and because you have not personally seen her as a patient.
You can just tell from her Instagram
Videos she’s unstable. She has a vacant look in her eyes
Because you are mental health doctor- I wonder if you know what is being done to curb the incessant use of mental drugs that are prescribed like candy to children in our country. At least half of my kids friends have been on mental medications- HALF. And most do not receive what I would deem REQUIRED mental health counseling. I have a friend who is 35- she was on Reddlin for 15 years as a young teen well into adulthood- she finally took herself off because she realized she couldn’t live her whole life like that. I wonder if the constant prescriptions are actually making mental health outcomes worse?
Let’s not forget how the fields of psychiatry and psychology flip flop all over the place throughout the years. To say there’s some sort of permanent understanding of drugs and treatments courses in this field is laughable. These are the people that support life altering hormone suppression therapy to undeveloped children who on a whim declare they’re a different gender. Not that all of medicine isn’t this way, but this field especially so.
My mother was told I had adhd when I was in 1st grade. My teacher told her I just look out the window when she’s talking and suggested medication (which I’m sure psychiatrists everywhere would have been giddy to prescribe). My mother suggested she was a boring and uninspiring teacher, refused medication, and I went on to have a perfectly successful academic path. I’m now a physician. Not a psychiatrist, thank god.
I hope this attitude towards mental health doesn’t prevent you from referring your patients with mental health issues to us psychiatrists. I don’t know what your specialty is, but I am pretty sure if I heard it I wouldn’t disparage it. We all need to work to advance our understanding together. Do you really think *any* doctor goes into medicine to gleefully diagnose crippling disease so they can force-medicate it?
Disparaging psychiatry is not to disparage you, of course, so don’t take my comments to heart. No, I don’t think anyone goes into medicine to force medication on people to a hopeless outcome. But, I think a lot of physicians convince themselves they are doing good, when really they are not. To me the litmus test is often that the most difficult thing is usually the most correct. And in psychiatry, isn’t that true? The easiest treatment for depression is for you to prescribe an SSRI or whatever the sexiest new medicine is at the time. The most difficult thing would be to insist that patient eat healthy, exercise regularly, find fulfilling employment, work hard, achieve things. Studies even have shown that regular exercise is an equivalent to antidepressant medication, without all the side effects and risks. So why aren’t you pushing for that, every single time? Because you are convinced that medication is good, and because the latter is easy. It’s the institutional gold standard. But it’s wrong.
Dasha, I too am a physician, older than you for sure as ADHD didn’t exist when I was at school. I don’t even remember children behaving badly. Parents and teachers didn’t put up with it. Looking out the window was alright if one was quiet about it 😂.
Absolutely! I fear the direction of the mental fortitude of this country. Every time there is one of these psychopaths that shoots up a public place, the first thing everyone brings up is how the state of the mental health care system is in crisis and we need more services. But I can’t see how that would be true. There’s a therapist hiding behind every blade of grass. There’s online therapy, inpatient, outpatient, meditation, medication, clubs, groups, you name it. It’s the biggest bubble in healthcare I’ve been alive to witness. No other field exploded with on ground accessibility the way the mental healthcare system has, and yet everyone seems to be mentally worse off than they ever have been. Looking at patient charts, the whole of my state suffers from anxiety, depression, and GERD. So clearly the treatment isn’t curing the condition.
A couple of comments. First, psychiatrists and psychologists help a lot of people. I would not be typing this comment if I had not gotten help. Second, therapy and medication can really help people who are struggling. Third, while both professions have made mistakes and are imperfect, there really is no better option. The reason is a lot of mental health problems are hard to fix and it is really hard for humans to change their behavior.
I am glad you did well without medication, and it would not surprise me if some doctors unneeded medication. At the same time, your distain for psychiatrists and psychologists is not helpful nor warranted because they really do help people and they are the best solution we have right now.
I respectfully disagree. My feeling is that what most psychiatrists offer is a slew of pills meant to “cure” mental illnesses that in the past were remedied by upholding familial and friendly connection, exercising, eating well, doing work that is fulfilling and you are proud of. Over time, big pharma, self righteous psychiatrists, and patients who didn’t want to hear the old “eat well and exercise” began to lubricate the market with meds. Like anything in life, health takes a lot of work. Mental health takes a lot of work. Pills are not replacements for that. They may be adjuncts, but far too many physicians have given up altogether on even trying to suggest these medications are tools meant to supplement healthy choices and work, not replace a lifetime of bad habits.
Secondly, there is an expectation, especially in developed western societies, that the default should be constant happiness. When people aren’t happy, they seek therapy, and those therapists insist they are victims or defective or push the agenda that people need help. But we aren’t meant to be happy all the time. The rest of the world population expects to be unhappy and suffer - and if they can find a little bit of joy, they feel fortunate for that. Here it’s backwards.
And lastly, the explosion of therapists, online therapy, the gargantuan growth of this sector, leads me to believe something is wrong. People are “unhappy” and anxious, and there is a long line of others who found a way to capitalize on that, by coddling the masses. In reality, people are much more resilient than that. But you have to put the work in. That’s just one opinion, of course.
I think you have a lot of misconceptions about mental illness, psychiatrists, and therapy. First, eating well, taking care of yourself, spending time with heathy family members, spending time with friends, etc. are good ideas. However, these things cannot fix delusions, trauma, bipolar, panic attacks, moderate or severe depression, eating disorders, etc. In fact, a lot of moderate and severe mental illnesses prevent people from taking care of themselves. They can also make it hard for other people to be around the mentally ill individual. Second, I have never met a psychiatrist who thinks they can cure mental illness by just prescribing medication. They understand the benefits of medication and medication's limitations. That being said, most people who need medication do better on it. Third, a good therapist does not tell a client they are a victim or defective. Just the opposite, they are trying to help their clients be independent and not need a therapist.
I have been in therapy for decades and I can tell you I am not there because I think I should be always happy. I am there because I struggle with a lot of difficult issues which I cannot fix on my own.
Reading your comments, I really don't think you understand mental illness or what mental health professionals do. Mental illness is very hard and unpleasant. No one wants it. Fixing it is very hard and right now, the best a person can do is get help and find something which works for them.
Again, respectfully, thank you for responding and I appreciate your engagement in this conversation.
In one sentence you say therapist are trying to help their clients be independent and not need a therapist, and in the very next one you say you have been in therapy for decades and you have issues you cannot fix on your own.
My point is, maybe you can, and therapy is not the answer. If it were, don’t you think decades of this treatment would have helped? It may feel good or feel like progress, but like you pointed out, the end point of treatment is the obsoletion of its need. If you need it for decades, maybe it has failed to give you the tools you need to deal with this on your own.
The way I see it, mental illness is a spectrum. On the extreme side there are severely mentally ill individuals whose mental issues create a lifetime of debilitation. Disorganized schizophrenics who end up homeless, bipolar people with manic episodes that destroy their entire lives, violent people who destroy the lives of others. And such people have existed since the dawn of time, continue to exist now, and they will never be properly treated because there is no cure. Even management of symptoms is somewhat of a farce in my opinion - these floridly psychotic people may respond to one drug or another after weeks or months of experimentation, but they eventually have another relapse or trigger to psychosis and they’re back where they started. Ultimately, they’re psychotic people who occasionally get some control, but they will always be psychotic people. I think psychiatrists really overestimate their role in these peoples treatment - if temporary control is ever attained, it’s fleeting and the majority of these people don’t live normal productive lives.
On the other end of the spectrum are people with occasional anxiety or depression. Things literally everyone experiences. The therapy and psychiatry culture will encourage these people to get help. It used to be such problems would be solved by talking to family, leaning on your community, church, synagogue, friends, whatever. But therapists will encourage them to replace those connections with therapy. Psychiatrists will immediately offer medication, many with side effects. And the message is always, you need help. So if one could be enabled to deal with these feelings and overcome them, through perseverance, and come out the other side better for it - therapy and psychiatry encourages people not to do that.
The proof to my hypothesis is that we have more therapists and psychiatrists and mental health awareness now than at any other stage in human history. And yet… it seems we also have record mental illness. The treatment is not working. The culture of therapy is facilitating, normalizing, and encouraging the pandemic of mental illness.
My own children and some of my grandchildren have been diagnosed with ADHD. I have seen how they function with and without medication. All are intelligent people, but without medication they’re not only disorganized messes, but a couple of the youngest ones have significant problems with behavioral control. It’s not just a focus thing and medication doesn’t cure it. Medication is more like a pair of glasses that allow them to function more consistently on par with their intelligence. They still have to learn other ways to cope with the ADHD. The newer medications are extremely subtle in how they work, better than Ritalin. However, like many psychotropic drugs, some work for an individual better than others and it may take awhile to find the best one. I have seen mental health of my family members IMPROVE with medication when they finally had a fighting chance to be their best selves. ADHD is genetic, which may explain why your friends have more than one child with that brain architecture.
Thank you so much for this comment, Caryl. I have ADHD - as does my mother, who wasn't diagnosed until her sixties - and you said everything I wanted to say.
The real question to be asking here is why so many children are having these foundational mental problems nowadays. This was unheard of only a few decades ago, and is not normal.
Check out Harald Blomberg Rhythmic Movements that Heal, or Sally Goddard, or Sonia Story, ADHD as motor neuron immaturity. Based on what I've read and experienced, I don't think it is genetic, I think it is caused by prenatal/early life stress, and lack of movement. That is what is causing the increase in ADHD (and other learning disabilities). Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic suggests that the psych meds themselves are responsible for the increase in severe mental illness.
Today the demands on students are much more. There used to be ample recess for students and fewer academics at early ages. Increasing scholastic demands on today’s students necessitates more seat-work in the classroom. Many children no longer walk to school. Physical activity helps a lot of people with ADHD and now students have less of it. I think there was just as much ADHD in the past, but society and education has changed in ways that are less helpful to those with ADHD. Additionally, many people with ADHD have comorbid conditions such as anxiety. My understanding is that it has to do with brain architecture. The reason why some of the behaviors and symptoms are singled out and labeled as “ADHD” is 1) insurance needs a diagnosis and 2) remedies which help people with certain behaviors can be grouped together to help others with similar symptoms and behaviors.
It was unheard of because no one talked about it as such. Everyone older than 40 likely remembers the kids in grade school who lashed out, didn't pay attention, caused most of the trouble, etc.
Its like 1 in 5 adults are on mental meds. Long term maintenance; not crisis intervention.
And the kids? We can’t put garbage in and not expect garbage out. If GMO foods and sugar in everything is safe; why is 70% of the US obese or overweight? And yes it’s genetic for some- but there’s a reason they feed corn to cattle and pigs and chickens- it’s quickly and cheaply fattens them up. They feed this stuff to newborns in formula. Americans would be shocked if they read the labels on food and knew what they all meant. Or know that everything is covered in chemicals in the corporate fields. You can’t wash off a season of pesticides and herbicides in the sink.
The digestive system is known as our “2nd brain”…..perhaps the collective WE need to address the gut and not the brain for the learning issues and demand the FDA and CDC actually do their job or get rid of their useless jobs.
You have a good point here. I'm really health conscious in terms of what I eat but not a fanatic (I'll eat a big piece of pie *IF* it's homemade and I recognize the names of all the ingredients and none of them are dye or preservatives). EVERY food commercial on TV is for some godawful "meal" and each company seems to try to outdo the others into how much sugar, fat and salt they can stuff into whatever they're serving. Deep-fried pizza with stuffed crust and quadruple cheese! And this food is cheap because the government subsidizes corn but not, say, broccoli.
And in France for example (bc that I have first hand knowledge AND their lifestyle is often used to promote universal/socialized medicine) they subsidize locally produced food and are highly protective of family farms and “clean” foods.
Follow the money.
Is that still true if someone takes a large amount of the drug?