A debate on mental sickness...

[oldbadger]

I appreciate that there is already a less asinine thread on mental health else-where on this site. However I wanted to start a debate on this topic, not least because I have this disease. Thoughts?

Hello John!
I've scanned through the thread, and noticed that member's posts are referring to sickness, disease, illness etc etc. but not one mention has been made of disability.

The very first point to focus upon is you and many others have and do have to cope with mental DISABILITIES!

 

[The Hammer]

I realize now there is a perhaps very simple way to express (or address) one aspect about my criticisms not of the idea that each and every diagnoses in the DSM or ICD corresponds to a unique disease with a particular, specific pathogenesis, but of this "chemical imbalance" notion which plagues common media reports and other sources of information (from TV shows to magazine ads). Something simpler than an inability to find some base state in an fMRI study. What would it mean to be "chemically balanced"?

The brain itself runs on chemicals (neurotransmitters and such), when certain aspects of the brain are not working as the should, chemical imbalances can and do occur.

As an addict, I have exceptionally high activity in my D2 receptors, which means I reuptake dopamine at a rapid rate, in turn not feeling pleasure the same way as the rest of the " normal" population. What a normal person might feel extreme pleasure from, sex, I get only a fraction of that. Because of this it leads to thrill seeking and drug seeking behavior. This brain imbalance, can and has been imaged via fMRI.

But as @Storm has said, there is a rampant case of misdiagnosis and over medication due to the fact the the pharmaceutical companies want to push their products to make money, and the doctors are encouraged to do so via kickbacks and endorsements.

 

[oldbadger]

The brain itself runs on chemicals (neurotransmitters and such), when certain aspects of the brain are not working as the should, chemical imbalances can and do occur...................

Exactly so. Christen's doctor is not wrong.
Imbalances can be caused by all manner of physical conditions, such as ( a few examples paragangliomas and pheos, producing apparently pure psychological and mental disabilities.

 

[oldbadger]

One condition about mental disability which saddens me is the attitude of so-called 'normal' people to it.
I recently was reading some US legislation which referred to 'mental defectives'..... how can the public re-organise its thoughts about mental disability when crap like that is being dished out by the authorities?

 

[The Hammer]

One condition about mental disability which saddens me is the attitude of so-called 'normal' people to it.
I recently was reading some US legislation which referred to 'mental defectives'..... how can the public re-organise its thoughts about mental disability when crap like that is being dished out by the authorities?

Yup, there is a lot of stigma if you are diagnosed with a "mental disorder" and so a lot of people never seek treatment. They see needing treatment as a sign of weakness. It's almost worse among people who are addicts, because we are seen as "immoral and having no willpower", when it actually does stem from neurological problems. Not always entirely of course, nothing is ever black and white.

 

[oldbadger]

Yup, there is a lot of stigma if you are diagnosed with a "mental disorder" and so a lot of people never seek treatment. They see needing treatment as a sign of weakness. It's almost worse among people who are addicts, because we are seen as "immoral and having no willpower", when it actually does stem from neurological problems. Not always entirely of course, nothing is ever black and white.

Oh, how the strong (in any given area of life) want to preach down, look down, etc to those who they see as weak!

 

[Storm]

Christen's doctor is not wrong.

Said doctor is not *necessarily* wrong. However, given the countless other, equally plausible causes and the inability to test for any of them, and in light of the fact that what should by all rights malpractice managed to become standard practice... The assumption that the doctor is right is unjustifiable and quite dangerous.

 

[Storm]

Oh, how the strong (in any given area of life) want to preach down, look down, etc to those who they see as weak!

Right?

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a deeply sick society."

 

[oldbadger]

Said doctor is not *necessarily* wrong. However, given the countless other, equally plausible causes and the inability to test for any of them, and in light of the fact that what should by all rights malpractice managed to become standard practice... The assumption that the doctor is right is unjustifiable and quite dangerous.

OK....... but I tried to handle the above by writing 'the doctor is not wrong'.

Guys Hospital, England is leading research into various genetic disorders which cause the body to produce massive imbalances in hormones and other bio-chemistries, producing uncontrolled levels of anxiety and stress. Such patients have previously been sent to counsellors, therapists etc...... whereas now they go to the operating table for complete cures.

See paragangliomas for just one example which supports Christine's doctor's suggestion that psychological conditions can be caused by chemical imbalances.

 

[oldbadger]

40 years ago my first wife suffered from a most dreadful and terrifying psychological disability which I couldn't handle on my own, and she often stayed in a huge mental hospital near here. These hospitals were as big as villages with many hundreds of patients, some living at the hospital permanently. I would often walk out with my wife, and we would sometimes go to the hospital's canteen. Lots of people would sit there, rocking to and fro, or mumbling, sometimes shrieking or crying out. A patient who was once a well known chemist would play table tennis with me and confide in me that he was King John reborn but as yet undiscovered.
I would purchase chocolate bars and teas and sit with my wife talking, and suddenly a person would grab my chocolate bar and run off one way, and as I looked in that direction so my tea would be stolen and taken in another. After a while you tend to sit with your arms protectively wrapped around your tea and choc-bar, looking here and there as you talk........ and you become one of the patients who all do this as well.

Long after my wife died, if I felt submerged by the trials of the world, I would go that mental hospital, just walk in, and go to that canteen, and play ping-pong with the patients, and invariably have my tea and choc-bar seized........... etc .......... and do you know what?..... The experience always reset my calibrations on what is important in life, and what not.

The hospital is gone now, a massive housing estate, but when I drive by I think, and remember those times.

 

[Storm]

OK....... but I tried to handle the above by writing 'the doctor is not wrong'.

Yes, I saw. But there's a whole wide world of difference between "the doctor might be right" and "the doctor is not wrong." And that difference is very, VERY important.

 

[oldbadger]

Yes, I saw. But there's a whole wide world of difference between "the doctor might be right" and "the doctor is not wrong." And that difference is very, VERY important.

True.........
I was happy to write that about Christine's Doc, simply because he said 'mental health issues can be caused by chemical imbalance'.
Doctor Louise Izatt says so as well. She is driving the British project which is researching clinical genetics, particularly in the area of paragangliomas...... and 'oh boy', do all those excessive hormones and adrenalins change the nature of a person when they're out of control.
Also, before her team discovered my wife's condition and saved her life this year, Mrs B (my wife) was an edge of seat, anxious and touchy kind of person. After her adrenalectomy she changed..... I have discovered that my wife is in fact the most laid back, calm and easy going person I ever knew...... it just took 20+ years for me to find out, with Doctors Aylwin and Izzat's help.

And so I wrote ..... Christine's doctor is not wrong, saying what he did as a GP.

But I bet that I mistrust psychiatrists and psychologists more than you do! Bet yer! from 1978-1982 my first wife's psycho-therapist was a Doctor Alison. They reckon now that he probably raped hundreds of his patients. He was putting them 'under' and/or 'auto-suggesting' sexual enjoyment to them and raping them. He was convicted on about 13 counts after a very brave nurse had to risk her career in exposing him. I think he got 8 years prison in about 2002. Police and Med Councils kind of over-supported 'pillars of the community' like Doctor Alison in those days!

EDIT: Oh.... I found some web reports about it all:-

1. Jailed psychiatrist may have attacked hundreds of women ...
   The Telegraph - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph - Telegraph › News › UK News
   11 Dec 2002 - A consultant psychiatrist was jailed for eight years yesterday for raping... concerns about Dr Christopher Allison 14 years ago but failed to act.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This brain imbalance, can and has been imaged via fMRI.

I put this first because it is the easiest to address. I’ve run many, many fMRI studies and not only do they lack all the pretty colors we see in ads and so forth (these are added in after imaging based on statistical signal processing, voxel size, BOLD levels, etc.), but they absolutely cannot tell us anything about any “imbalance” that has anything to do with receptors or neurotransmitters or that does anything other than to indicate the extent to which neuronal activity is characterized by nonlinearity (imbalance), complex dynamics (nonlinearity over time), and widely-divergent activity among similar populations at levels far, far below functional brain regions such as the PFC, hippocampus, V1, etc.

The brain itself runs on chemicals (neurotransmitters and such)

I know. However, it is the fact that such chemical levels have no balance, no resting state, nor even really local fixed points that are attractors/sinks. Rather, it is defined by unbalance. The term "chaos" in so-called "chaos theory" (which has undergone various iterations and their accompanying names, such as catastrophe theory) is widely misunderstood. The intuitive sense of chaos has to do with complete unpredictability. The system is in a particular state and one point and then a completely different at another and then yet another complete different state. In fact, chaotic systems are special because they are a kind of "controlled" chaos. It may be, for example, that the phase space of the system can be modelled fairly well (even exactly, given the necessary initial conditions and the application of suitably precise physical laws), and in fact it is more typical for chaotic systems to have such graphs. What makes them special (or rather, two things that do), is first the obvious sensitivity to arbitrary changes in parameters. Take a pyramidal neuron receiving input from some 100,000 or 200,000 other neurons while it changes what its "fuzzy" threshold is (if it has one). This neuron alone is receiving input from the axons of a hundred thousand neurons or two, and fundamental to this input is the inter-neural communication governed by neurotransmitters.

Consider now a few dozen of these, which may or may not share input but all of which are part of localized networks (which we would define arbitrarily in most cases given the scale even for cognitive neuroimaging studies, let alone neuronal models). Tiny changes in just a few ions in select places can influence a neuron's spike train (simplistically, sequences of firing rates). Most importantly, it is absolutely fundamental that no balance exist, especially for the primary chemicals which enable neural dynamics/communication. Otherwise, you couldn’t learn, retain memories, or really do much of anything. The brain isn’t just a dynamical system but an information processing unit that, unlike a computer, has no distinction between processor and memory (memory here is used simply as encoded/stored data, not RAM vs. CPU cache vs. hard-drive space). Levels of everything from potassium ions to serotonin fluctuate wildly in every brain, but these fluctuations are governed to some extent by reinforced patternings within and even among local neural populations. However, the topological properties which best approximate some localized network don’t actually reflect the graph-theoretic properties of directed networks, first because of the internal dynamics but far more importantly because such networks synchronize nonlocally and nearly instantaneously.

So when a population of neurons which includes neurons attached to tens or hundreds of thousands of others within a local population/within a local “network” responds nearly instantaneously and continuously in response to nonlocal dynamics of other such networks, the idea of “balance” isn’t just empirically unsupported and theoretically without merit or even just nonsense; it’s a violation of physics.
To this we can add that nobody has ever detected or has any idea of what chemical “balance” of any sort would look like, other than to note that changes resulting from what we have good reason to believe are changes of neurotransmitter levels affect mood/behavior. This is true in general, though, and to identify neurotransmitters implicated in depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or that wonderful, new addition to the DSM V – “Internet Gaming Disorder”- as the cause of such disorders is not only to posit that a relationship exists between particular neurotransmitters and a cluster of symptoms that serves as the ENTIRE foundation for our diagnostic schemata, but to make the fundamental mistake of confusing correlation with a particular direction of causation.

As an addict, I have exceptionally high activity in my D2 receptors, which means I reuptake dopamine at a rapid rate, in turn not feeling pleasure the same way as the rest of the " normal" population.

Ignoring the lack of any “normal” population understood or modelled within relevant fields such that there is any “normal” dynamics to which we could compare any “abnormal” levels of neurotransmitter activity (which we can’t even measure), I have to ask: Are you aware of how many other disorders are characterized in precisely the same way?

 

[The Hammer]

I put this first because it is the easiest to address. I’ve run many, many fMRI studies and not only do they lack all the pretty colors we see in ads and so forth (these are added in after imaging based on statistical signal processing, voxel size, BOLD levels, etc.), but they absolutely cannot tell us anything about any “imbalance” that has anything to do with receptors or neurotransmitters or that does anything other than to indicate the extent to which neuronal activity is characterized by nonlinearity (imbalance), complex dynamics (nonlinearity over time), and widely-divergent activity among similar populations at levels far, far below functional brain regions such as the PFC, hippocampus, V1, etc.


I know. However, it is the fact that such chemical levels have no balance, no resting state, nor even really local fixed points that are attractors/sinks. Rather, it is defined by unbalance. The term "chaos" in so-called "chaos theory" (which has undergone various iterations and their accompanying names, such as catastrophe theory) is widely misunderstood. The intuitive sense of chaos has to do with complete unpredictability. The system is in a particular state and one point and then a completely different at another and then yet another complete different state. In fact, chaotic systems are special because they are a kind of "controlled" chaos. It may be, for example, that the phase space of the system can be modelled fairly well (even exactly, given the necessary initial conditions and the application of suitably precise physical laws), and in fact it is more typical for chaotic systems to have such graphs. What makes them special (or rather, two things that do), is first the obvious sensitivity to arbitrary changes in parameters. Take a pyramidal neuron receiving input from some 100,000 or 200,000 other neurons while it changes what its "fuzzy" threshold is (if it has one). This neuron alone is receiving input from the axons of a hundred thousand neurons or two, and fundamental to this input is the inter-neural communication governed by neurotransmitters.

Consider now a few dozen of these, which may or may not share input but all of which are part of localized networks (which we would define arbitrarily in most cases given the scale even for cognitive neuroimaging studies, let alone neuronal models). Tiny changes in just a few ions in select places can influence a neuron's spike train (simplistically, sequences of firing rates). Most importantly, it is absolutely fundamental that no balance exist, especially for the primary chemicals which enable neural dynamics/communication. Otherwise, you couldn’t learn, retain memories, or really do much of anything. The brain isn’t just a dynamical system but an information processing unit that, unlike a computer, has no distinction between processor and memory (memory here is used simply as encoded/stored data, not RAM vs. CPU cache vs. hard-drive space). Levels of everything from potassium ions to serotonin fluctuate wildly in every brain, but these fluctuations are governed to some extent by reinforced patternings within and even among local neural populations. However, the topological properties which best approximate some localized network don’t actually reflect the graph-theoretic properties of directed networks, first because of the internal dynamics but far more importantly because such networks synchronize nonlocally and nearly instantaneously.

So when a population of neurons which includes neurons attached to tens or hundreds of thousands of others within a local population/within a local “network” responds nearly instantaneously and continuously in response to nonlocal dynamics of other such networks, the idea of “balance” isn’t just empirically unsupported and theoretically without merit or even just nonsense; it’s a violation of physics.
To this we can add that nobody has ever detected or has any idea of what chemical “balance” of any sort would look like, other than to note that changes resulting from what we have good reason to believe are changes of neurotransmitter levels affect mood/behavior. This is true in general, though, and to identify neurotransmitters implicated in depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or that wonderful, new addition to the DSM V – “Internet Gaming Disorder”- as the cause of such disorders is not only to posit that a relationship exists between particular neurotransmitters and a cluster of symptoms that serves as the ENTIRE foundation for our diagnostic schemata, but to make the fundamental mistake of confusing correlation with a particular direction of causation.


Ignoring the lack of any “normal” population understood or modelled within relevant fields such that there is any “normal” dynamics to which we could compare any “abnormal” levels of neurotransmitter activity (which we can’t even measure), I have to ask: Are you aware of how many other disorders are characterized in precisely the same way?

I am quoting you to be polite as I have no interest in reading the entirety of your post at 3am.

Check the research done by Doctor Nora Volkow on addiction.

An fMRI cannot tell you neurotransmiter levels that is a given (I hope). But it does show a hyperactivity of the prefrontal cortex in the D2 region (associated with pleasure) in the brains of addicts. That is what I was reffering to.

Also I used normal in quotations due to precisely the fact that there is no baseline for measurement.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

True.........
I was happy to write that about Christine's Doc, simply because he said 'mental health issues can be caused by chemical imbalance'.
Doctor Louise Izatt says so as well.

It is rather ironic that this thread began so close to an email from my sister on a paper they were asked to read for a graduate class she is taking to become a nurse practitioner:
Barker, P., & Buchanan-Barker, P. (2012). First, do no harm: Confronting the myths of psychiatric drugs . Nursing ethics.

I had many problems with this paper, but they reflect a certain disagreement between two camps that both reject the biomedical model. One camp perceives mental illness more as a way that society defines deviance in order to control it, in terms of social theory rather than theories within the medical and biological sciences, and in short a sort of entirely social "construct" with at best minimal basis in medical sciences. This viewpoint I reject. Rather, my criticisms of the biomedical model stem from the ways in which diagnoses were created/constructed based on serious symptoms that are not and should be thought of as somehow personal "flaws" one must overcome or "snap out of." The extent to which the diagnoses described in the two definitive reference guides match some set(s) of distinct pathologies is unknown, but was is known is that the evidence has provided far more against this view than it has for it. In particular, the "chemical imbalance" propaganda is as nonsensical as it is definable (i.e., completely).

Baughman, F. (2006). There is no such thing as a psychiatric disorder/disease/chemical imbalance. PLoS medicine, 3(7), e318.

Leo, J., & Lacasse, J. R. (2008). The media and the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Society, 45(1), 35-45.

Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS medicine, 2(12), e392.

France, C. M., Lysaker, P. H., & Robinson, R. P. (2007). The" chemical imbalance" explanation for depression: Origins, lay endorsement, and clinical implications. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38(4), 411. [see upload]

The problem, however, isn't simply a matter of academic dispute or the fact that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It's that, while many of those who equate mental disorders with cancer in a noble attempt at diminishing unwarranted and counter-productive stigmata end up potentially inhibiting recovery and treatment in at least 2 ways. The first is that the effects of the "mental disorders are diseases like any other" campaign doesn't seem to have destigmatized mental health issues, does seem to have hampered or made less likely recovery (Deacon, B. J., & Baird, G. L. (2009). The chemical imbalance explanation of depression: reducing blame at what cost?. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28(4), 415-435.), all the while contributing to an industry fueled by a medical science applying a diagnostic model based upon subjective classification and clustering of symptoms among other arbitrary (and non-arbitrary) factors (Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS medicine, 2(12), e392.)

Mental health is a very (literally deadly) health concern. The answer is not to treat it as if we can rest assured that medical doctors (whose knowledge of the brain tends to be lesser than that of a beginning graduate student in various fields of psychiatry) are the authority simply because they not only defined the disorders into existence but did so claiming that they were illnesses like any other. After over 40 years of count-evidence without supporting evidence, it is time to recognize that the reality is far more complex. Either that, or we will simply harm those we intend to help by applying an outdated model without evidence and disregarding actual evidence so that psychiatry can retain its position on the top of the hierarchy of mental health specialists (among other bad reasons).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

An fMRI cannot tell you neurotransmiter levels that is a given (I hope). But it does show a hyperactivity of the prefrontal cortex in the D2 region (associated with pleasure) in the brains of addicts.

It is impossible to show hyperactivity. fMRI relies on NMR technology with (de)oxygenation as a proxy. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that all fMRI studies show hyper-activity or are regarded as failures. One can statistically increase neural activity in the brain regions you mention more or less at will, as well as others implicated in so-called "pleasure systems" or "reward systems" (and/or others; the popular literature is replete with misnomers and even within specialist clinical literature disconnects exist such that clinical specialists classify brain areas according to functions that are only a tiny minority of these regions' functional correlates).

This is actually rather key. Statistically differentially activated regions from a sort of "average" of non-diagnosed subjects/participants compared with those diagnosed with eating disorders, addiction disorders, and OCD indicate similar underlying pathologies not just among disorders within the same superclass (e.g., mood disorders), but beyond. A key component to basically all fields of brain study is self-organization (including plasticity, Hebbian learning, and the other basic stuff as well as more intricate synchronization phenomena). Essentially, patterns of thought and behavior literally change the physiological nature of the brain. One can be addicted to work, some set of obsessive and/or compulsive behaviors, alcohol, or heroin. Certain stimuli, though, have a far greater capacity to not only create a sort of physical organization among networks reinforcing addictive/obsessive behaviors via so-called "pleasure centers", but according to models like the biopsychosocial model affect persons differently. That is to say that some may possess (and seem to possess) a proclivity or predisposition to addictive or otherwise pattern-like behaviors.

This predisposition to certain mental health issues is likely the basis for most of mental health problems. Certainly, a predisposition towards general mental health problems is the best evidence we have.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Why did you ignore the majority of my post and the link I got the information from?

Because I have spent about 2-3 decades of research on this matter, almost 2 decades of research with access to and the ability to understand the literature of the relevant research, and the past 5 or so years engaged in brain research (mostly computational, cognitive, and theoretical neuroscience). So a link which over-simplifies and haphazardly combined a select few out of the current theories is of little value to me. I may be wrong, and perhaps so utterly wrong it is astounding, but a little article providing simplified tidbits of various work conducted using various theoretical frameworks shouldn't persuade anybody. It is meant to explain, at best, a viewpoint, not explain it.

 

[The Hammer]

It is impossible to show hyperactivity. fMRI relies on NMR technology with (de)oxygenation as a proxy. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that all fMRI studies show hyper-activity or are regarded as failures. One can statistically increase neural activity in the brain regions you mention more or less at will, as well as others implicated in so-called "pleasure systems" or "reward systems" (and/or others; the popular literature is replete with misnomers and even within specialist clinical literature disconnects exist such that clinical specialists classify brain areas according to functions that are only a tiny minority of these regions' functional correlates).

This is actually rather key. Statistically differentially activated regions from a sort of "average" of non-diagnosed subjects/participants compared with those diagnosed with eating disorders, addiction disorders, and OCD indicate similar underlying pathologies not just among disorders within the same superclass (e.g., mood disorders), but beyond. A key component to basically all fields of brain study is self-organization (including plasticity, Hebbian learning, and the other basic stuff as well as more intricate synchronization phenomena). Essentially, patterns of thought and behavior literally change the physiological nature of the brain. One can be addicted to work, some set of obsessive and/or compulsive behaviors, alcohol, or heroin. Certain stimuli, though, have a far greater capacity to not only create a sort of physical organization among networks reinforcing addictive/obsessive behaviors via so-called "pleasure centers", but according to models like the biopsychosocial model affect persons differently. That is to say that some may possess (and seem to possess) a proclivity or predisposition to addictive or otherwise pattern-like behaviors.

This predisposition to certain mental health issues is likely the basis for most of mental health problems. Certainly, a predisposition towards general mental health problems is the best evidence we have.

ok

 

[oldbadger]

It is rather ironic that this thread began so close to an email from my sister on a paper they were asked to read for a graduate class she is taking to become a nurse practitioner:
Barker, P., & Buchanan-Barker, P. (2012). First, do no harm: Confronting the myths of psychiatric drugs . Nursing ethics.

I had many problems with this paper, but they reflect a certain disagreement between two camps that both reject the biomedical model. One camp perceives mental illness more as a way that society defines deviance in order to control it, in terms of social theory rather than theories within the medical and biological sciences, and in short a sort of entirely social "construct" with at best minimal basis in medical sciences. This viewpoint I reject. Rather, my criticisms of the biomedical model stem from the ways in which diagnoses were created/constructed based on serious symptoms that are not and should be thought of as somehow personal "flaws" one must overcome or "snap out of." The extent to which the diagnoses described in the two definitive reference guides match some set(s) of distinct pathologies is unknown, but was is known is that the evidence has provided far more against this view than it has for it. In particular, the "chemical imbalance" propaganda is as nonsensical as it is definable (i.e., completely).

Baughman, F. (2006). There is no such thing as a psychiatric disorder/disease/chemical imbalance. PLoS medicine, 3(7), e318.

Leo, J., & Lacasse, J. R. (2008). The media and the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Society, 45(1), 35-45.

Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS medicine, 2(12), e392.

France, C. M., Lysaker, P. H., & Robinson, R. P. (2007). The" chemical imbalance" explanation for depression: Origins, lay endorsement, and clinical implications. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38(4), 411. [see upload]

The problem, however, isn't simply a matter of academic dispute or the fact that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It's that, while many of those who equate mental disorders with cancer in a noble attempt at diminishing unwarranted and counter-productive stigmata end up potentially inhibiting recovery and treatment in at least 2 ways. The first is that the effects of the "mental disorders are diseases like any other" campaign doesn't seem to have destigmatized mental health issues, does seem to have hampered or made less likely recovery (Deacon, B. J., & Baird, G. L. (2009). The chemical imbalance explanation of depression: reducing blame at what cost?. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28(4), 415-435.), all the while contributing to an industry fueled by a medical science applying a diagnostic model based upon subjective classification and clustering of symptoms among other arbitrary (and non-arbitrary) factors (Lacasse, J. R., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature. PLoS medicine, 2(12), e392.)

Mental health is a very (literally deadly) health concern. The answer is not to treat it as if we can rest assured that medical doctors (whose knowledge of the brain tends to be lesser than that of a beginning graduate student in various fields of psychiatry) are the authority simply because they not only defined the disorders into existence but did so claiming that they were illnesses like any other. After over 40 years of count-evidence without supporting evidence, it is time to recognize that the reality is far more complex. Either that, or we will simply harm those we intend to help by applying an outdated model without evidence and disregarding actual evidence so that psychiatry can retain its position on the top of the hierarchy of mental health specialists (among other bad reasons).

Thanks for your post.
I say again, psychological problems can be caused by chemical imbalances in a body.
Please just confirm that you can accept this statement or not.

Here is a web site which present 59-61 conditions caused by hormonal imbalances within the body.
Psychotic symptoms and Hormone imbalance - Symptom ...
symptoms.rightdiagnosis.com/.../psychotic.../hormone-imbalance-desc.ht...
List of 61 causes for Psychotic symptoms and Hormone imbalance, alternative diagnoses, rare causes, misdiagnoses, patient stories, and much more

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I say again, psychological problems can be caused by chemical imbalances in a body.
Please just confirm that you can accept this statement or not.

There is no chemical balance in the body. Ergo, psychological heath and psychological problems are due to this "imbalance", which totally defines every state of every brain.