More on Serotonin

I just love this Clinical Psych piece: Ghosts, Goblins, and Serotonin: Boo!

Charity Girls, etc.

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing in the Sandy Springs library and discovered the book Charity Girls, by Michael Lowenthal. It reminded me of a topic near and dear to my heart, wrongful civil commitment and forced treatment of people labeled mentally ill.

Charity Girls is not about wrongful civil commitment but it is about wrongful imprisonment of women. It's a true story. Here's a blurb from a review: Supported by an act of Congress, military leaders and social reformers during World War I detained and quarantined some 15,000 young women, without hearings or judicial oversight, in an effort to protect soldiers.

And from Lowenthal: "during the First World War, some 15,000 American women were incarcerated in reformatories and detention homes—often for months at a time, with no charge of a crime, no trial, no legal recourse—while they received forcible medical treatment for venereal disease."

Many of the detained women were prostitutes, but a great number of them weren't; they were "charity girls," those who "picked up" men for the sheer fun of it and for the attendant perks of nights on the town—and who, by our contemporary standards, were doing nothing illicit or even unusual. Social standards change, but I don't believe the human heart does. I couldn't stop imagining what these charity girls had felt: girls who had the very same hopes and sexual urges as we do now, but who were made, for having those urges, to feel wicked."

Huh! It's a good book and a scary one, and yes I can't help but post another picture of my dog. He keeps me going

by the mid-1990s the serotonin-deficiency theory of depression had been scientifically tested and rejected

Wow, I wake up this morning and, after walking the dog, making coffee, checking for email from the boss man, find this Rockin piece at Furious Seasons.

Finally reality is coming home to roost. SSRI's, SNRI's don't correct imbalances in your brain...but that's really the tip of the iceberg and I hope this one keeps melting.

By the way, one of many problems with psychiatrists is that psychiatry really is the easiest specialty in medicine, where the med students with the lowest grades and the weakest test scores end up. Oh and the ones that got caught working while impaired (that's high on drugs folks) back when they were real doctors.

And there's a good New York Times piece that adds more to the idea that thyroid problems may cause psychiatric symptoms.

It still concerns me that some phrinks will label someone with an abnormal thyroid as bipolar , depressed, or who knows what, and treat the abnormal thyroid levels as symptom of the purported mental illness, while some will say that the bipolar diagnosis or other psychiatric diagnosis was given incorrectly to someone who needed thyroid medicine.

Things I was wrong about

1. It's not only the good that die young - if you disagree, just wait, you'll change your mind in a few years;

2. All of the people who voted for W really do have organic brain damage, they just do;

3. Taco Salad is not a health or diet food;

4. Cats....

this list is by no means intended to be exhaustive

It's No Secret

Welcome to the 21 century where nothing is private. Your health information, not really a big secret - why have you got something to hide?

The Last Psychiatrist has an excellent piece on google and privacy and these folks, Patient Privacy Rights, are trying to do something to improve the situation.

I've thought about providing my health care providers with this form, but I'm a little chicken, I mean what if it goes in my permanent record and I get bad health care because of it. Still the form is pretty cool.

Thoughts, Questions, Concerns?

Ain't that America?

I got this first story, the story of immigrants being forcibly drugged from the ever charming Liz Spikol, and the second one from the good old New York Times. It just makes you think, at least they didn't forcibly drug the firefighters who came in from Mexico to help put out the California fires, well, I don't think they did.

Lack of Insight

Anti-science fear mongers like the Treatment Advocacy Center advocate forced medication and confinement of people labeled as having mental illnesses based on the claim that people so labeled lack insight, however, this argument is specious for numerous reasons one of which is the notorious lack of insight of clinicians who assign psychiatric labels to humans:

"Clinicians, even well-trained ones, often have excess confidence in their own perceptions, are sometimes influenced by biases and agendas that they themselves do not fully appreciate, and are frequently resistant to the base rates of dangerousness for the populations they are evaluating."

Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes by Frederick Schauer

Crazy Love

We just keep going and and it keeps getting better.

It's a battlezone out there in blogland

Still it's worth it. Gianna at Bipolar Blast has the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that keeps so many of us going in these interesting times.

When rich people are tired, they're sick. When poor people are tired we're crazy and dangerous.

Yesterday I mentioned that it's the working poor, the lowest paid people in our society, who suffer from depression the most.

This morning I awoke to Oprah's low energy dilemma as reported on Good Morning America.

Turns out, when Oprah or Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes have low energy, they've got thyroid problems or anemia. When poor people get tired, they've got depression that's costing our nation 36.6 billion per year. In other words, when the rich get sick, they're victims of illness, when the poor get sick, we're stealing, oh, uh, and setting fires too.

If Oprah goes to a doctor and complains of tiredness, yet not depression, they check her thyroid, and diagnose thyroid problems. If a poor person has a thyroid problem, he or she gets labeled bipolar.

So the question is, why aren't Oprah and Leslie Stahl labeled bipolar? After all, they just reported the symptoms of both clinical depression and bipolar disorder/mixed episode on Good Morning America?

I guess the answer is, they don't want to be bipolar even though they have the symptoms.

But then, aren't rich people who get tired crazier than poor people who get tired? After all if Oprah is tired, she can go to a spa or get a massage. If a food service worker is tired, they can call in sick to work, get fired, get evicted and become homeless, and thus the poor have much more incentive, and many more sane reasons to work when tired, uh depressed.

What is society really doing with these psychiatric labels?

Do you have one, and if so, has it helped you, or hurt you?

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Servants have highest rates of Depression

Apparently it is the people who have the the least rewarding jobs, the physically and psychologically most taxing jobs, and no access to health care and no money to access "pleasurable activities" who experience the highest rates of depression.


In the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the source for this report, a major depressive episode is defined as a period of two weeks or longer during which there is depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure and at least four other symptoms that reflect a change in functioning, such as problems with sleep, eating, energy, concentration and self-image.

Could such symptoms be caused by working hard and not receiving enough money to eat, experience pleasure, groom oneself, have a safe place to sleep?

Samhsa, The National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and of course The Treatment Advocacy Center would have us believe that this depression is caused by a biological defect in the brains of us servants that makes us unhappy. After all, you'd have to be crazy to resent spending 10 hours a day flipping burgers for $5.15 an hour. Why at 40 hours, that's almost enough money to split a one bedroom apartment with four other people in most United States cities, almost enough money to buy half of one used shoe at a thrift shop, and more than enough money for bus fare and a pack of gum.

I don't think so.

But the big concern of this study is this: "Depression exacts a high price from workers and from their employers, costing the U.S. workplace an estimated $36.6 billion per year in lost productivity," said SAMHSA Administrator Terry Cline, Ph.D.

Woah there buddy, wait up. Is someone suggesting that fast food restaurants, hotels and motels are not making enough money?

Gee they're making money hand over fist. This epidemic of depression must not be hurting them all that much.

Fast Food Profits are increasing - for the owners of the fast food industry that is, and maybe that's why they're not depressed:

Service Sector Profits are increasing - again for the owners, not the workers, so the owners are pretty happy (okay Paris Hilton didn't seem all that happy in jail, but unlike a worker at her family's hotel chain, she had high dollar lawyers and was released quickly). I wonder what happens to average minimum wage worker at the Hilton when he or she gets a DUI? I guess the good news is, most of these workers can't afford alcohol much less a car so they don't really get that many DUI's. So how about this headline: Depressed Servants don't Drive Drunk

But still we've got Samhsa, The National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and of course The Treatment Advocacy Center suggesting it's these untreated depressed workers harming the American Economy.

Here's a solution to the problem. Fast Food Restaurant owners, Service Industry Corp owners, all of you give your workers a 4 dollar raise across the board and you'll save money because the amount of depression and hence the amount of lost productivity will decrease.