Again I'm not sure if this goes here, but it seemed the closest related subject.

The other day I watched a tv show on mysterious illnesses in patients that had no apparent pattern and how doctors solved them. In one it was a story about a little boy who kept getting sick and devoted mother. In the end turned out mother was poisoning the boy to see her ex husband, cause if nothing was wrong with the child then ex husband would have nothing to do with her. The doctors believed she had some mental illness I can't pronounce or type without botching the spelling right now, but all of it boils down to what the psychiatrist said at the end of the episode.

She said that 'What the lady had explains a certain behavior or pattern of behavior seen in other cases, but it doesn't excuse the behavior or that what she did to her child was wrong.'

That really got me to thinking and I wondered, as many of us here have dabbled a bit in psychology. Do you think that most mental 'illnesses' are truly illnesses that should excuse a person's behavior(good or bad) or do you think that no matter what the behavior, it doesn't excuse their actions?

Hope that made sense

In my opinion, mental illnesses are labels put on anyone who doesn't act like the norm. Especially the more common types like ADD, ADHD, OCD, depression, ... These are used so quickly and put a nasty 'abnormal' label on people who are just a bit different. Half the kids have ADHD these days while a few decades back they'd just be lively kids. Of course it's easier to stick a pill or two in your child than it is to take the time to cultivate their energy and vividness. Half the time someone feels sad, they're depressed (usually with a good reason) and get put on antidepressants .. while back in the old days you'd just be sad and would have to learn to overcome that sadness. Again, it's much easier to drug yourself into fake happiness than to discover happiness in between the hardships of life.

There are more extreme cases of mental illnesses, where people are completely out of touch with reality and while I can agree to call those illnesses, I rarely agree with their 'cure'. Those people are generally drugged and locked safely away from society. In those cases I would say that they aren't aware of what consequences their actions have. I wouldn't say that it excuses them though, it just means you have to face them with those consequences in a different way than the mentally sane.

The problem is that some mental illnesses arepossible to fake and there is a trend in this society to overdiagnose mental issues as illnesses.

As far as the anti-depressant pill thing goes, I think that's more due to a chemical imbalance (compared to the norm), isn't it? I had a fun summer a few years ago that led me to a psychiatrist asking me some questions to figure out how to deal with me essentially. My grandmother had suggested I go see them because of my depressive nature that year (among many lesser other years I suppose). I think the first thing I said after they stopped asking me questions was that I didn't want to be put on any medication that would alter who I was. Rather live the reality than the dream, you know? They said they weren't going to anyways, because of bla bla bla whatever chemicals in my body were fine. Aaanyways, fun summer. . . . .

I think illnesses are usually associated with certain parts of the brain not working like they should, thus altering certain behaviours.

Practically everything in biology can be traced back to chemical fluctuations, including parts of the brain not working like they should. My question is do we need pills to control those fluctuations when we can learn to do it ourselves just as well .. only with a bit more effort.

I'm convinced that an individual can learn to control or deal with most of their bodily functions/processes, even many that are considered abnormal. By supressing a chemical reaction with another chemical reaction you're not learning anything though.

So those pills kinda attack my purpose of life: to experience and learn from those experiences.

Very well put Zan. I would also like to bring up a question i have had for sometime now. Is the chemical imbalance the cause of the condition, or the effect/symptom.

I think the point of pills is mostly like that sugar tablet idea. Where someone wants to say get stronger. So they give them a tablet and say it has the strength of a 100 tigers in it. Take it day and night along with exercise and eating right and you will soon become as strong as your opponent. Then person says thank you, only to realize it's just sugar they've been eating and it's their own mind, strength and proper exercise and eating that got them what they wanted.

I myself had incentive to change. Many solstices ago, I was one of those kill yourself major depressives as many know and they actually prescribed me to get on Prozac and made me bring it home. I've always been a fan of heal yourself through the power of your mind and treating your body right. I hardly ever take meds unless absolutely necessary. So I wasn't about to change for depression, though the doctor explained it very nicely. Needless to say the idiot told my mom and my mom blamed herself and started lashing out at me for blaming her, but anyways, I refused to take the meds, and my mom was convinced if I took them it'd make me happier. I told her if she took one then I would. She did and I did and I felt no different, like at all. That was last I took. Instead I looked to myself and examined why I was sad and depressed, altered it, and became happier, and other times when I couldn't, put on a facade. Noone can tell the difference really.

Either way in short, I don't think pills do much for many patients, except give them a reason to change themselves as they think it's the pill doing it for them. For other patients, it might be like vitamins, righting a small imbalance and giving them a way to balance themselves, though this I have yet to see.

Yetaro: For many docs, i think that the chemical imbalance is the condition that needs be cured. The symptoms are in the behavior. Low seratonin, means you get mopey behavior and if not corrected immediately with a pill then you will be thought a harm to yourself or others. Many docs are learning to look at environments though, instead of just chemical imbalance for many patients.

To me, chemical imbalance is just a way of explaining what many don't really get the answer to, such as our emotions. Like the body pushes blood to the heart when one falls in love and yet, it doesn't explain all of it, just a part. So meh, hope made sense

Western medicine treats biology as the sole cause of abnormalities. Very sometimes psychology gets added into the picture and you get mental issues included ... which are generally reduced to more biological causes and 'solutions'. Only eastern medicine and a plethora of derivative therapies, of which most practitioners are no better than arming a blind monkey with a machinegun and letting it loose on a fly in the western world, include energy into the picture.

Personally I think any problem needs to include three therapies and combine them: energetic, mental and physical. Though I'd pick lifestyle changes over medication as the physical therapy, whenever possible.

As for the placebo effect, or the sugar pill thingy, it exists but they're a minority. Most of those mind-fixing pills are actual chemicals and they do have an effect. Just not from one single pill, Nightwolf

I think if we used those three therapies, it'd be easier to heal ourselves through self power than having to rely on outside sources like pills and such.. Or in true western world fashion, make it a quick fix and then we're talking.

Hmm, all the ppl I've seen on those pills all don't seem much different from when they started them, but maybe it's more an internal balance. I don't know, heh

As you could probably tell I'm not overly fond of the prescribe a pill for everything method. :S

many of those tests have been scientifically proven to be better than a placebo in research studies...how it affects individuals though may vary

i agree with zan's standpoint...although i study psychology i am comeing to dislike psychologists and they way they're so judgemental...as zan said anything that does not fit in with their norm is classified as a mental illness...i.e. what about shamans and people who believe in spirits, etc..what about us? We're not mad and yet they would have us labelled so....50 years ago a child was just energetic, now they have ADD!

ofcourse in many serious situations the diagnosis is justified but i think there needs to be more focus on psychotherapies than pills...some studies have shown that they work just as well as pills for some types of mental illnesses