Posted by manowar on June 16, 2001, at 12:41:12
I read a book called "Change your brain, change your life" by Dr. Amen in San Francisco. I found the book to be fascinating and enlightening.
He has an uncommon approach to Psychiatry. His clinic does what is called ‘spect’ studies of his patients. (Similar to MRI’s, but better at showing how the brain is actually functioning). He doesn’t understand why psychiatry doesn’t commonly use imaging technology to diagnose problems, being that the brain is far more complex than any organ in the body.
Anyway, in his book he gives cases and shows the ‘spects’ of people with various type of mental illness including depression, OCD, bi-polar, schizophrenia. He also shows spects of people that have abused drugs, or have had hard falls and brain injuries. What is cool is that you can look at the ‘spects’ and the ‘problem area’ of a subjects brain seems to always correspond with the type of problem he has.I read a chapter about depression and how it normally has to do with the deep limbic area of the brain and that with most depressions, it is actually working too hard. (I seemed to have most of the symptoms of deep-limbic depression, which are most of the standard symptoms of major depression).
The next chapter blew my mind. It was on ADD/ADHD.
I never expected in a million years that I had ADD symptoms at all. But what I learned is that ADD is a problem where the symptoms vary from patient to patient, and no two patients are the same. I found that I have many symptoms of an ADD subtype. I also learned that only half of people with attention deficit have problems with hyperactivity.
The pre-frontal cortex of the brain seems to be the culprit.
Sometimes, it seems that people who think they are suffering from major depression are actually suffering from a subtype of ADD which he calls ‘deep limbic ADD’. He asserts that the ‘deep limbic’ section of the brain works in conjunction with the prefrontal cortex; and if the prefrontal cortex is not functioning properly (not enough activation), it can cause the deep limbic section to overwork, hence depressive symptoms.
He points out that it is very important for the p-doc to differentiate between the ADD subtype and depression, because the treatment is often different.
Anyway, he commonly prescribes stimulants along with anti-depressives to patients who have problems with apathy, low motivation, ect.
My problem is that where I live, most p-docs are very reluctant to prescribe stimulants.
I know that stimulants have an anti-depressive effect. Last year I went to a diet clinic and was given a drug called didrex. Remarkably, as soon as I took the drug my depression lifted. Unfortunately, that ‘side effect’ wore off after several days.
I know that stimulants are very addictive, but I’ve never seemed to have a problem in the past (drug over-usage or addictive behavior).
Dr. Amen talks about stimulants like they are the best thing since sliced bread. (I suppose they are especially with true ADDers)
He also says that they are very safe, and the only problem he has with them is sometimes his younger patients ‘forget’ to take their dose. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with adults overusing the drugs to get ‘high’.
Does anyone have experience with stimulants as an augmentation strategy? From what I’ve read about Adafrinil, could it be that stimulants by themselves be considered as anti-depressants? Or do they just work too quickly, with relatively too few side effects, and make most people feel too good to be effective as anti-depressants? We wouldn’t want people to feel too-good, too-quickly would we:)
poster:manowar
thread:66730
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010612/msgs/66730.html