Posted by linkadge on January 27, 2006, at 11:37:50
In reply to Dont do it!!!!, posted by Daniela23 on January 27, 2006, at 8:44:17
No offence, (and I cannot say for you because I don't know), but this attitude is *very* common among people with bipolar disorder. The attitude that one has the power to pull onesself out of one's illness.
My older brother has bipolar disorder, and won't take meds. He has been depressed, and continues to have recurrent depressions. Whenever he gets better, he always attrubutes it to something within his own power that got him there.
The depression will improve naturally on its own, as it does with the natural course of the illness, and it only seems natural to attribute it to somthing within one's power that got them well. But, correlation does not imply causation. For instance, self esteem will increase as depression improves. That does not mean that your self-esteem, or your self-motivation was actually what got you better!
But we need to look at the facts. There are real, structural and biochemical abnormailities that have consistantly been found in bipolar disorder who do not medicate. Abnormalities like glial reductions in the fronal cortex, grey matter reductions, n-acetyl-aspartate, hippocampal volume abnormalities etc.
I know that the case for antidepressants is confounded by the buisness of drug marketing, but whenever I start to think that the disease is fabricated, I need only to look a the case for lithium.
Lithium is no money maker. It does make people high. It does work though. Of course it has some side effects, but for those who choose to continue taking it, the burden of side effects does not surpass the burden of the disease. Lithium does reduce suicide which is high in bipolar disorder.
Nobody is asking you to take your medications, but please be mindfull of the possability that the parameters of your individual case may not extend to everbody.
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:603370
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060122/msgs/603420.html