Posted by HyperFocus on October 13, 2008, at 2:10:45
In reply to Origin of Physical + Mental Illness, posted by inmostleaf on October 12, 2008, at 18:13:30
Cam W, a longtime babbler, wrote a long technical post about the HPA axis-: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000420/msgs/31619.html
Searching PB for HPA axis will probably yield more info.From a non-technical point of view any major trauma to a person's body can cause damage that requires special intervention to treat, and the exact same reasoning applies to the mind. If you suffer a fracture due to an acute force applied to your bone then the bone may not be able to heal itself. Same deal with your emotional centres. Repeated emotional stress can cause damage of the biological structures responsible for emotions. However this damage can be reversed with drugs and also cognitive and behavioural therapy (CBT)
Like you my family was in turmoil at the start of adolescence, and I also suffered acute emotional abuse from bullying for a long time. Combine that with genetic predisposition to mental illness and I wound up with a dysregulated and dysfunctional emotional core.
The most significant treatment difference between physical and mental illness is that a doctor can x-ray your arm and set it or do surgery to make the bone heal normaly so you regain full use of your arm. But a psychiatric doctor cannot open up your mind and see what's going on and we don't have any mental x-rays that can peer into a person's mind and see what's happening. This is what makes mental illness so difficult to treat. Like in your case different doctors can make different diagnoses and use different treatments because, ultimately, a lot of psychiatric diagnosing comes down to guesswork.
Anyway welcome to PB and I hope you find treatment that works.
poster:HyperFocus
thread:857107
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081006/msgs/857156.html