Posted by chujoe on May 14, 2010, at 8:54:54
In reply to Re: depression + mental exhaustion » g_g_g_unit, posted by SLS on May 13, 2010, at 7:08:33
g_unit, some of your symptoms overlap with mine as well. I'm increasingly convinced that the whole diagnostic process for "mental illness" is screwed up. I've mentioned this before in other threads, but the idea that a person can be sliced and diced and put into a particular diagnostic box or boxes seems wrong-headed to me. It seems better to me to think in terms of different people presenting different sets of concerns / symptoms that occur in clusters & while some clusters will be more common that others, it's a mistake to give a particular cluster a name like "depression" or "anxiety" and then begin to believe that it is a thing, i.e., a diagnosis.
The implications of this view for prescribing medication is profound. First, most of the clusters of concerns / symptoms a pdoc sees will have multiple causes: genetic & biological, social & psychological, environmental & cultural, etc. Second, not all of these will respond to medication, though they might respond to other sorts of treatment. (Speaking only for myself, I found that meditation tends to allow my medications to work more effectively -- if I don't meditate on a particular day, it's like missing my medication that day, I really feel it.) Third, this view suggests that a good pdoc wouldn't necessarily hand the psychosocial parts of a person off to a social worker or psychologist, but would do that work with his patient him or her self. Unfortunately, in the US at least, the health care system makes this almost impossibly difficult. It may be better in civilized countries.
As clusters go, the research I've looked at suggests very strongly that anxiety / ADHD / depression are often associated with each other, so, to respond directly to g_g_g_, I think you need to convince your pdoc that you have such & such a cluster of concerns & that you want to treat them. You might also discover that you need to take some action on your own, since meds are probably only part of the solution. It's boring, but vigorous exercise, fish oil & a multi-vit with some extra D, a therapist you trust (since it's unlikely to be your pdoc), and maybe meditation / relaxation exercises (take a look at Jon Kabbat-Zinn's materials), might need to be added to your treatment.
poster:chujoe
thread:947174
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100514/msgs/947414.html