[marincounty]

In the nineties, and and up to about ten years ago, I would hear Doctors mention "chemical imbalance".

Today, I couldn't imagine a medical doctor claiming a person/patient has a chemical imbalance. The truth is they just don't know what causes mental illness, and most mental disabilities.

For awhile, it looked like they could increase dopamine, decrease serotonin, blah, blah, etc. and they were finally getting a handle on these complicated psychological problems.

Well, they were wrong with their chemical imbalance theories, and they are back to speculation--wild speculation in most cases. Out of all the medical specialties, Psychiarty has not made much progress from the 50's. At least they aren't carring around ice picks and severing the frontal lobes though.

[dubhrosa]

The most extreme critics of SSRIs would argue that the alterations to the brain caused by these drugs are severe and irreversible. Another genuine question: what makes us so sure that future generations won't look back at the widespread prescription of brain altering drugs that operate on practically immeasurable and poorly understood mechanisms, as being so different to lobotomies?

[tunap]

Correlation that has stuck with me for 15 years. An acquaintance of mine stated years ago, when we were in our late 20's, that she was put on SSRIs from 13-17 years old and had absolutely no memories of those years. No recall of her teen years, whatsoever. That struck me as incredibly tragic.

Around the same time another friend was taking a smoking-cessation drug that induced very graphic vusuals of dismembering various family members... but I digress.