[0F]

Whether or not you go insane when exposed to emotional stress has nothing to do with your character or personality. It’s biochemical. I hate the way that this article says “it’s impossible to predict who will go insane and who won’t” and it’s universally accepted when it’s not true and is based on untrue and harmful fuzzy thinking. It’s like saying “it’s impossible for man to fly” which may have been true in a practical sense a thousand years ago but it was never actually true. If more people had appreciated that, maybe we would have been flying much earlier.

The reason he says it’s impossible is because he thinks it’s based on subtle aspects of personality traits which are ephemeral and impossible to grasp.

Of course you can predict who will go insane. There are specific biochemical pathways that are responsible. In the future when we have mastered them we will probably find that there are certain obvious traits that correlate strongly to the disposition. It is often the case that the simple truth was hiding right in front of us.

[spadros]

Unfortunately, we’re in the stone ages of mental health. There is no blood test or brain scan we can do to assuredly find depression, bipolar, or any other common mental health diseases. Hopefully you’re correct and in the future we will have some for sure predictor, but at the current rate we have very little to nothing. You’re optimism doesn’t seem to match the environment.

[0F]

There’s a huge number of leads in the search for markers. It’s just that nobody is talking about it. I’ve never met a lay person who had any clue of what’s going on in the space

[spadros]

Interesting. Care to elaborate?

[EEBio]

Last year a couple of researchers published a paper on their approach to treat depression in otherwise-untreatable patients.

They implanted a chip in the patient's (yes, n=1) brain, which they trained to detect when the patient is going into depressing thoughts. Using Deep Brain Stimulation they terminate the signal propagation of that neural pathway.

Similar techniques have been used to treat Parkinson's.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32846987/

[spadros]

Interesting. I think the field of using electronic brain stimulation to help disease is moving forward in a good direction compared to the lobotomies and craziness of the 60s. That seems to be what you’ve linked here.

I’m talking about a simple, non intrusive way of testing someone’s mental health without talking to them. That stills seems far off on the horizon. Maybe some MRI research might be able to take us into the future in that regard.

[tom_]

Well it's certainly sometimes impossible to predict. But that's enough!