[samatman]

Inducing some chemical change is so broad as to be meaningless. "Chemical imbalance" is at least a claim, and GP was right to question it before going way off the rails. To address that: major mood disorders are caused by something, and it isn't the decisions of the sufferer. Those can make it better or worse, sure, but to even entertain the idea means you've never encountered this in the wild.

Treating something with a chemical doesn't mean what you were treating is a chemical imbalance. If it's vitamin C and scurvy, yes, if it's ulcers and antibiotics, no.

No one thinks bipolar disorder is caused by a lack of lithium. The theory of chemical imbalance is just a theory, one I don't happen to think has much going for it.

[mnemonicsloth]

You’re being pedantic. I’m with you that “imbalance” sounds a little new-agey and imprecise, but I’ve talked to a lot of scientific and medical people about BiPD and I haven’t met one yet who didn’t understand what was actually being said: that bipolar disorder has some kind of physical, correctable cause in the brain. Somewhere in there, all those little lithium ions pummel a misfolded protein into shape or clog up an ion channel or something in such a way that the patient experiences relief.

It isn’t precise. But back in the real world, the “chemical imbalance“ explanation serves the very important purpose of explaining to a lot of ordinary people who otherwise wouldn’t understand that bipolar people who are manic or depressed are not in control of what they do. And that’s important, because when they’re manic or depressed, bipolar people often act like bad people.

[samatman]

I'm not being pedantic at all, my best bet is that bipolar disorder arises from brain connectome structure, not chemical imbalance.

The chemical imbalance theory of various disorders is ascendant but it's by no means universally supported for bipolar disorder. These days "depression is when you don't got serotonin" is likely to get you laughed out of the room.

[mnemonicsloth]

Did you even read what I wrote?