[experiment0]

I'm really not sure what this means:

> My brain works a little differently than most people’s. My body doesn't balance chemicals like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine well and as a result I get “sick”, my label for my particular mix of anxiety, depression and general mental health issues.

Chemicals like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine? So neurotransmitters? And what does balance have to do with it? Do you lack dopaminergic neurons? Do you have an over expression of serotonin? I'm not asking for you to go into detail about your problems but that sounds a little too wishy washy.

A lot of these issues sound exactly like what many other people also suffer from every day. So it's hard to not think that on some level this is psychosomatic.

[oliyoung]

I was trying to simplify it, admittedly a lot, I was just trying to illustrate that really in the end behaviour and affect is just chemistry, effected by various different stimulus. (i also should've added as a footnote, i studied psychology for several years)

And sure these are all things that people suffer day-to-day, what makes it more is that an episode can go days, weeks and (thankfully not recently for me) months.

[experiment0]

OK. I understand what you were trying to put across. But ultimately what you described was a set of symptoms of a disorder that you didn't fully explain, so I found it confusing reading the essay with vague hints of the underlying issue.

I'm just saying this as cognitive scientists spend a lot of effort working out which mechanisms and pathways are malfunctioning for a specific disorder, and a generalised statement listing 3 neurotransmitters didn't sit well with me.

From a neuroscience perspective, there is a major issue with self diagnosis, its very hard to be objective when you're examining yourself and once you begin to notice something, you tend to 'fix' the evidence in your mind. Psychosomatic symptoms are surprisingly common. However I don't want to sound like I'm questioning your diagnosis, so if you are aware of a deficit on a functional level please ignore me.

[oliyoung]

Oh no no, I completely understand how it could "not sit well" with someone, I over-simplified it for the audience and it was only supposed to be illustrative in the purpose of what I was writing.

(Obviously I'm more a believer/subscriber/fan of cognitive approaches to psychology, and why I wanted to be a psychologist and not a psychiatrist.)

[hollerith]

I suggest ignoring experiment0's comments in this thread.

At any rate, your article has convinced me that you're not just engaging in self-fulfilling prophecies or theorizing as he seems to imply when he writes "psychosomatic".

(And experiment0, you can't have gotten far in your study of neuroscience if you think there are just 3 neurotransmitters.)

[experiment0]

Why would you suggest to ignore me when I was aiming to promote discussion. I was primarily questioning the science behind the post as there's a lot of questionable reporting on topics like these and so if it looks dubious, then I'm set to promote clarification. As it turns out oliyoung does seem to know what he's talking about, so I guess I needn't have worried.

And the snark at the bottom of your reply is really quite unnecessary.

[baby]

I suggest ignoring hollerith's comments in this thread.

things got so meta...

[baby]

> its very hard to be objective when you're examining yourself and once you begin to notice something, you tend to 'fix' the evidence in your mind.

That's the first time I hear a reasonable argument that I can't diagnosis myself.