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by Marwy
4632 days ago
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>There is a core of very serious cases, like schizophrenia and some bipolar sufferers, but those are not mental illnesses, they are physical ailments with psychological symptoms. Purely mental illnesses have no scientific explanation, no reliable diagnostic criteria, and no treatments -- which is why the DSM is being abandoned. What about depression? OCD? Anxieties? Are they "physical ailments with psychological symptoms"? |
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No one knows, and anyone who claims to know is speaking without any scientific backing. This will eventually change, primarily because of a move away from psychology toward neuroscience, but this is not going to happen quickly.
I will say this. Eventually "mental disorders" will all be either abandoned or turned into treatable biological disorders, diseases with know causes, just like medicine. But that's not around the corner -- it will take years or decades.
A neuroscience operation was recently performed on a woman who was so depressed that her life was essentially over -- she was institutionalized, unable to function at all. In the procedure, a location in the brain called "area 25" was stimulated using criteria that had worked with laboratory animals.
When the electric field was applied, the woman's depression lifted instantly -- instantly. The procedure is still experimental and is not safe for ordinary cases of depression, but it shows where we're headed:
"A depression switch?" : http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/magazine/02depression.html...
It is examples like this that explain why I and many other people are advocating a move away from psychiatry and psychology -- the resources being expended on those activities are being wasted, and are taken away from things that might work.