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/sci/ - Science & Math

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9978923 No.9978923 [Reply] [Original]

How can you say to someone "you have a chemical imbalance" when you've never given them any brain scans or tested any of their bodily chemicals, enzymes, fluids, or genes for any abnormalities?

>> No.9978931

By being (((human))), by being a psychiatrist, by being a jew, by using your beak.

>> No.9978940

No "chemical imbalance" for any mental illness has ever been discovered. No "chemical imbalance" is tested for in the diagnosis of any mental illness. When cancer is diagnosed we usually have X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, PET scans, ultrasound tests, blood tests, endoscopies, biopsies, all sorts of things. But for some reason mental illness doesn't require any of those things for a diagnosis.

>> No.9978949

>>9978923
It's an inference based on past similar cases in which brain chemistry was analyzed.

>> No.9978955

>>9978949
it's quite literally pharma company propaganda

>> No.9978960

>>9978923
Its just an over simplification that you tell people to help them understand that depression is at least in part caused biological factors.

>> No.9978968

>>9978923
There’s literally no evidence for this and depression isn’t a real disease, it’s a way for sadboys to give up their agency and blame their lack of motivation on an organ.

>something something or perish like a dog something...

>> No.9978980

>>9978968
That's not really true, depression probably is a real disease, or at least a broad description of multiple different diseases with similar clinical features. The reason we hear about 'chemical imbalance in the brain' is because we fix depression with medications that alter brain chemistry. For all we know, that isn't the actual reason they work, so I don't really like that kind of terminology, but the evidence is quite clear that they do in fact work.

>> No.9978984

>>9978980
>the evidence is clear
didn't the meta analyses, when incorporating the suppressed studies, show it can almost all be explained by (active) placebo except in a very small % of severe cases?

>> No.9978988
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9978988

>>9978984
Incorrect. Have a look for yourself at this very large, definitive study. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32802-7/fulltext

Blue squares are odds ratios. Amitriptyline, for example, has a 2.13 odds ratio over placebo. lines are 95% CIs. That's very convincing data.

>> No.9978989

>>9978923

The idea of mental illness is racist and culturally biased. "Oh he has a mental illness because he avoids eye contact". Some cultures consider it rude to make eye contact with people. "He has a mental illness because he hears voices". Some cultures consider it a gift to hear voices. Being sad doesn't make you mentally ill either. Different cultures have different forms of grieving. Some cultures consider it acceptable to grieve for several years. Why do Americans think their way of doing things is the "default way"?

>> No.9978990

>>9978980
It’s hardly clear. Very many of these don’t work, and to the extent they appear to work this is through the FDA’s rather shitty requirements (pharmaceutical companies can be very selective with the proof they offer). Also, just because you’re tweaking behavior doesn’t mean the source of the original behavior was pathological.

The US has a depression problem. This is not a widespread outbreak of a disease, but a natural outgrowth of a psychotic society.

>> No.9978996

>>9978990
The pharmaceutical companies are not the only people running studies, and it's become obvious in recent years that while initial studies overstated the effect of antidepressants, they are still better than placebo and they still are efficacious in relieving the cluster of symptoms that we call 'depression'. Read the study I linked above- it's quite clear.

>> No.9979000
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9979000

>>9978989
This place is producing some really meta bait.

>> No.9979002

>>9978996

>putting someone to sleep makes them shut up

Gee who would've thought? That's all medicine does basically.

>> No.9979005

>>9978996
>if you visit a psychiatrist you’re more likely to get trazodone instead of mirtazapine for depression because the whole psychiatric field is a fucking mess

>> No.9979006

>>9979002
I won't bother with you if you're not going to engage in good faith. Get out of here, loser.

>> No.9979009

>>9979005
Well, tricyclics have tolerability problems. That's the biggest reason you won't see them prescribed.

>> No.9979021

>>9979009
Good, cuz it’s not a tricyclic

>> No.9979023
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9979023

>>9978923
Yes psychiatry is an imprecise science and will continue to be so until its practitioners start incorporating neuroimaging into their diagnostics I've been saying this for years. This "chemical imbalance" mantra was started by capital nothing more, capital informs the culture through symbology, through commercials and advertisements talking about how their product solves a problem, and they characterize the problem really really simply so as to be understood by all consumers... the consumers take this on authority because they don't know the difference between funded propaganda and real research, not that they should be expected to. And that's the tea sis, capitalism facilitates schizophrenia in this way, in the divvying up of maps and territories of the mind. The pop science only serves to instill a sense of biological determinism, based not on actual determinist theories but on superstition about ones own reality and perception, about ones own body. Chemical imbalance...