I highly doubt that if I go to a doctor telling them that I am depressed, they would just send me out the door, and not diagnose me with anything. — Agustino
They would diagnose me with something for sure, and quite possibly prescribe me some pills for the short term and then ask to see me again.
I don't need to have major depression (which is what you're talking about) to be treated by a doctor. It will suffice that I have, for example, frequent episodes of lethargy, loss of energy/motivation, trouble sleeping and sadness. That is not sufficient to qualify me for major depression. But it is more than sufficient to warrant treatment according to a doctor.
But is it the doctor's job to decide what "better" is for the patient? — Agustino
The doctor is "helpful" in a few cases. — Agustino
The doctor is "helpful" in a few cases. Someone from my family suffered and died from Alzheimer's. Yeah, the doctor was "helpful", she gave them pills and injections so that they would be like a vegetable, and would lose interest in everything else - of course they wouldn't be violent anymore. If you count that as "helpful" fair enough. I don't. If you're unlucky to get a physical condition like that, then you're fucked - doctor or no doctor. That's it, if you get that, I honestly think that nothing, save a miracle, can save you. — Agustino
But I'm not discussing that type of mental illness. If you get depression - and I was diagnosed with depression before - you have hope. — Agustino
You're not finished. You have a lot of inner resources left, which lie untapped inside of yourself. So long as your mind is not physically affected, you can still climb out of the pit you have dug yourself in.
In that case, there's ways for you to save yourself. But they ultimately depend on you, not on the doctor. The doctor can do little, if anything, to save you.
I was responding to Thorongil:If you walk into a doctor's office having already diagnosed yourself, then why are you even going to the doctor's and being surprised when, perhaps, your doctor may agree? When I've gone to the doctor, I don't do the job for her. I lay everything out for her to decide best what most probably is affecting me. You start with as many symptoms and clarifications as one can, and then your doctor decides with you what you should do. — Heister Eggcart
You could go to the doctor claiming to feel depressed and he or she might not diagnose you. — Thorongil
But they don't have to fix my home life or whatever. They have to fix my attitude/response to my home life so that the depressive response is changed with a different kind of response. And medicine isn't helpful in doing this.Doctors fully realize that they can't fix your home life, or your job, or whatever else. But medication can help those people arrive at a better baseline in which they can change their bad surroundings. You seem to really fumble over doctors' intentions, and why they do what they do. — Heister Eggcart
They've spent their time educating themselves how to treat disorders according to classifications made by others like them. They necessarily see through the prism of the classifications, and can never help the person they face. And I'm not the only one who believes so - there are academics who have written books supporting similar conclusions.Yes, it's why they spend over a decade educating themselves in order to best treat the people they live to serve. If it's not the doctor's role to decide that a cast on a broken bone is better for that person, then a doctor is of no use. — Heister Eggcart
No I'm not blaming them, I'm simply stating a fact. If you have the bad luck of having such a condition, doctor or no doctor - you're still fucked. The doctor will help - but only very minimal kind of help.Sounds like you're trying to blame doctors and medicine for Alzheimer's ravages, and the medical field for not being able to cure your family member's illness. Sometimes you have to treat people with drastic means in order to ensure as drastically a different, but better, improvement in someone's health. This doesn't always work, however. — Heister Eggcart
If they were left alone, they wouldn't have been much worse than after treatment.But perhaps you'd rather your family member be left alone? — Heister Eggcart
If one has a heart-attack, I know the symptoms to expect, and I have the tools necessary to notice if there actually is a problem. For example - I will take their blood pressure, and monitor pulse for any kind of arrhythmia and see how fast/slow it is. I will measure their blood oxygen level. Provided that blood oxygen level is good, their symptoms are minimal, and blood pressure levels are normal, and there are no signs of arrhythmia I wouldn't worry too much, even if their heart rate may be high and they may claim tightness in the chest, etc. Then I will monitor the condition for any changes, and call the ambulance only if necessary. At the moment I don't have an ECG machine (but I will at one point acquire one, but can't be bothered at the moment), and then there will be no need for ambulance, except if they actually have a heart attack (in which case it might be faster if I transport them to ER).Mayhap if one has a heart-attack, you can be their cheerleader so that they can overcome what they can't, zzzz — Heister Eggcart
According to the doctors you love, I was :PThis doesn't therefore mean that you were truly clinically depressed. — Heister Eggcart
>:O that's hilarious!"fuck man, I real sad, halp me," — Heister Eggcart
Well I felt like I couldn't at the time. But that doesn't mean that I actually couldn't. You can learn to disbelieve your feelings with regards to some things.No, you can't. — Heister Eggcart
Well if you have advanced stage cancer - chances are again, that doctors, or no doctors, you're fucked. One of my cousin's grandparents was a doctor. When he got cancer, he refused treatment. Why? Because he understood that if you have cancer, treatment may actually speed up your death, and will make the rest of your life a living hell. It's easy for doctors to prescribe treatment to others - they're doing a job - but when it comes to themselves, it's a whole different story. Fact of the matter is, that when the body really goes haywire, the doctors themselves can do much less than people imagine. When doctors do wonders, most of the time, it's when the body hasn't actually really gone haywire. Like someone has indigestion and GERD - they go to the doctors, they follow a treatment, and they're as good as new!You might as well tell someone suffering from cancer that they can do it all by themselves. Perhaps some herbal tea is all you need... — Heister Eggcart
But they don't have to fix my home life or whatever. They have to fix my attitude/response to my home life so that the depressive response is changed with a different kind of response. And medicine isn't helpful in doing this. — Agustino
They've spent their time educating themselves how to treat disorders according to classifications made by others like them. They necessarily see through the prism of the classifications, and can never help the person they face. And I'm not the only one who believes so - there are academics who have written books supporting similar conclusions. — Agustino
I generally don't trust my doctors anyway. I have a decent grasp of medicine, and can always discuss and look at different possibilities with doctors. I had conditions in the past, for example, that doctors recommended surgery for, and that I treated without any kind of surgery after I pressured the doctor in the treatment I wanted (which by the way worked, even though the doctor was "skeptical" about it at first). — Agustino
No I'm not blaming them, I'm simply stating a fact. If you have the bad luck of having such a condition, doctor or no doctor - you're still fucked. The doctor will help - but only very minimal kind of help. — Agustino
If they were left alone, they wouldn't have been much worse than after treatment. — Agustino
It's just a fact that doctors can't really help if you're really in trouble. They can do somethings for you, but generally not that much. — Agustino
Well I felt like I couldn't at the time. But that doesn't mean that I actually couldn't. You can learn to disbelieve your feelings with regards to some things. — Agustino
Well if you have advanced stage cancer - chances are again, that doctors, or no doctors, you're fucked. One of my cousin's grandparents was a doctor. When he got cancer, he refused treatment. Why? Because he understood that if you have cancer, treatment may actually speed up your death, and will make the rest of your life a living hell. — Agustino
For example, I have a family friend whose wife had breast cancer in the terminal stage. Even with chemo, she was given a small chance to live. So she refused treatment. Instead she went on a special diet, the cancer went into remission, and she ultimately got cured.
Also, don't forget that for doctors ultimately, you're just another patient. If you die, oh well, the patient died. You're not the first, nor the last that will die. They're used to this. In fact, doctors learn to become emotionally detached from their patients, precisely because they get to see so many dying people, and they can't be emotionally attached to them all the time, or they would lose their mind. — Agustino
And by the way - doctors themselves are one of the leading causes of death — Agustino
I highly doubt that if I go to a doctor telling them that I am depressed, they would just send me out the door, and not diagnose me with anything. They would diagnose me with something for sure — Agustino
Justification?Utter rubbish. — Heister Eggcart
Just because there's millions of hours put into it, doesn't mean that it's necessarily yielding good results.You make it sound as though there isn't millions of hours put into researching mental illness, and medicine in general. Also strange that you distrust doctors by appealing to academics. — Heister Eggcart
No, when my life is on the line, thinking what's best to do, regardless of who does that thinking, is what's needed. Independent thinking especially - not thinking that's clouded by biases, including medical biases. I may see the situation more clearly than the doctor does in fact. The doctor can only think through the prism of the medical establishment, and quite often not even through that. I still remember when I ended up in the hospital after a severe stomach infection that lasted for 1 week, with fever, diarrhea, not being able to sleep because of the pain etc.. I went there because I wanted them to do my blood tests, and I was sent to the very best gastroenterologist (because I knew someone who worked there) but the stupid doctor wanted to keep me there, and give me intravenous antibiotics and rehydration. And I refused, and I had to bear with their rant about the fact that I'm stubborn blah blah, and then when the blood tests came back, the doctor to go like "Oh yeah, blood tests are excellent, you were right, there is no sign of infection left in your blood". And then they advised me to "drink coke" and take medicine to stop the diarrhea - both advices which I ignored. They also advised me to drink rehydration salts, which was a good idea and I followed it. Firstly, coke, despite their supposed medical expertise, does not harden the stool - that's a medical myth. Why should I trust the "best" doctor in the hospital based on a medical myth? Secondly. taking drugs to stop diarrhea is stupid - your body reacts by having diarrhea because it is trying to get rid of a pathogen that way. You don't "stop" the diarrhea - unless you have to meet the President or something. You let your body do its thing.But when expertise is on the line, you best do what your doctor thinks is right, because you're not a doctor, he/she is. — Heister Eggcart
I didn't claim that modern medicine hasn't helped people. It has. I'm only arguing that the help is more limited than doctor worship makes it sound like. And a large part of this help comes from better hygiene and prevention (by the way :P ) .If this were true, we wouldn't have hospitals and doctors and lots and lots and lots of people who have been able to thrive and prosper because of modern medicine. — Heister Eggcart
If breaking from the sensible thing enables you to save your life, why not? Again - you're judging something to be unintelligent merely because it is unintelligible - I had a thread about this in fact, check it out ;)Your appeal to the rarity of people like your friend's wife breaking from the sensible thing to do doesn't make it logical for you to ignore professionals. — Heister Eggcart
It seems to me you're saying what is wrong, in some moral sense, with being depressed. — Moliere
Indeed, in the U.S where you have this stereotype (particularly strong in regards to males) to so to speak, pick oneself up by their bootstraps - having depression is often viewed as a failure and one feels a burden and quite real pain of feeling ostracized from society. (Which evidently aggravates the illness.)As if having depression is a failure of oneself, and the reason people seek treatment is not out of need but is because they perceive themselves as being wrong and perceive others as perceiving them as wrong. — Moliere
If that be the case then, certainly, there's nothing morally wrong with depression. The reason one seeks treatment is the same as the reason one seeks treatment for chronic pain -- to feel better. Not because they are wrong for having depression. — Moliere
No, there is nothing objectively wrong with having depression; but, one feels much more burdened socially having depression than say having a broken wrist or leg — Question
Speaking of evolution, why did we evolve in such a way that we can be 'depressed'? — Bitter Crank
Depression seems to be a natural state that the body embraces when afflicted with continual stress. — Question
What's wrong with being depressed? — Question
shouldn't I embrace a cure to the underlying problem (back ache) if it were available? — Hanover
I see psychologist and psychiatrist, but none of it seems to help. If life is so bad, why continue living? — rossii
You're sort of asking why we should fight our God given natural state because, after all, an all good god wouldn't have given us something for no good reason. End your depression for the same reason you shave down your ugly nose. It makes you happy. — Hanover
Cause and effect could be hard to discern here, were you stuck with a certain inkling which made you turn to philosophy and was it the philosophy which made a possible natural inclination worse? — Gooseone
You seem to be of the opinion that life is bad and not worth continuing and that the aid you are getting now does not alleviate your view on things — Gooseone
After reading more about these things I became extremely depressed, suicidal - these theories were the opposite of my view of life. I wouldn't say that I was a optimist back then, but I viewed life as something worth living, I enjoyed many aspects of it (in fact I still do enjoy many things, but thoughts of pessimism just ruin it for me). — rossii
Depression seems to be a natural state that the body embraces when afflicted with continual stress. — Question
Sure, and you shouldn't take migraine meds but should just accept your headache and move on, and please don't be a judgmental prick while having a migraine. Just deal with it. Nature gave you this migraine for a good reason. Embrace it. — Hanover
No. What makes the difference? The attitude one has in front of whatever the world is. — Agustino
Well sure, but it depends. I agree if you're starving, you have no roof over your head, you're out in the cold, and so forth - like some beggars, then yes, mere attitude won't make you any happier. But most people who struggle with depression aren't in those circumstances. Although - I will say that even someone who is in those circumstances, while a change in attitude may not make them any happier, it could set them on a road towards changing their circumstances and finding the help they need.(though even this is not that powerful, and can't make things as bad as being starving — The Great Whatever
It is - because attitude precedes actions. If you have a bad attitude and a bad situation, then you'll not act in ways which can change your situation and make it better.But it's not possible for a good attitude to remedy bad conditions. — The Great Whatever
Yes but it makes one focus on what's important in order to become capable to alter the situation if this is at all possible. Having a good attitude isn't a guarantee of success - but it definitely gives you the best odds.Also, the ability to have a good or bad attitude is just another living condition, and is also not magic, so it doesn't really help. — The Great Whatever
One might say that depression is an excess of emotional control. — unenlightened
I didn't consider life good or bad. I just accepted it and tried to enjoy it as much as possible. According to pessimists life is bad, ugly place not worth continuing. This is what I deal in my head all day, this conflict what I feel about life and what pessimist say about life. — rossii
I'm not a doctor either, but I have studied medicine for quite a long time and have spoken to a few doctors. Regarding lithium - it does have potential side effects but they are rare and will often happen when lithium levels reach too high in the blood. There generally isn't a good source of lithium naturally, so many people have towards the lower levels, which may be responsible for their feelings of depression. However - lithium treatments should only be undertaken AFTER a blood test has been run, and the lithium levels present are below 0.4mmol/L (these limit levels would differ from country to country depending on what the labs there set as the mean concentration for people). Afterwards, treatment with lithium should occur under the supervision of a doctor, and with a monitoring plan for the blood levels of it. This has sensible information after a quick read:I'm no doctor and don't pretend to be one; but, try some lithium. It's as harmless as one can get and is quite effective as an adjunct to most medications along with being a potent anti-suicidal drug. I take 5 mg (120mg of lithium orotate) every day and feel quite serene and calm. Goods stuff for your body also. — Question
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