The stigma around mental health issues is still unfortunately at play, but I think another huge factor accounting for our failures to provide appropriate treatments for patients is the stubborn insistence on the neurotransmitter imbalance theory of depression.
A large body of evidence suggests that factors such as high levels of inflammatory cytokines, gut microbiome dysbiosis, LPS translocation, and metabolic syndrome may be responsible for the symptoms of depression.
Unless we abandon the one-size-fits-all model and adopt an approach that aims to determine the root cause of someone's depression and address it, patients will continue to suffer in silence.
Since antidepressants don't have the best safety profiles (and even exacerbate depressive symptoms for many patients), I'm in favor of judicious psychedelic prescriptions for depression.
Agreed. The one-size-fits-all failed. I think that - for some people - the neurotransmitter imbalance *can* be a major contributing factor, but defintely not for everyone. It's a bit short-sighted to think that a condition of this complexity has a singular origin. Go, personalized medicine...
I believe that any patient who complains of depression must be dealt as a whole entity and all his problems as described by him must be accepted as a real problem. The treatment of the patient cannot be done in parts. The remedy to be used by the treating physician must cover all his problems and should be a mirror image of all his problems, only then there can be hope to cure such a patient.
How many physicians have trained themselves to have such an approach ?
The usual and easy approach is to divide patients into convenient parts. Choose the parts considered easy to handle, ignore the not understood parts of the patient. Try hard to treat him by imposing the understanding of the physician on him, knowing fully well that the understanding was even initially imperfect, but still insisting on forcing a fit and hopping for a cure.
I hope I have succeeded in conveying what approach that I hope can solve the problem on a permanent way.g
The stigma around mental health issues is still unfortunately at play, but I think another huge factor accounting for our failures to provide appropriate treatments for patients is the stubborn insistence on the neurotransmitter imbalance theory of depression.
A large body of evidence suggests that factors such as high levels of inflammatory cytokines, gut microbiome dysbiosis, LPS translocation, and metabolic syndrome may be responsible for the symptoms of depression.
Unless we abandon the one-size-fits-all model and adopt an approach that aims to determine the root cause of someone's depression and address it, patients will continue to suffer in silence.
Since antidepressants don't have the best safety profiles (and even exacerbate depressive symptoms for many patients), I'm in favor of judicious psychedelic prescriptions for depression.
Agreed. The one-size-fits-all failed. I think that - for some people - the neurotransmitter imbalance *can* be a major contributing factor, but defintely not for everyone. It's a bit short-sighted to think that a condition of this complexity has a singular origin. Go, personalized medicine...
I believe that any patient who complains of depression must be dealt as a whole entity and all his problems as described by him must be accepted as a real problem. The treatment of the patient cannot be done in parts. The remedy to be used by the treating physician must cover all his problems and should be a mirror image of all his problems, only then there can be hope to cure such a patient.
How many physicians have trained themselves to have such an approach ?
The usual and easy approach is to divide patients into convenient parts. Choose the parts considered easy to handle, ignore the not understood parts of the patient. Try hard to treat him by imposing the understanding of the physician on him, knowing fully well that the understanding was even initially imperfect, but still insisting on forcing a fit and hopping for a cure.
I hope I have succeeded in conveying what approach that I hope can solve the problem on a permanent way.g