[lbo-talk] SSRIs

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Nov 18 11:36:15 PST 2005


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> Depends on with what. Manic depression or bipolar
> disorder is totally impervious to talk therapy.

This is probably true -- but like all therapies for mental illness (including talk therapy) the evidence is all empiric. We don't _know_ that there do not exist some who have suffered from bipolar and 'handled' it without drug therapy. The brain is so fucking complex, and there are so many trillions of possible relations involving it and the social world that quite possibly someone somewhere sometime has suppressed or alleviated bipolar with aerobic exercise or aspirin!

One thing about SSRIs that (at least as of a year or two ago) seemed established (but not explained), is that they can prevent shrinking of the hippocampus. Depression causes [WARNING: we are in territory where all causal propositions are tentative] the hippocampus to shrink. SSRIs given soon enough prevent that shrinkage. Sorry I can't cite the source where I read this. Probably _Science News_.

I don't know of anyone who "explains" all or any mental illness as being purely "biologic" (whatever that might mean). But _labelling_ depression as such is, in itself, useful talk therapy for many. The first step, as it were, in getting mental illness under some kind of control is accepting the fact itself. And MAMI' slogan, "Mental Illness is a Brain Disease, not a Character Flaw," is highly useful in achieving that.

I always mentioned to my classes that I suffered from depression, and that had one invariable result: students showing up in my office to tell me that they (or their girlfriend or their brother) suffered from depression or bipolar. And most of them would begin the conversation using the terminology of "chemical imbalance." Literal nonsense of course, but it makes as much sense as any description one could give in "ordinary language."

The brain is hard to control; it has a mind of its own.

Carrol



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