Appreciated this one. Especially now that after seeing this one I saw this :
- https://mastodon.online/@Geri/112296976578269067
- https://mastodon.social/@Lazarou/112298308223198771
Experts ignoring the elephant in the room, younger generations are sick and tired of CAPITALISM, it’s not ‘smartphones’ or whatever bullshit excuse the Media comes up with, it’s the very toxic society you’ve forced on us which is making us ill.
¿Por qué no los dos?
No one is saying depression has no imbalance of chemicals. The joke is about the CAUSE of the depression, not the existence of it.
You cannot have something spawn from nothing AND caused by external factors. Ever. They are definitionally exclusive.
I want to preface my comment that it’s in no way an argument against any kind of medication, but rather what I as an unaffected layman understand about the issue.
Chemical imbalance as a source of mental problems has been largely debunked to my knowledge. There were studies where mentally healthy individuals were induced with these imbalances on purpose (e.g. given medication to increase serotonin reuptake or something?). They did not develop mental problems. As such it can’t be the cause, but that doesn’t mean they’re not connected.
Especially the exact full role of serotonin in the body is not fully understood anyways. It has an effect on mood, but it’s also involved in digestion at least, and probably vice versa.
The whole matter is rather complicated, but the general consensus seems to be that stabilizing certain key neurotransmitters helps mentally stabilizing a person, which can be helpful in combination with other therapeutic measures.
I have people taking SSRIs in my family and circle of friends, and the sentiment towards these goes from “amazing” to “they suck but I can’t function without”. However, it should be noted that the person with the highest regard for them does not take them for to mental problems, but rather off-label, but it had a positive effect on mood.
Mental health workers should focus on finding the actual root cause for the issue and treat it through therapy. Medication can help facilitate that. However, the approach of “pills will fix it” hasn’t worked with physical pain either and has led to the opioid crisis.
