Why does everyone have a 'disease' nowadays?

Turtwig wrote: »

Depression is one of the most prevalent illness in society. For some reasons humans in general have a stigma against. Facilities provided to deal with it are still at a pathetically novice stage. What does a GP do? Do absolutely nothing for a depressive until they get into a CBT course?

They could start by doing a basic medical check up on anyone who reports depression like symptoms before handing out mood altering medication. That sounds like it should be automatic practice with GPs as lots of physical problems cause people to feel depressed and finding out the root cause of a problem and treating that makes so much more sense than treating a symptom endlessly.

A few years back I was severely depressed and had near constant suicidal ideation. I used to walk my dogs along a lovely riverbank twice a day and instead of feeling uplifted by that as I always had before. I used to spend most of the walk looking at the water and fantasising about lying down in it until the darkness that I was living in over took me totally. I wasn't planning on acting on those feelings but I felt like I was down in a dark hole that I couldn't get out of and thinking about giving in to that darkness was like a comfort blanket.

After a few months of this I went to my GP about what I thought was an unrelated matter and he took a blood sample to do a full work up on. A week later I was told I was anaemic and needed to start a strong iron supplement as well as making some changes to my diet that ensured my body would absorb the iron. By the next day all my feelings of depression were gone. I still had some problems in my life that were making me stressed and worried but I felt strong and confident in my ability to handle them instead of barely able to carry on.

All of my depression was coming from a nutritional deficiency. I could have gone to the doctor with my mental symptoms and been prescribed xanax or similar which would have blocked out the worst of my misery but I wouldn't have felt right or happy on those. And at the same time my body would still have been depleted of a necessary nutrient and eventually my depression would have worsened along with my body suffering further consequences of my anaemia. Instead a box of spatone and a few hours without dairy every day restored my brain chemistry to normal. I treated the cause of my depression and got better, instead of masking a symptom and letting the actual problem get worse.

Numerous nutritional deficiencies cause similar symptoms, other than iron, lack of Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, Magnesium, Vitamin B complex, amino acids, zinc, folate, selenium and iodine can all cause severe depression. For many people the very real cure for their depression can be as simple as going outside for an hour every summer morning before applying their sunblock or eating a handful of nuts each day. I don't understand why a simple blood test isn't the very, very first thing done for every patient who presents with depression. It doesn't always have to be the only treatment and it won't always show a problem. But it's an absolute disgrace that diagnosing or ruling out a physical root of the problem isn't the first thing doctors do.

NIMAN wrote: »

Whats doing without dairy?

If that's in relation to my post. Dairy inhibits iron absorbtion so in order to make sure my body was actually absorbing the iron supplement I needed to avoid dairy for a couple of hours either side of taking it. I'm a big milk drinker and eat lots of cheese and yoghurt, so I had to alter my diet to 'do without dairy' at times during the day and instead up my Vit C intake as Vit C is necessary for iron absorbtion. Taking an iron supplement at the same time as consuming dairy will get you nothing but a bout of constipation (which means those follow-on-formula ads drive me nuts as the added iron won't be absorbed by the baby and is likely to cause them tummy upsets).

Conversely if you have a Vitamin D deficiency you might want to up your intake of full fat dairy as that can help absorbtion of Vit D.

zeffabelli wrote: »

The problem is these articles are decontextualised from the culture they are talking about.

What has happenned in the US in education with the No child left behind act is they now how unfair expectations on children and are testing them over and over and over again and if individual children don't meet those expectations, these rigid standards, the children get particularised and its the only country where psychiatry has a foot in the door into education. And for a country that values and prizes the individual, they are paradoically trying to kill of those parts of children, and adults that don't accommodate the models of current education.

That's pretty much what most of the articles I've read on this subject say. Expectations of children have changed and as a result the children who can't meet those narrowing expectations are found to have an illness and medicated in order to make them fit the expectations. It's not just the schools though they are a major part of the problem with recess hours reduced and in some schools eliminated entirely.

But there are also other causes. We have reached a point where our society has expectations of our children that are almost paradoxial. Infants are expected to display independent behaviours, like the ability to sleep fall asleep alone and then stay alone for 8-12 hours from only a few weeks/months old despite the fact that very few babies are naturally able to manage this. While older children are denied independence as theirh parents are frightened to allow them free play alone and are instead over-scheduling their lives with activities. Then children who have very natural, imo, meltdowns or rebellions in the face of such expectations and restrictions are diagnosed with an illness instead of the real cause of the problems being identified and changed.