Posted by deb on March 2, 2000, at 19:41:41
In reply to Psychiatric Drugs in General, posted by deb on March 2, 2000, at 18:51:50
James - i can imagine that you are probably thinking that i am simply uneducated on mental illness and that i am making totally unfounded generalizations with respect to the biochemical theory of mental illness. i am not. please understand that i have suffered for years with mental illness. fortunately, my illness has not been as debilatating (sp?) as biopolar, schizophrenia, ocd....i have suffered with anxiety/panic and major depression and it has sucked! i can almost understand that there is a biological basis for the aforementioned illnesses (excluding anxiety/panic and depression); however, i know that environmental factors contributed to my mental illness and my lack of coping mechanisms allowed them to snowball. i had a messed up childhood and have always been sort of hyper/anxious all of my life - but how can my doctor tell me that MY illness is biologically based when no tests have been performed and his assertion is based solely on my description of my symptoms and how come we have no studies of long term effects of these drugs? i am 35 years old and i am scared as hell that the end result of me taking these drugs for so many years may manifest itself when i am much older and there i'll be ...stuck with a fucked up brain...(pardon my french)...there is so much that scientists and doctors do not know about the human brain and i can't help but think that maybe people like us are guinea pigs...i have been going back and forth with myself on this entire issue....meds or no meds? will i be better off feeling my feelings or simply numbing them? how much of my personality has been altered as a result of these drugs?
poster:deb
thread:25549
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000302/msgs/25563.html