Posted by Dinah on August 9, 2011, at 8:46:30
Even my therapist doesn't understand what I'm talking about when I point out all the various health problems, including mental health problems, that would fit my hypothesis of a subset of patients whose mental health problems are due to problems in the HPA axis or autonomic nervous system. I'm not an academician or a practitioner.
Yet I strongly feel that this would be something that should be studied, not on an individual symptom basis, but on the basis of considering it a syndrome. If it could be validated, it would be helpful not only as a descriptor or cause of certain symptoms, but as an indicator of when to use those treatments that currently exist. With a simple questionnaire, or maybe a saliva test, even general practitioners could have a working basis on which to decide if, say, medications that raise NE levels might be a bad idea, or where atypical antipsychotics might be helpful if they are tolerated.
They want to remake psychiatry into a medical model, and surely a knowledge of which brain chemicals fit which symptoms of umbrella diagnoses like "depression" would be the quickest way to bring psychiatry into this model.
I wish I were in a position to do studies or suggest ideas. But I'm just a psych patient, and even my own doctors probably would pat me on the head and say it's an interesting idea.
poster:Dinah
thread:993270
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110809/msgs/993270.html