1 in 5 college age adults have mental disorder

Watermark said:
Is it all that common though?

Judging by the amount of ads I see for it on television, the drug companies seem to think that whether or not it actually is, they're going to MAKE it look common. They are searching for the next blockbuster drug. And that's what's wrong with our system.
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It's common enough that NIH sponsored a specific section to fund research from several sectors (preclinical as well as clinical trials) to address the disorder. Yes, it is fairly well represented among the population. I personally know two people who suffer from it.

The drug ads are overdone, though, I have to agree. Nobody can diagnose him/herself like that and they can't rush to the pharmacy and self-medicate. I personally tend to see those ads as bordering on the irresponsible if not immoral, but so far they're still legal. I understand that some steps are being considered to rein them in because of the irresponsibility.
 
Thorn said:
It's common enough that NIH sponsored a specific section to fund research from several sectors (preclinical as well as clinical trials) to address the disorder. Yes, it is fairly well represented among the population. I personally know two people who suffer from it.

The drug ads are overdone, though, I have to agree. Nobody can diagnose him/herself like that and they can't rush to the pharmacy and self-medicate. I personally tend to see those ads as bordering on the irresponsible if not immoral, but so far they're still legal. I understand that some steps are being considered to rein them in because of the irresponsibility.
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Direct to consumer medical advertising, IMHO, should be banned. I don't know the constitutional issues surrounding that, but perhaps it could be done on a voluntary basis.

We're the only developed nation in the world that allows this type of advertising, and it's absurd that drug companies spend more money on it than on researching new drugs.
 
Watermark said:
Direct to consumer medical advertising, IMHO, should be banned. I don't know the constitutional issues surrounding that, but perhaps it could be done on a voluntary basis.

We're the only developed nation in the world that allows this type of advertising, and it's absurd that drug companies spend more money on it than on researching new drugs.
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Absolutely. At least the perks to physicians, right down to the big sponsored lunches (to the physicians, mind, not those of us who do the investigative work!) have been curtailed. I think in fact they've been banned. We as a society tend to applaud the circuses, unfortunately.
 
Watermark said:
Direct to consumer medical advertising, IMHO, should be banned. I don't know the constitutional issues surrounding that, but perhaps it could be done on a voluntary basis.

We're the only developed nation in the world that allows this type of advertising, and it's absurd that drug companies spend more money on it than on researching new drugs.
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I could not agree with you more.
 
Question are 'smokers' considered in the 'addictive' categories? How about 'binge drinkers'?

How many of 'us' would fall into those two categories alone in college? The parameters are not clear.
 
leaving home for college hits young adults with a serious reality check

i suffer from long term depression that started when i was about 14 due to undiagnosed sleep apnea - i spent over half of my adult life with chronic sleep deprivation - this is a condition known to cause depression and paranoia

who knows what other mind warping diseases exist that have not yet been discovered
 
Annie said:
Question are 'smokers' considered in the 'addictive' categories? How about 'binge drinkers'?

How many of 'us' would fall into those two categories alone in college? The parameters are not clear.
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My mentor was one of the leading researchers in North America, if not the world, on addiction. He said that nicotine was the most addictive substance there is. This can be confirmed experimentally, but just ask anyone who has tried to quit! Some of us do it cold turkey and in retrospect it seems to have been easy but I know it really wasn't. It involved a lot of pep talks to myself as well as removing as many of the cues as possible. Even after the first couple of weeks I had no desire to return to smoking, but many others I know still, after many years, feel that they could pick it up again with no problem.
 
Thorn said:
My mentor was one of the leading researchers in North America, if not the world, on addiction. He said that nicotine was the most addictive substance there is. This can be confirmed experimentally, but just ask anyone who has tried to quit! Some of us do it cold turkey and in retrospect it seems to have been easy but I know it really wasn't. It involved a lot of pep talks to myself as well as removing as many of the cues as possible. Even after the first couple of weeks I had no desire to return to smoking, but many others I know still, after many years, feel that they could pick it up again with no problem.
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Not arguing that. Questioning the definition of mental illness regarding college students.
 
Thorn said:
My mentor was one of the leading researchers in North America, if not the world, on addiction. He said that nicotine was the most addictive substance there is. This can be confirmed experimentally, but just ask anyone who has tried to quit! Some of us do it cold turkey and in retrospect it seems to have been easy but I know it really wasn't. It involved a lot of pep talks to myself as well as removing as many of the cues as possible. Even after the first couple of weeks I had no desire to return to smoking, but many others I know still, after many years, feel that they could pick it up again with no problem.
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synanon had more success getting people off of heroin than nicotine

our older boy quit cold turkey just before his daughter was born :)
 
I watched a thing on meth last night , I hope they can someday repair the damage that drugs like this do to the dopamine receptors.

What an incideous drug that little monkey is.

Its a real nightmare. Cheap, easy to make and completely life destroying.
 
Desh said:
I watched a thing on meth last night , I hope they can someday repair the damage that drugs like this do to the dopamine receptors.

What an incideous drug that little monkey is.

Its a real nightmare. Cheap, easy to make and completely life destroying.
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It's unlikely that the damage can be reversed, once it occurs. The damage is not to the DA receptors, though. Meth, like all the amphetamines, acts by releasing the neurotransmitter from the cells independently of the biological release mechanism, and by preventing its reuptake back into the cell. That latter is the primary mechanism of dopamine and related neurotransmitter inactivation. One biological adaptive mechanism is that the number of receptor proteins embedded in adjacent cells will decrease in response to the extracellular overload of transmitter, but this decrease takes considerable time and is not in proportion to the increased dopamine availability caused by the drug. The enzymes that usually take care of the rest are saturated and also do not keep up. The damage downstream may or may not be corrected by biological adaptation; my opinion is that these, too, are beyond saturation. Any recovery will take a long, long time.

Remember that the only "brain" cells that regenerate are actually in the nasal cavity, not in the cerebrum. So if cells die as a consequence of this and if systems that normally might take over from trauma are also damaged, recovery prognosis is dim. It's extremely complex, and no treatment can address that.
 
Hey Thorn, someday I'd like you to give me a medical rundown of how LSD and psylocybin affect the brain in the longterm.
 
Epicurus said:
Hey Thorn, someday I'd like you to give me a medical rundown of how LSD and psylocybin affect the brain in the longterm.
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Oboy, that could be complex! Both affect serotonin, and I think that any longterm effects are, in fact, memory. Neither releases transmitter, they just act directly on the postsynaptic receptors. "Flashbacks" are actually memories triggered by some environmental cue. Sol mentioned scents as a powerful (actually the most powerful) triggers for evoking memories.
 
Thorn said:
Oboy, that could be complex! Both affect serotonin, and I think that any longterm effects are, in fact, memory. Neither releases transmitter, they just act directly on the postsynaptic receptors. "Flashbacks" are actually memories triggered by some environmental cue. Sol mentioned scents as a powerful (actually the most powerful) triggers for evoking memories.
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So to your knowledge it doesn't change anything about the way the brain works? I only ask because I've spoken with a psychologist who had said that in addition to exacerbating genetic predispositions toward mental illness, LSD and psylocybin actually changed the way the brain worked after prolonged use.

Of course there could be nothing to it also. As Scrubs has said, psychologists are the Walmart Greeters of medicine. And I'm sure he felt it was something I needed to hear even if it wasn't true.
 
Epicurus said:
So to your knowledge it doesn't change anything about the way the brain works? I only ask because I've spoken with a psychologist who had said that in addition to exacerbating genetic predispositions toward mental illness, LSD and psylocybin actually changed the way the brain worked after prolonged use.

Of course there could be nothing to it also. As Scrubs has said, psychologists are the Walmart Greeters of medicine.
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The drugs indeed can act as a catalyst for the onset of genetically related illnesses such as schizophrenia; similarly they can trigger the onset of symptoms in someone who already has developed the disorder. I've never seen anything that suggested that the hallucinogenics caused lasting changes in healthy individuals, quite the contrary, but have to admit that my area is dopamine and the other catecholamines.

Frankly, I'd be skeptical about what a psychologist says about biological events. Their clinical training is not in this area, generally. Psychiatrists are MDs and are able to prescribe drugs, but psychologists are not. I still shudder when I remember a clinical psychologist lecturing in one of my stats classes (he should have stayed away; he was less skilled with numbers than with transmitters). He seemed so thrilled with himself that he remembered "norepinephrine"; didn't know much more about it than the name but this was a good example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing! The stats lecture addressed, of all things, the program used to compile and tabulate responses to survey questions. :)
 
Thorn said:
It's unlikely that the damage can be reversed, once it occurs. The damage is not to the DA receptors, though. Meth, like all the amphetamines, acts by releasing the neurotransmitter from the cells independently of the biological release mechanism, and by preventing its reuptake back into the cell. That latter is the primary mechanism of dopamine and related neurotransmitter inactivation. One biological adaptive mechanism is that the number of receptor proteins embedded in adjacent cells will decrease in response to the extracellular overload of transmitter, but this decrease takes considerable time and is not in proportion to the increased dopamine availability caused by the drug. The enzymes that usually take care of the rest are saturated and also do not keep up. The damage downstream may or may not be corrected by biological adaptation; my opinion is that these, too, are beyond saturation. Any recovery will take a long, long time.

Remember that the only "brain" cells that regenerate are actually in the nasal cavity, not in the cerebrum. So if cells die as a consequence of this and if systems that normally might take over from trauma are also damaged, recovery prognosis is dim. It's extremely complex, and no treatment can address that.
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Well I dunno. In 100 years, with nanotechnology and such, we could probably do direct repairs to the brain. But there's no short term cure. It's like someone in the 13th century telling people it would be great if we had flying machines.
 
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