DEPRESSION AND ALL THE OTHER MALFUNCTIONS OF A PERSON’S THOUGHT PROCESSES ARE A MEDICAL CONDITION. Our brain functions with (our thoughts are made with) electrical impulses and chemicals, primarily serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When these chemicals are out of balance and their levels are wrong, a person’s thoughts are wrong. This chemical imbalance can result in depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, hallucinations, and multiple personalities. A person might suffer any one, a combination of, or all of these manifestations of the medical issue of a chemical imbalance. How do I know so much about this? I know about this because someone very close to me valiantly fought medical depression and some of the other issues for over a decade before he finally lost the battle, just as Robin Williams lost his. The person was my oldest brother, my childhood hero, and one of the people I most admire, even now. Some people still think that people who are depressed should just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get over it.” That is tantamount to telling someone with cancer to just get over that tumor or telling someone with diabetes to quit whining and just eat like the rest of us. It’s like telling someone with Parkinson’s disease to get over it and quit shaking or someone with emphysema to take a deep breath. You get the picture. Sometimes it might seem that someone just let a circumstance get the best of them, but we can’t know that for sure. We don’t know when the chemical imbalance occurs, how long the person might have just been trying to “get over it,” or how quickly a chemical imbalance can take a deadly toll. The insidious problem with medical mental illness is that it is so difficult to diagnose the exact problem, prescribe a treatment, and monitor the progress of that treatment. With virtually any other medical issue, a doctor can see the problem or touch the part of the body affected. He has a way of “looking at it” — X-ray, CAT Scan, MRI, electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, blood tests, and urinalysis. A doctor has no way to “look at” a person’s brain chemistry. A doctor has no way to “look at” a person’s thought processes. The doctor can only try a treatment and then try to see if it does any good. The doctor’s only means of evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment is to observe and interview the patient. However, guess what? The very nature of mental illness sometimes causes the patient to mask or deny his symptoms. After all, he should “just get over it.” This brings about another problem: sometimes the treatment works against the patient and actually triggers suicidal thoughts. Prozac is known to cause suicide in younger patients and the elderly. In my brother’s case, he was taking 26 medications a day, and only one of them dealt with a different health issue. I’m convinced that he was being overmedicated, and that is what defeated him. He needed to be admitted to a hospital and taken off all the medications so that he could have a fresh start. However, his insurance coverage for the treatment of this medical issue “capped out,” and he was sent home. Hospitals dont usually send someone home to die, but they did my brother. I’m trying not to “judge the judgers,” but be careful; you never know when you or a loved one might fall victim to this medical condition, and you will find out that you or that person can’t “just get over it.” Most of you have stopped reading by now, but I want to add a footnote. Through our tragedy, as my family sat by my brother’s bed for a week, waiting for the inevitable, we found ways to be joyful. We shared memories; we teased one another; we talked about the beautiful day outside and anything else positive. I hope my brother heard that through the fog of his coma and was comforted by it. Whenever I find myself getting upset about some insignificant circumstance, I think about those days, and give myself an intense reality check. My brother’s illness robbed him of his joy in many things, particularly fishing. I hope he is having a beautiful day in heaven enjoying the best fishin’ hole ever!
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 22:33:09 +0000
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