4 ms·
Measuring dopamine is a bit like measuring a person's heart rate. It could indicate fear, or it could indicate sexual arousal, too much coffee, or some other me
by c3534l 7y ago
Measuring dopamine is a bit like measuring a person's heart rate. It could indicate fear, or it could indicate sexual arousal, too much coffee, or some other medical condition. People like to say things like "seratonin is the drug that makes you happy," or "oxytocin is the drug that makes you feel love," or "dopamine is the brain's reward mechanism," but those statements are simplified to the point of being wrong.
This study is still pretty cool though, because it does point us in a general direction. It can help explain why some mental illnesses like schizophrenia have strong genetic components, yet also environmental factors like childhood abuse. As you said, the reduced dopamine could be a good thing. But maybe in a genetic minority it creates a neuro-chemical downward spiral. Maybe we could prevent the development of schizophrenia by prescribing medication following trauma. Who knows. It opens a lot of doors.
- ianai 7y agoMeds and, you know, talking to them for longer, more often, at earlier stages.
- apatters 7y agoSure. But the issue that needs to be solved with talking therapies is, how do you scale them? Talking to a psychologist starts at $200/hr and the farther you go down the ladder in terms of qualifications the lower the success rate of the therapy. Not everyone can afford this, whereas pills can actually be covered by insurance.
- fsloth 7y agoYeah, you definitely want a qualified therapist. As soon as you are facing individuals who are basing their help merely on intuition and life experience you are statistically on a really thin ice. And even qualified people can be dead wrong. For example it's really hard to find competent help for adult high-functioning asperger spectrum depression patients (I've witnessed this).
- krageon 7y agoIf not everyone can afford proper care, that's a problem that you need to solve in the system that is obviously failing them. Talking therapies already scale just fine, as you say the therapist is paid well and the people that actually need them are a vast minority. If they become the vast majority (where you would actually need to scale), something is systematically wrong somewhere else and that needs to be addressed outside of therapy.
- apatters 7y agoAre they really a vast minority? The statistics here are interesting: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.... About 17M adult Americans have had one or more major depressive episodes. 35% of them received no treatment at all. That's just the numbers for depression, let alone other disorders. The pills can treat symptoms but they don't resolve the root causes of the disorders. I think there are a lot of people out there who would benefit from more or better treatment but the latent demand greatly outweighs the supply.
- raxxorrax 7y agoIn time of depression I often recommend to start drinking. But if anyone comes up with a better drug, it would be completely irresponsible to deny them this opportunity.
- ianai 7y agoKava kava is way better in my experience.
- apatters 7y agoI actually think we do a great disservice to people who are dealing with trauma by using alcohol because we stigmatize it instead of treating it like what it is: self-medication. It is just another thing a lot of people do to cope with stress, pain, unhappiness etc. In some ways it's effective, unfortunately it can also come with a lot of nasty side effects like hangovers, damaged relationships, etc. When you view alcohol as a medication you can then compare it to other medications. The pharmaceutical antidepressants, anxiolytics etc. are far from perfect, but they almost universally have less dangerous side effects than heavy alcohol usage. If someone's using alcohol to cope there's nothing intrinsically immoral or shameful about that, but if the side effects are manifesting there's probably a better medication out there.