4 ms·

Let me add that many psychiatric conditions, more so than physical conditions, are continuous, not binary, with severity changing over time.

podgaj 5y ago
Psychiatric conditions are physical conditions. You cannot have a change in mood with out changes in brain catecholamines. Catecholamines are physical.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  Why don't we have valid an reliable biomarkers for depression then? What is a 'normal' level of catecholamines? Not disagreeing that the mental/physical dichotomy is arbitrary.
  - podgaj 5y ago
    Because currently it’s impossible to test the amount of catecholamines in the brain. What is a normal level? well, you know it when you feel it. There is no normal level, I get what you mean, depression exists for a reason. As does mania. These are healthy responses when we come into contact with an external stimuli. The issue is with mental illness, not mental health. With mental illness the changes happen with no apparent environmental stimulus.
    - Pyramus 5y ago
      It is possible to test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catecholamine#Testing_for_catecholamines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catecholamine#Testing_for_cate... Somebody else stated it already better than I could: We do have a number of biomarkers for depression, the problem is they only correlate with the disease, so asking you how you feel in a structured way is still more indicative.
      - podgaj 5y ago
        I said they’re impossible to test in the brain, not in the plasma. It’s a huge difference. Even the serum tests for catecholamines vary so much that you have to take them specific times of the day. And it can in no way diagnosis depression or any other mood disorders through those test. There Are no biomarkers for depression right now that are widely tested or even tested minimally. I know, I asked for them all the time because I have bipolar disorder.
- podgaj 5y ago
  I would hope we can have a discussion about this topic rather than people just down voting. If anyone can explain to me how psychiatric conditions are not physical conditions, let me know.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    I think the main objection is that what you are saying is technically true - all human conditions are physical in the sense that humans are immensely complex dynamical systems consisting of atoms, molecules, proteins, pathways etc. However it's not helpful in terms of diagnosis and treatment, which is fundamentally different in many ways compared to physical conditions - and stigma is often a result of people no understanding the difference. To make a really simplified example: If you break your leg, a doctor will do a test, an x-ray say, recognise the leg is broken and interfere directly in one way or another with the physical system that is your body. The conscious you is not a part of this process (this is a simplified example, it does make some difference). If you 'break your mind,' again very simplified, because you are treated like sh*t at work, your parent dies, you are genetically predisposed and have no social net, and as a result develop depression, there is no (physical) test. The conscious you is a central part of the treatment. It is even thinkable to not treat the physical you but target your environment instead. Again this is a simplified example with shortcomings. Also having read your replies I believe you wanted to simply highlight that the distinction physical/mental is arbitrary and it is.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Well, assuming the brain is somewhat similar to a computer, then there would exist a separation between "brain hardware" and "brain software". Just like a bug in Windows is not a bug in the hardware, even though it is measurable in terms of electrical signals if you care to look, it could be that there exist separate psychiatric/psychological conditions (problems with the brain software) vs physical conditions (problems with the brain's hardware, such as a tumor or a glandular abnormality). They would both be measurable in physical terms, but that doesn't mean that they have to both be exactly the same thing. IF this vague notion were correct, it could mean that there could be separate diseases like "physical depressions" (that is, various defects of the body's hardware that cause abnormal amounts of certain neurotransmitters to be present in the brain, influencing thought that way) and "psychological depressions" (various mistakes in the thought process/software that cause problems with motivation/emotions/etc, that themselves also result in certain neurotransmitters being present in abnormal amounts).
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    > Well, assuming the brain is somewhat similar to a computer, then there would exist a separation between "brain hardware" and "brain software". And both the assumption and conclusions are bizarre. There is no such distinction in the brain and the distinction in, physical man-made, hardware is also not so clear.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      > There is no such distinction in the brain How do you know this? What else would the brain be if not a computer, and if you agree that it is a computer, why do you believe it doesn't have some equivalent of "software"? > the distinction in, physical man-made, hardware is also not so clear Sure, the distinction is somewhat fuzzy, though there can be clear cut cases as well.
      - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
        > How do you know this? What else would the brain be if not a computer, and if you agree that it is a computer, why do you believe it doesn't have some equivalent of "software"? Because not all computers have this distinction, the first man-made computers did not have this distinction and the distinction still isn't that clear. “software” is simply the part the end-user is expected to be able to change. The F.S.F. simply defines it as everything stored in writable memory, but the distinction between writable and nonwritable memory is not even so clear. The human brain doesn't have a distinction between writable and nonwritable memory, and memory is implemented in circuitry itself. One can build a computer even today that has no distinction between software and hardware.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  You assume that they are “conditions” in the physical sense with a single defining cause because a psychiatrist at one point decided to award a name to a set of superficially similar symptoms. “back pains” is not a physical condition; there is a plethora of different physical conditions that can result into such superficially similar symptoms and this is the flaw psychiatry as a discipline is often criticized of, the assumption that an approach which assumes a defining cause necessarily has merit absent any evidence of such a defining cause.

podgaj 5y ago

Psychiatric conditions are physical conditions. You cannot have a change in mood with out changes in brain catecholamines. Catecholamines are physical.

Pyramus 5y ago
Why don't we have valid an reliable biomarkers for depression then? What is a 'normal' level of catecholamines? Not disagreeing that the mental/physical dichotomy is arbitrary.
- podgaj 5y ago
  Because currently it’s impossible to test the amount of catecholamines in the brain. What is a normal level? well, you know it when you feel it. There is no normal level, I get what you mean, depression exists for a reason. As does mania. These are healthy responses when we come into contact with an external stimuli. The issue is with mental illness, not mental health. With mental illness the changes happen with no apparent environmental stimulus.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    It is possible to test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catecholamine#Testing_for_catecholamines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catecholamine#Testing_for_cate... Somebody else stated it already better than I could: We do have a number of biomarkers for depression, the problem is they only correlate with the disease, so asking you how you feel in a structured way is still more indicative.
    - podgaj 5y ago
      I said they’re impossible to test in the brain, not in the plasma. It’s a huge difference. Even the serum tests for catecholamines vary so much that you have to take them specific times of the day. And it can in no way diagnosis depression or any other mood disorders through those test. There Are no biomarkers for depression right now that are widely tested or even tested minimally. I know, I asked for them all the time because I have bipolar disorder.
podgaj 5y ago
I would hope we can have a discussion about this topic rather than people just down voting. If anyone can explain to me how psychiatric conditions are not physical conditions, let me know.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  I think the main objection is that what you are saying is technically true - all human conditions are physical in the sense that humans are immensely complex dynamical systems consisting of atoms, molecules, proteins, pathways etc. However it's not helpful in terms of diagnosis and treatment, which is fundamentally different in many ways compared to physical conditions - and stigma is often a result of people no understanding the difference. To make a really simplified example: If you break your leg, a doctor will do a test, an x-ray say, recognise the leg is broken and interfere directly in one way or another with the physical system that is your body. The conscious you is not a part of this process (this is a simplified example, it does make some difference). If you 'break your mind,' again very simplified, because you are treated like sh*t at work, your parent dies, you are genetically predisposed and have no social net, and as a result develop depression, there is no (physical) test. The conscious you is a central part of the treatment. It is even thinkable to not treat the physical you but target your environment instead. Again this is a simplified example with shortcomings. Also having read your replies I believe you wanted to simply highlight that the distinction physical/mental is arbitrary and it is.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Well, assuming the brain is somewhat similar to a computer, then there would exist a separation between "brain hardware" and "brain software". Just like a bug in Windows is not a bug in the hardware, even though it is measurable in terms of electrical signals if you care to look, it could be that there exist separate psychiatric/psychological conditions (problems with the brain software) vs physical conditions (problems with the brain's hardware, such as a tumor or a glandular abnormality). They would both be measurable in physical terms, but that doesn't mean that they have to both be exactly the same thing. IF this vague notion were correct, it could mean that there could be separate diseases like "physical depressions" (that is, various defects of the body's hardware that cause abnormal amounts of certain neurotransmitters to be present in the brain, influencing thought that way) and "psychological depressions" (various mistakes in the thought process/software that cause problems with motivation/emotions/etc, that themselves also result in certain neurotransmitters being present in abnormal amounts).
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  > Well, assuming the brain is somewhat similar to a computer, then there would exist a separation between "brain hardware" and "brain software". And both the assumption and conclusions are bizarre. There is no such distinction in the brain and the distinction in, physical man-made, hardware is also not so clear.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > There is no such distinction in the brain How do you know this? What else would the brain be if not a computer, and if you agree that it is a computer, why do you believe it doesn't have some equivalent of "software"? > the distinction in, physical man-made, hardware is also not so clear Sure, the distinction is somewhat fuzzy, though there can be clear cut cases as well.
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      > How do you know this? What else would the brain be if not a computer, and if you agree that it is a computer, why do you believe it doesn't have some equivalent of "software"? Because not all computers have this distinction, the first man-made computers did not have this distinction and the distinction still isn't that clear. “software” is simply the part the end-user is expected to be able to change. The F.S.F. simply defines it as everything stored in writable memory, but the distinction between writable and nonwritable memory is not even so clear. The human brain doesn't have a distinction between writable and nonwritable memory, and memory is implemented in circuitry itself. One can build a computer even today that has no distinction between software and hardware.
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
You assume that they are “conditions” in the physical sense with a single defining cause because a psychiatrist at one point decided to award a name to a set of superficially similar symptoms. “back pains” is not a physical condition; there is a plethora of different physical conditions that can result into such superficially similar symptoms and this is the flaw psychiatry as a discipline is often criticized of, the assumption that an approach which assumes a defining cause necessarily has merit absent any evidence of such a defining cause.