Depression research on the scale of space program ?
Q.I am so sick of reading about stupid ass clinical studies researching another use for an SSRI or more mumbo jumbo psychology studies bullshit. Fuck that. We need a major movement in this country. We need more money spent on the neurobiological CAUSES of mental illness. We need research programs for mental illness on the scale of the current AIDS research. The AIDS researchers are well financed and they have the political will to find better treatments for AIDS. There is a lot of political support for AIDS research. But there is little political support for mental illness research. Nobody gives a fuck about depressed people.
A.We haven't a hope in hell of finding a neurobiological CAUSE for depression (even if there is one) given current understanding of neurobiology. Maybe a few helpful indicators may crop up. But cause! Not in the near future. I realize that Amos, thats why we need a shitload of money...way more than they are spending now...to be spent on research into this subject. I totally realize they barely even understand what is really going on with depression and various other types of mental illness. That is the whole problem. Where there is a will there is a way and if some powerful politician wanted it or depressed people had a movement going on like the AIDS people have got going for them, this problem would have a much more bright future. Thats why Im voting for Al Gore because he seems to have the will to try to dramatically improve mental illness treatment and care. Compare the amount of research that goes on with AIDS, cancer, heart disease and then compare it to the amount that goes on with mental illness research. The mental illnesses research is just lipservice research. They are barely making a dent into the problem. There are a lot of people for whom these various psychiatric drugs dont work that great for...20% to 30% dont get a good response from ANY med. Thats a good sized portion of the population whom are just sucking up pain and being disabled. If they can do the human genome project and send a man to the moon, they can fix clinical depression. If they wanted to spend the money bad enough it could be fixed. I'm paraphrasing something from someone whose name I unfortunately forgot, but it went something like, "any system sufficiently complex to invent algebra is too complex to understand itself." I have a background in science, and I believe in the merits of reductionism, but I have to wonder if we'll ever discover more than indicators...
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