#mood stabilisers

[feckcops]

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis – Book Review

“In Sedated, Davies shows that the so-called mental health crisis stems from the assumption that mental illnesses arise within the ‘broken brain’ of an individual sufferer. This is the ‘biochemical model’ of mental illness. In contrast to what many of us assume, the idea that mental illnesses are caused by an imbalance of neurochemicals and can only be treated by using psychotropics like antidepressants, or mood stabilisers or antipsychotics, is a theory that has never been proven. Neither depression nor schizophrenia, neither anxiety nor bipolar disorder, have ever been observed in vivo. No one has ever been able to point to an MRI or CT scan and say, ‘Look! There it is!’

“According to Davies, this is because the biochemical model of mental illness is wrong. He argues that many diagnosed conditions (though in his book he sticks to the example of depression), are not down to malfunctioning grey matter, but are, instead, an understandable reaction to wider societal problems. In Sedated, Davies painstakingly debunks the individual, brain-based view of mental illness and explains why its apparently unquestioned acceptance by the general public as the only means of conceiving human distress should concern us. Not only does our taking this model for granted encourage the administration of potent drugs to those who don’t necessarily need them, it also results in the obfuscation of other plausible sources of hardship such as poverty, discrimination, loneliness, and environmental factors such as pollution. These are undoubtedly complex and more challenging to tackle than the comparably simple option of taking a pill every day. Pharmaceutical companies created the narrative of the broken brain to profit from them, and most governments of industrialised countries went along with it.

“This wider discussion about how business, economics, and politics shaped psychiatry and vice versa is central to the main thrust of Sedated. Through the course of the book, Davies plots developments in psychiatry against those in the UK’s social, political, and economic spheres in order to demonstrate how the neoliberal, uber self-reliant free-market nurtured by Margaret Thatcher’s government of the 1980s has shaped how we understand mental wellness and illness, as well as ourselves, right up to the present day: ‘By putting economic servitude before real individual health and flourishing, our priorities have become dramatically and dangerously misplaced, and more suffering, paradoxically, has been the unhappy result’. A key takeaway from this well-evidenced historical analysis is that the issues with our mental health system are deeply entrenched; simply throwing more money at the situation, by funding more facilities and professionals, will merely perpetuate the same ‘failing approach’.”

[xxivletxx]

rosado: adorable artist

[faithfromanewperspective]

okay okay okay so my lovely irl neurokin friend who is also a psychologist in training and has done Actual Research on the you know, psychology side of things discovered as part of her career and journey to diagnosis the theory that says adhd is not a lack of dopamine (as in less of it) but an overabundance of dopamine receptors. basically that means for some of us, in order to have a high enough amount of them get hit to Do Things we need. much more than a regular neurotypical of Brain Chemical because there are So Many Receptors For It To Go Sit In.

(note this theory is a theory and not proven 100% and as most of us adhders have a billion other things going on, it could also relate to a highly correlated Other Thing. all it is is pushing back on the adhd-is-a-lack-of-dopamine theory in a very proactive and thoughtful way. that theory is also valid. and it could also be both. see later)

anyway a while back i was (mistakenly) like 'oh don't stimulants and antipsychotics do opposite things why prescribe both but also wtf do you do if you have adhd and you know, Something Else that might require antipsychotics helppp' (legit i def procrastinated some enviro assignments attempting, poorly, to research this because no one knows shit about brains or can explain it in a way you don't need a phd to understand if they do. even my psychiatrist doesn't know. i asked)

anyway in some recent do-i-need-a-new-medication research (getting hypomanic at work is Not A Vibe) i stumbled across the fact that antipsychotics and some mood stabilisers actually block some dopamine receptors. combine this with the well known fact that stimulants prevent the re-uptake of dopamine (as in the mechanism in your head that gets rid of it back into the Chemical Scrapyard when its job is done), meaning stimulants cause more dopamine to be out and about at once, tada!! so:

adhd symptoms from Not Enough Dopamine=solved! yay stimulants

adhd symptoms from Too Many Dopamine Spots=solved! bc antipsychotics block off some Dopamine Spots so some of us can work like a Normal Person again

so in summary, in the Right Amount For Your Brain stimulants and antipsychotics can be a really good combo :-))

guys i think i figured out the chemistry of adhd meds vs antipsychotics and their relation to dopamine does anyone want to hear about it

[acebytaemin]

good luck, i really believe you’ll get taemin tickets 🩵 your taemin tattoo should be enough to grant you access if you ask me

thank you angel 😔 im really not very confident at all but i hope your well wishes count somehow

[blixabargelds]

has adjusting to mood stabilisers made anyone else ffucking stupid before or am i suddenly developing dementia

[verlake]

some podcast episodes will ask why the vampire lestat was a commercial success when it's objectively, not a good book, as compared with interview with the vampire which is objectively a better book and a commercial flop. and then they will posit an answer that has you crying on the bus home.

[so0ppa]

need me a lesbian situationship but gd i might be too mentally ill for smn like that for a while

[donttouchtheneednoggle]

Was anyone gonna tell me birth control was this powerful???

[saintknightley]

i do want to get a new job but it’s really hard to tell people the reason you aren’t applying to jobs is because last time you were it made your mental health so bad and you got so paranoid that you were convinced people were going to come to your house and shoot you about it

[venusjailer]

Sometimes I wish the American Psycho fandom was bigger because I look at the fandoms of other shows I’m into (currently Succession) (hmu if you want to inanely fangirl over it with me btw) and there’s always so much discourse and theories and posts and stuff constantly going on, like HOURLY, and it’s so much fun. But then on the other hand it feels like all of us on AP tumblr are just a little gang of pals and it’s so peaceful and safe here without any negativity <3

Also everyone here is like. An insanely talented artist in whatever format (drawing, digital art, writing). And I just love how such a silly little cult film from the turn of the century manages to bring us all together to share our love and our art and our appreciation of it with one another

[nest-being]

setting myself some goals for the rest of the month!! i'm gonna do 10 minutes of yoga and half and hour on the treadmill every day bc i've honestly been way too bed locked recently!! also gonna try and actually eat the fruit i buy instead of forgetting about it like i always do 😅

if anyone has a favourite yoga routine they like to do in the mornings, i'd love to know!

[obstinatecondolement]

Hand washed some underwear in the wee small hours so I would have clean underwear tomorrow. I am actually kind of killing it, guys. Mental illness who?

[blixabargelds]

day 723 of missing being able to write

[harbingersecho]

i had to draw rui & hui real quick, they're too adorable

[windupaidoneus]

anywayyy. good night! heres to a better tomorrowwww

[shiraishi--kanade]

helo :) u dont have to reply to this whatsoever if you dont want to, im just letting u know that i did notice your ask on my oc group’s account !! and ill likely be waiting until i publish a few initial posts before i respond :3 which will probably be in the next few days depending on how fast i can draw stuff out akdhsj

so me not responding in quick succession isnt bc youve done anything wrong or ur ask made me uncomfy, im just waiting things out a bit !! ik it makes me nervous when people dont respond to my stuff relatively quickly and im not sure if its the same for you so,, just in case akdhajsh

sorry for rambling at u AGAIN and i am very appreciative of u engaging,, oh god this message is too long now for such a short purpose HAHA ,,,

i hope ur having a lovely day !!!

Oh no absolutely no worries! Take as long as you need to or feel free to ignore asks you don't want to deal with, honestly. God knows I have way too many asks in my own inbox because I've either forgot to answer or didn't know how to. It's all up to you but I appreciate the message!