My mother is a psychiatric nurse and her second husband a psychiatrist, so in addition to an exposure to the science of the natural world, I was also inscribed with the idea that human behavior is a result of synapses in the brain. I never had the fear of determinism/nihilism that Pinker describes, but rather was told that many psychological disorders (depression, bi-polar disorder, etc.) were caused by chemical imbalances that altered the "normal" neurological functioning of the brain. I was always skeptical of the need for things like anti-depressants, partly due to what I percieved as my father's (the dentist) general distrust for them. Dentistry and psychiatry are hardly similar. What my dad does is essentially lobotomize a tooth. Something's wrong with it so he cuts a small portion out and considers it "fixed." It's not a very subtle discipline but is, of course, absolutely necessary.
I started to question the use of psychoactive drugs when I was in my adolescence. Obviously being a teenager is never easy for anyone. You become self-conscious, irrational, moody, full of angst and often downright depressed. This is because your brain is actually re-wiring itself to prepare you for your adult life. I remember a particular point when things got "bad" for me and my mom wanted me to see a psychiatrist. I absolutely refused. On some level I knew that my mood was being affected by a physiological change that was naturally occurring and I didn't want to interfere with the process. I became VERY upset with her for trying to "dope me up" so I'd feel better. She took my response as blatant disrespect to her line of work. A few years later, one of my younger sisters was going through a similar rough patch and started 'cutting' - a practice where one makes small cuts on their body because the pain creates an endorphin rush. My sister mentioned that she had just finished doing this to a friend while chatting online. The friend phoned it in to 911 and an ambulance pulled up outside our house 3 minutes later.
My sister was taken to an inpatient psych ward for 3 months and placed on anti-depressants. When she got home, she wasn't the same person. The drugs had changed her, and not for the better. In thinking about "the ghost in the machine," I have to disagree that the soul of a person is something completely beyond physiology. My sister lost her soul for a few years of her life because of very strong medication that drastically altered the chemistry of her brain. This is a situation in which the laws of the state (because she was a minor) and the beliefs of my parents - in my opinion - interfered with something that was part of a natural process. It's a hard line to define, but I don't believe that she was suicidal in any way but rather following a stupid trend that a bunch of angst-ridden girls participate in.
I started to question the use of psychoactive drugs when I was in my adolescence. Obviously being a teenager is never easy for anyone. You become self-conscious, irrational, moody, full of angst and often downright depressed. This is because your brain is actually re-wiring itself to prepare you for your adult life. I remember a particular point when things got "bad" for me and my mom wanted me to see a psychiatrist. I absolutely refused. On some level I knew that my mood was being affected by a physiological change that was naturally occurring and I didn't want to interfere with the process. I became VERY upset with her for trying to "dope me up" so I'd feel better. She took my response as blatant disrespect to her line of work. A few years later, one of my younger sisters was going through a similar rough patch and started 'cutting' - a practice where one makes small cuts on their body because the pain creates an endorphin rush. My sister mentioned that she had just finished doing this to a friend while chatting online. The friend phoned it in to 911 and an ambulance pulled up outside our house 3 minutes later.
My sister was taken to an inpatient psych ward for 3 months and placed on anti-depressants. When she got home, she wasn't the same person. The drugs had changed her, and not for the better. In thinking about "the ghost in the machine," I have to disagree that the soul of a person is something completely beyond physiology. My sister lost her soul for a few years of her life because of very strong medication that drastically altered the chemistry of her brain. This is a situation in which the laws of the state (because she was a minor) and the beliefs of my parents - in my opinion - interfered with something that was part of a natural process. It's a hard line to define, but I don't believe that she was suicidal in any way but rather following a stupid trend that a bunch of angst-ridden girls participate in.
So I guess my position is one of placing a high value on the science of the natural world and the science of physiology. I believe that who we are as people can be boiled down to chemical reactions that happen in our brains and that there are natural differences between all of us that make us unique on some level. I fear that we are in an age where "there's a pill for every ill," and that the medical industry purports this idea of a normalcy that can be achieved through pharmaceutical treatment. I kind of feel offended by this because in also seems to apply that most of us are not OK the way that we are. I think I must believe that our bodies and minds are much more resilient than we give them credit for and that, like the natural world, we can repair, adapt and grow around much more than we think we can.
I agree with your views on the dangers of an overmedicated society. Instead of embracing the uniqueness of an individual’s physiology, it seems that pharmaceutical companies are trying to homogenize the outcomes of bodily reactions. Although I also believe that the human response is based on chemical reactions and electrical synapses, I would like to emphasize the dependence of these processes on its environment. The host of these chemical processes, the individual, should be held responsible for altering their surroundings to optimize their physiology; for example through exercise, good diet, and the types of social interactions. Unfortunately, what drug prescription for psychiatric diseases does is essentially to remove an individual’s responsibility for their behaviors, while affecting the function of other organ systems. I believe that when a person is prescribed a medication to cure emotions, it creates a sense of helplessness. Mother Nurture gives us a chance to mold the properties that Mother Nature has endowed us, but psychiatric drugs remove this important window of opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your ideology that today's society has a "pill for every ill" and I applaud you for recognizing that mentality is not the only one, despite being raised in a scientific-swaying environment. Much like your sister, my ex boyfriend was medicated from the ages of 12 to 18 in response to his upbeat, hyper, and energetic disposition. At that point in time his teachers were frustrated and parents did not know where to turn, so in a moment of despair his dad told his mother that if she did not find a solution by the next morning, that my ex would be going to military boarding school. She spent the night at the library and came across the term "chemical imbalance of the brain," excited that this might explain her son's life situation, they took him to a doctor and sure enough the brain scans determined that he had a "chemical imbalance," and he went on to be a "ghost in the machine" for the next six years and had to deal with side effects that no adolescent should deal with ranging from acne to sexual problems (which in mind in turn caused him to over-exert himself and become overly promiscuous when he got off the medication and entered college). Instead of embracing him for his individuality, they alienated him for qualities that I personally considered gifts. I believe that people should be appreciated for what they are, and if they are not given the opportunity to deal with their outbursts or learn to focus their active minds and bodies, then they are not truly given the chance to come into their own, and in a sense people outside of themselves are messing with their "fate" and "determining" the outcome of their lives, positive or negative. Of course, I believe that people can overcome distressing periods of their lives, but I know for a fact that if my (at this point hypothetic) child is acting out, getting down, or has a bit to much energy, they will not be receiving a pill, but I might put them on a sports team for extra socialization and exercise (to shed some of that extra energy).
ReplyDeleteI found a lot of truth in what you wrote and I also found a lot of similarity to my own situations in life. When I was younger I went through serious phases of depression and self mutilation as well. Neither of my parents had a background in medicine but debated heavily whether or not to put me on medication. I even wavered back and forth on what to do. Like with your sister, I had had several close friends and relatives go on drugs for similar things and come out never being the same. It scared me to watch them change and become dependent on something other then themselves. Ultimately we chose to skip the drugs and work on it other ways. To this day I'm thankful that I stayed off of them and have also developed quite a distrust. Well I do believe that some psychological disorders are caused by issues in the brain, it's hard for me to look past the cons of the medicines used to treat them.
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ReplyDeleteMy post here is more a response to Jeehye's reply than to Chris's original post, although I may get back to issues that Chris raised in the process. I found two statements made by Jeehye particularly interesting. The first is her argument that, although human response is based on chemical reactions and electrical synapses, "the host of these chemical processes, the individual, should be held responsible for altering their surroundings to optimize their physiology; for example through exercise, good diet, and the types of social interactions." She then argues that prescribing drugs for psychiatric diseases essentially removes an individual's responsibility for their own behaviors.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting here is that the individual, unless on psychiatric medication, is assumed to have full responsibility for their actions. I would like to complicate this idea of individual responsibility and environmental influence. We know that some environmental toxins can cause physiological and/or psychological "disorders" (I suppose you could just call them "conditions" to be more neutral) in children (whether exposed directly, or having parents who were exposed to these toxins). We also know that people who are poor and/or nonwhite in the U.S. have much higher rates of exposure to certain environmental toxins, due to living in contaminated neighborhoods or working in hazardous occupations. This current economic/racial stratification in the U.S. is the result of a long history of political, economic, and cultural developments, all created by interactions between humans, as well as between humans and the nonhuman world. It has led in some cases to more children of one race/class being born with a particular "disorder" than children of another race/class. Whose responsibility is it to make sure that these children become healthy, happy, self-supporting adults?
In addition, while I am not a cultural determinist, I would also like to complicate the distinction between Nature and Nurture in the contemporary context. Human activities have affected our environment on so broad a scale that when a child is born a certain way today, it is difficult to claim that he/she is just "naturally" like that. That is, the physical form that a child takes when born can be influenced not only the activities of the mother during pregnancy, but the activities of others (what kinds of chemicals were allowed into foods from the supermarket, what kinds of substances were recommended to pregnant mothers as safe to ingest, etc). Epigentics (which was briefly mentioned in class) provides some fascinating possibilities for how DNA expression in an individual can be influenced by environmental factors experienced by their parents.
To bring my response back down to earth from the hypothetical situations that I seem drawn to, I think that I, like Alice, would tend to try all sorts of changes (changing diet, physical activity, social environment, etc.) before allowing my child to be put on psychiatric medications. However, my decision would not be based on a notion of my child retaining autonomy, personal responsibility, or some sort of "real self," but rather on evidence that psychiatric medications often cause behaviors that I would like to avoid, while eating a healthy diet and getting exercise seem to have more consistently positive outcomes.
Oh Chris, This is hard. And it seems like we all have a parallel story. For every one the drugs helps..... When it's a sister--or US--it seems kind of callous to go all 'science / theory' on it, but I've got to wonder (with Elliot and Ian Hacking) about why these transient conditions show up when they do. Nobody cut in my high school (misery took other shapes). Now we all know someone.
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