If psychological illness is caused by the lack of certain chemicals in the brain......?

Question

and not by life conditions or our surroundings and experiences, please explain feral children? In case you don't know what a feral child is, it is a child who has been raised by animals and has usually had little or no human contact and displays the characteristics of the animals that raised it, such as barking like a dog and running around on all fours. Do you really think they became that way due to a chemical imbalance in the brain? Why is it that 99% of major psychological illnesses have a story behind them. Like the people who were abused as children abuse their children, or the bullied kid that shoots up his entire school. What ever happened to the concept of hate breeds hate and all that good stuff? I truely believe we become a product of our surroundings and life experiences and that psychological drugs were created to make doctors and pharmacutical companies wealthy. Your thoughts?

To me it is obvious that people are a product of their enviornment, surroundings experiences, etc. That is why depressed people produce depressed offspring. However, if you took a what you call genetically ill patient from birth and put them in a psychologically stable home, they would be surrounded by a different environment, which would produce different results. Tabo makes a valid point, if it is caused by a lack of chemicals in the brain, why then does the problem still exist when these chemicals are prescribed?

Jadore, from my understanding, zyprexa is a drug used to help patients who have schizophrenia, why on earth would these drugs be prescribed to someone who doesn't have a chemical imbalance, the same goes for depression, bi-polar and any other form of mental illness? The answer is because there is no imbalance, we become ill due to our surroundings and experiences, if this were not the case, people wouldn't become depressed or suffer from ptsd unless they had the imbalance before the incident occured. ;-(

I am not giving thumbs down for any answers, this is a disturbing topic to me, and although I might not agree with your answer, I will respect it. ;-)

res ispa, you bring up many valid points, the first being thing that caught my attention is the word theory, because that is exactly what psychology is based upon, theories, not facts. second you mention something about safety and schizophrenia, the more serious the illness the higher the safety risks are for the drugs related to that particular drug. Some side affects include, mental retardation, diabetes, heart failure, suicide and in very rare cases death. These are only a few. So why are they prescribing drugs to people who hit a bump in the road, knowing full well the risks if they don't have an imbalance? Third you mentioned cost, agreeable claim, however, most psychological drugs cost between 200 to 300 dollars for a one month prescription, it is fact that mental illness studies show that 10% of the population suffers from some form of illness and that rate continues to rise yearly along with new mental conditions yearly. I am not convinced this is necessary. :-(

Answer 1

I believe that the chemical imbalance is not the cause but rather a by product of a emotional or spiritual problem. Medications can help reduce the symptoms, but they can't "fix" the root problem. Just as pain meds can temporarily deaden the pain, but do not heal or remove it, so psych meds reduce the symptoms but do not "fix" anything. Want proof? Get off the meds and see if the problem is still there!

Answer 2

It isn't an easy thing to discover the causes of things. Like others on here have said not all psychological ilnesses are caused by chemicals in the brain. However, it probably isn't the case that all or even most psychological disorders can be written off as environmental. There are theories out there like the Diathesis Stress Model that portray the interaction between the environment and genes. How would an environmentally focused theory explain schizophrenia when there are studies showing strong genetic correlations? The fact of the matter is that any evidence pointing to only genes or only environment are far and few between nowadays. The reason being that modern psychology doesn't look at the world through the lense of Behaviorism anymore. Most psychologists are interactionists; that is to say that most psychologists believe that genes and environment interact with each other to produce behaviors. As for the final comment about doctors and pharmaceutical companies, some of that maybe true but it also costs quite a lot to find drugs that will work without killing the user and millions of dollars must be invested to find one drug. That is why these drugs usually are expensive. Also some of the drugs that we do have have proven successful at at least assuaging some of the symptoms of mental illness but are by no means a cure. One final point I would like to make is that the fact that most cognitive therapies, i.e. therapies that don't use drugs, don't have that high of success rates. So even though drugs don't cure, cognitive therapies are most certainly no cure either. Thus the fact that drugs don't work and cognitive therapies don't work seems to point in the direction of an interaction between environment and genes. Which way this causation runs needs further research and can vary from situation to situation or mental illness to mental illness.

Answer 3

Mental illness can be due to chemical imbalance in the brain, which may be hereditary or a genetic mutation. Mental illness can also be due to life events, which can trigger chemical imbalance. The latter type is more often referred to as psychological rather than mental.

You're right. Evil begets evil. Hate breeds hate. Most people take revenge, or at least wish to, when they're done wrong. Few people are not the product of their environment. If a normal person (well, in the accepted range of normality) was never harmed and traumatized, the person wouldn't acquire any psychological illness. If a mentally ill person was born in and remains in loving, nurturing care, the person would stand a better chance to cope with the illness than if he/she was in an apathetic or abusive environment.

Psychiatric drugs do help some people with mental illness, but many of the same drugs turn others suicidal. Side effects of drugs can take years to manifest. I really believe that It is best to leave them as the very last resort. Psychiatrists are basically medical doctors specializing in treating mental or psychological problems. Drugs are an important 'tool' to them. They're a lot more ready to prescribe them than a psychologist would.

Answer 4

First of all, I'm not sure that feral children are considered to be mentally ill. They are not socialized in the same way other humans are.

Many mental illnesses are caused by imbalances in chemicals in the brain. This is not inconsistent with the things you have mentioned here. We don't fully understand how, but the condition of the brain and the condition of the mind are connected. This means that unhealthy behaviors can come from chemical imbalances. In fact, I'm not sure how the examples you've given are supposed to go against this. Many mental illnesses have a genetic component; that is, if your parent had an illness you are more likely to have that too. This could very well be a partial explanation for why things like abuse are perpetuated in families. Maybe you could make things more clear by adding detail.

Mental illness has been around since the beginning of time, long before pharmaceutical companies existed. I sincerely hope that nobody has to use these drugs in the future, but I'm happy that they're around. They've certainly helped the lives of many people I know.

Answer 5

Jennifer,
I will just address the feral children question because you already have such good answers ahead of mine. Feral children are not caused by either psychological or genetic factors. Feral, or more likely somewhat feral children are extremely rare. There is doubt that any truly feral (feral means raised in the wild, or just wild) children because to have a feral child, it must be raised in the wild.

Some children are somewhat feral because they have been kept in conditions that are extremely destructive, for example, children kept in closets or boxes with bars on them for many years. At least theoretically, you could make a child feral by refusing to educate or train them in any way, and expose them only to animals. Unfortunately, these conditions do occur.

There was a Russian girl who was essentially raised by a dog, and was fed and given water, just like the dog was. There was a show done about her that comes on every so often. It's painfully sad to watch. If you are majoring in psychology you might want to watch it, but I must warn you, it will stay with you forever.

Answer 6

Many psychological illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances and they are heritable. Bi-Polar disorder is especially considered genetic.

However, chemicals and genes never tell the whole story. Of course environment is a factor. A person may have a configuration of chemicals or even genes that would predispose them for a mental disorder. But if nothing ever happens in their lives that triggers it, those physical factors could remain dormant.

Answer 7

How can a feral child be considered to have a psychological illness when they act and do what they've been exposed to? That is such an unfair assumption. No they do not suffer from brain chemical problems. Perhaps, that reasoning is considered for a lack of explanation that is suitable enough.**Hate breeds hate, love breeds love, neglect breeds neglect and indifference breeds all of them except for love.**We are a product of our environments and the people we deal with; each being a catalyst. When those who do not need such drugs are forced to take such drugs; it is for the sole purpose of making doctors and pharmaceutical companies richer.

Answer 8

Not all of them are caused by lack or over production of certain chemicals.

PTSD has nothing to do with chemicals, there are so many different syndromes that aren't caused by chemicals...

people on mood stabilizers such as zyprexa, and others are not being treated as having over or under production of brain chemicals.

this is a hard subject because you can classify so many different disorders as either chemical or non chemical... they all inter twine somewhere...

I see your point, but not all are because of brain chemicals.

Bulimia for some is a chemical problem for some, and an environemtal for others.

just because the one girl that's bulimic suffers from BPD, doesn't mean the next girl suffers for the same reason. she could be suffering because people told her she was fat...

Answer 9

"Feral children" will still produce the same chemicals (serotonin, dopamine etc) as we "normal people" produce. Pharmaceutical companies are saying the cause of psychological illnesses is from a "chemical imbalance" in our brains and their specific drug, they recently designed, will treat it the symptoms advertised. They want us to buy their "legal" drugs, and hopefully become addicted to their product. The government is taxing millions of dollars from just one company, more than us average employed citizens earn in our lifetime. Imagine, how much the government taxes from drug companies, tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals, unbelievably massive amounts. Some laws just bother me....

Peace

Answer 10

I think this question brings up the nature/nurture debate.
I think some psychological illnesses can be caused, at least in part, by enviromental variables. Also, I believe people can have genetic predispositions to certain psychological illnesses.