Mental Illness Q and A - Mental Illness Research

By Neil Mastellone Co-Author: Jeanie Mastellone

Waiver
This information is offered for educational purposes only and is not intended to serve as medical advice. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. It is not a substitute for professional care. If your child, teen, or you have any health concerns, please consult your health care provider.
Q: What do you have to say about the painful stigma that still exists against people with a mental illness?
A: Every mental illness is essentially a subconsciously controlled and self-orchestrated "selfish reaction." A mentally ill child, teen, or adult is in strong reacting to the selfish and abusive choices of an unloving parent.
The "disease model" that is being marketed is to the public designed to take the spotlight off of abusive parents and enables doctors to prescribe powerful and costly psychiatric medications that numb patients to their reactive negative parent-related memories and feelings. Current medical theories and treatments drain people of their money, while enhancing the bank accounts of medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry.
Too bad we don't stigmatize our "greed," "selfishness," and "selfish control." Those kinds of stigma would benefit all of us.
Q: From what I have read most of the parents of teenage suicide victims claim that they had no clue that their children were having a problem. Could that actually be true?
A: Of course not. Nor is it true that young people kill themselves or try to kill themselves because they got a poor grade, were jilted by a lover, were taunted by friends, were depressed over losing at a sport, were rejected because of their sexual orientation, or were at the negative effect of drugs. There is always more going on.
There are always deeper reasons that usually relate to parents and how the suicide victim was treated at home. Parent related sexual abuse is probably the main ingredient that provides the "emotional charge" that provides impetus to the drive to end one's life.
Q: Do you think that someday we will no longer view mental illness as a "disease?"
A: I hope so.
I also hope that we quickly come to view all mental illnesses as being the "selfish reactions" that they actually are. Otherwise, the mentally ill will suffer in their denial, reaction, and illusion, with no realistic way to heal from their pain.
Q: Don't the studies that show imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brains of mentally ill individuals, and structural and energetic differences between the brains of people with mental illnesses and normal people, and the studies that link certain genes to particular mental disorders prove that mental illnesses are "biologically caused?
A: Mental illnesses do not have a biological cause. Psychology and a person's negative intentions and choices cause mental illnesses. Medical studies assert that they do but, in fact, they prove no such thing.
Researchers refuse to consider that psychology can and regularly does affect biology. Obvious examples of how that happens occur constantly in everyday life. These example stare researchers the in the face. However, not because they are ignorant, which they are not, but for self-serving reasons they choose to see and interpret facts as they want to see the or are told to see them.
Consider how a person's choices to become fearful or angry will affect the physical body's heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, muscle tension, the flow of brain chemicals, hormones, and blood distribution. These are clear examples of psychology altering conditions in the physical body. When medical researchers look at brain scans and see physical abnormalities, they are looking are "effects" not "causes."
The medical and pharmaceutical establishments have "good" self-serving reasons for putting the cart before the horse.
Q: Do you deny that the drug therapies for severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, clinical depression, even schizophrenia remarkably effective?
A: Yes. Psychiatric drugs are somewhat effective at controlling symptoms, but only for a time for a time, and not for all sufferers.
However, as every mentally ill person knows, more powerful doses or more combinations of drugs are usually needed to keep reactive negative memories and feelings from leaking into conscious awareness. Drugs can control and also produce painful side-effects, but they do not heal.
Over-medicating by mental health experts, especially the drugging of children and the elderly, has gotten way out of hand.
Q: What do you think of electro-shock therapy?
A. I think it is a barbaric practice.
Q: What are your thoughts about the Cognitive Therapies that are so popular?
A. Cognitive Therapies have a major flaw. They assume that "wrong thinking" is the problem. In fact, "wrong choices" are the core problem. Remember, before we think a thought, experience a feeling, take an action, or have a reaction, we subconsciously choose the thought, feeling, action, or reaction. If that were not the case, everyone's inner experience would be totally chaotic.

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Depression As A Misdiagnosis

Depression is a common mood disorder that a number of people seek assistance with. Unfortunately, some of these people end up misdiagnosed as depressed when they actually have bipolar disorder. Depression is a component of bipolar disorder. Though they are both mood disorders, they are entirely separate afflictions that require starkly different treatments. Misdiagnosis derails a person's wellness goals until it is corrected.
Psychiatric and medical professionals that do not have specific knowledge of bipolar disorder can easily overlook it. The reason is simple. A person that is depressed is going to understand how terrible they probably feel. They will visit their doctor, talk about their depression, how they're feeling, and hopefully be treated for it. The problem is that the depressive person does not always associate their mental upswings as a negative experience even if they are destructive. Anything is a welcome respite and positive so long as it is not the consuming void of depression.
Misdiagnosis creates a very drastic problem. The average treatment for bipolar disorder includes an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. The antidepressant is meant to bring the lower end of the person's moods to a higher level. The mood stabilizer creates a ceiling that prevents the bipolar person from escalating. Treatment for depression does not include a mood stabilizer. A bipolar person that is misdiagnosed as depressed and is on antidepressants will just keep escalating until they finally hit their breaking point. The mood stabilizer is not there to provide the necessary ceiling. That is extremely dangerous. It has resulted in suicides, homicides, institutionalization, and self-destruction.
There is good news and bad news! The good news is that the symptoms of the manic periods of bipolar disorder are fairly easy once a person understands what they look like. The bad news is that not a whole lot of people understand what Bipolar Disorder is as opposed to the mental image they have through the media or their own opinions.
The answer is in the question- how does the person feel when they are not depressed? Do they have unlimited energy? How about very scattered thoughts that either do not connect or are entirely erratic? How is the person sleeping? A manic bipolar can get very little to no sleep and still not be physically tired. Manic thinking causes a person to draw conclusions and have thoughts that they normally would not. It is common for a bipolar person to look back on an unwell period and question why they ever would have performed an action that they did. Impulsive decisions and spending are also very common.
The most important question at the center of it all is simply, "Are the periods where I am not depressed just as destructive when I am?" A person that is answering yes to some of these questions should ask to be screened for bipolar disorder.
Depression is easily treatable for a number of people. People that have more psychiatric problems going on will have a much harder time of things. A depressive person struggling to find wellness for years should ask to be screened whether they feel they meet the criteria or not. A dual diagnosis of depression and some form of anxiety disorder is common. Manic symptoms are often mistaken for the signs of an anxiety disorder because they share many similarities.
The final thing to look for is a pattern. Bipolar Disorder typically emerges during puberty. The Bipolar person's manic unwell periods follow a certain pattern. An event will trigger them, they will begin to escalate, their mind will gain speed until it reaches the peak, and then they will plummet down into a deep depression much worse than what they normally deal with. The next few days after that the person will feel pretty good but not to an unhealthy extent. Finally, they will settle back to whatever their baseline mood is. This pattern will have repeated itself several times over the course of the person's life.
Misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder as depression ensures that the bipolar person will not find wellness.

I'm a Type 2 Bipolar who spent uses his experiences to help people struggling with Depression and Bipolar Disorder to lead better lives. I aim to help educate them and their loved ones through my website at http://www.bipolarmanifesto.com

How Does Anxiety Affect Someone With Bipolar Disorder?

For people who are suffering from bipolar disorder, their problems may be compounded by anxiety. In 1921, Dr. Emil Kraepelin described it is as an "excited depression" and "anxious mania". According to him, anxiety is one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder. This view is highly debatable because some psychologists argue that anxiety is not a symptom. How does anxiety affect a person with bipolar disorder?
To understand how anxiety can affect people who are suffering from bipolar disorder, it's necessary to answer the question from both angles. On one side, let's look at anxiety as a symptom of bipolar disorder. In this case, the bipolar patient will suffer from less anxiety as the disorder improves. On the other side, let's look at anxiety as a condition which is separate from this condition. In this case, the bipolar patient's condition may improve but the anxiety problems may still persist. The patient will receive separate treatment for anxiety and bipolar disorder. Now, the problem is that antidepressant medication is used to treat anxiety but the medication is not suitable for bipolar patients because it makes the disorder worse.
When anxiety is a symptom, the patients say that they feel some kind of "agitation". This can be manifested in the way the patients walk around the room as they are being interviewed or they are found to be picking their nails. Other times, the patients may experience the feeling like they have "too much energy" within their skin or their thoughts are racing very fast. In more severe cases, the person may not be able to perform any task at all because he or she will be experiencing racing thoughts that are extremely random and overbearing so the person will not be able to concentrate, even for a few seconds. It can be very hard for people who experience this kind of anxiety to another person.
Sometimes, this form of anxiety may also be accompanied by irritability, which is a manic symptom. In this case, the person may turn to a short-term solution like alcohol to ease the awful experience. When these attacks occur, you will have an impulse to want to end the suffering. Alcohol can help to reduce the suffering for a couple of hours but the symptoms will return with greater fury when the effect wears off. Some people just keep drinking to control the symptoms but ultimately, they fall into a spiral, which may result in successful suicide. If you are suffering from anxiety as a symptom of bipolar disorder, you should seek professional help at once.
In the case where anxiety is a separate condition from bipolar disorder, it can appear in various forms. The bipolar patient may suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder or specific phobias. Specific phobias refer to the fear of heights, water, spider, snakes, and so on. Again, it's best to seek professional help when you are suffering from these types of anxiety.

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