Deception, the Spirit, and our bodies

[Guest MormonGator]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

No. They should throw away their pills and find other, more appropriate ways to overcome depression, perhaps not even in that order.

 

You both don't know what you are talking about, no apologies. It's okay to be ignorant, but it's not okay to try to spread your destructive ideas to people who deal with mental illness. It's the same with how I feel about anti-vaxxers. 

Thankfully you both represent a rapidly shrinking minority. A couple generations and your thoughts on mental illness will be largely forgotten. 

"The Apostle Peter wrote that disciples of Jesus Christ are to have “compassion one of another.”1 In that spirit I wish to speak to those who suffer from some form of mental illness or emotional disorder, whether those afflictions be slight or severe, of brief duration or persistent over a lifetime. We sense the complexity of such matters when we hear professionals speak of neuroses and psychoses, of genetic predispositions and chromosome defects, of bipolarity, paranoia, and schizophrenia. However bewildering this all may be, these afflictions are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor."-Elder Holland. 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by MormonGator

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

No. They should throw away their pills and find other, more appropriate ways to overcome depression, perhaps not even in that order.

...In some cases, drugs might even be a short-term solution.

That was one doctor told me when I asked him about medication vs agency and trials, etc. (He happened to be LDS -- randomly found).  This medication was not meant to be a permanent fix.  It was supposed to be something that gave me a chance to pause and collect myself without this cloud of darkness surrounding me.  Then we can work on real therapy that will actually be the permanent fix.

In the movie A Beautiful Mind  (FTR: Schizophrenia, not depression, but whatever) you hear Walter Nash say near the end "I'm on a new medication..." In real life, Nash never went back on medication.  He simply worked through it.  Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman decided that it would be irresponsible to let people see this movie and decide to simply forego medication for such a severe condition as schizophrenia.  They may have a point.  But depression is different.

I know some friends who have actually been helped by medication.  They swear by it.  But on the whole, there are an awful lot of medications that have been added to the arsenal and many which have been taken off.  With such a turn around, it is a turkey shoot whether you're going to be helped or not by various medications.

I believe the reason why is two-fold:

• Many medications really are junk or even dangerous.  As a non-proffessional I can't really give a list of which are good and which are bad.  But it is not as exact a science as they believe it is.  This also admits that there are many that are good and will actually work.
• The causes of depression are manifold.  So, if a doctor gives a prescriptions because of the symptoms rather than the cause, it's hit or miss if the medication is the right one.

Because I haven't seen a doctor about depression in years, that condition may have made progress (this is the one concession I'll make).  But it was flat out dangerous when I was being treated.

[NeuroTypical]

I agree brain pills are overprescribed, overused, and used to treat things that would be better handled in other ways.

I know something else: As our nation has progressed, our longevity and standard of living has increased.  One reason, is medical advances prolong the lives of, and  enhance quality of life for, folks who are better off because of those advances.   Some of those advances are in the realm of brain medicine.

So yeah, even assuming 99 out of 100 people take brain pills even though there's a better solution, that one is able to live independently, not hurt themselves, be a healthy member of a family, be able to perceive reality correctly, quiet the voices that would otherwise drive them to suicide, etc.  

We can work on overprescribing and all the social ills that come with it, while at the same time jumping for joy for the folks who genuinely have the choice of brain pills or nonfunction/death.

Glad the church has been talking sense since at least 2005: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2005/10/myths-about-mental-illness?lang=eng

 

[Vort]

3 hours ago, MormonGator said:

You both don't know what you are talking about, no apologies. It's okay to be ignorant, but it's not okay to try to spread your destructive ideas to people who deal with mental illness. It's the same with how I feel about anti-vaxxers.

You're exceptionally good at name-calling, MG. Kudos to you for having such a wonderful talent. You appear to be less forthright in actually giving solid logical argumentation to support your opinion.

You hold me in contempt. Fine, whatever. Your contempt does not make me wrong.

3 hours ago, MormonGator said:

Thankfully you both represent a rapidly shrinking minority. A couple generations and your thoughts on mental illness will be largely forgotten.

Yes, we know. We've heard this before, e.g. when you preach that it's only a matter of time before Jesus Christ himself talks about the holy sanctity of homosexual "marriage" and joyfully approves it as a temple ordinance. You are welcome to your wrong opinions, but you will not shout me down and bully me into meek acquiescence. You are wrong about so-called homosexual marriage, and I believe you are wrong about psychiatric drugs not being vastly overprescribed, and with a staggeringly obvious profit motive.

Seems like I remember you openly mocking those who were petrified of COVID-19 ("anti-vaxxers" comes again to mind; you might consider widening your insult vocabulary so it doesn't go stale) weeks or months before you switched your tune and decided to start shaming those who called the COVID threat overblown and the response to it dangerous, both to life and to liberty. Now if you honestly just changed your mind, that's fine. But when your argumentation consists primarily in mockery and name-calling—which it does—you would be better served rethinking your whole attitude toward discussing areas of disagreement.

40 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I agree brain pills are overprescribed, overused, and used to treat things that would be better handled in other ways.

I know something else: As our nation has progressed, our longevity and standard of living has increased.  One reason, is medical advances prolong the lives of, and  enhance quality of life for, folks who are better off because of those advances.   Some of those advances are in the realm of brain medicine.

So yeah, even assuming 99 out of 100 people take brain pills even though there's a better solution, that one is able to live independently, not hurt themselves, be a healthy member of a family, be able to perceive reality correctly, quiet the voices that would otherwise drive them to suicide, etc.  

We can work on overprescribing and all the social ills that come with it, while at the same time jumping for joy for the folks who genuinely have the choice of brain pills or nonfunction/death.

Glad the church has been talking sense since at least 2005: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2005/10/myths-about-mental-illness?lang=eng

I agree with all you have written above, or at least my understanding of it.

[Guest MormonGator]

20 minutes ago, Vort said:

Yes, we know

That’s why it bothers me for a brief time, but I forget about it soon afterwards. 

 

22 minutes ago, Vort said:

but you will not shout me down and bully me into meek acquiescence

Relax. I’m not doing that. That’s why I didn't tell you to be quiet or threaten to beat you up. But feel free to continue playing the martyr. 

[anatess2]

4 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

That’s why it bothers me for a brief time, but I forget about it soon afterwards. 

 

Relax. I’m not doing that. That’s why I didn't tell you to be quiet or threaten to beat you up. But feel free to continue playing the martyr. 

So...

Have you ever heard of this radical thing called passive aggressiion?  I wonder if there's a brain pill for that...

[priesthoodpower]

Taking a stab in the dark...

Was there no mental illness/depression back in bkofmormon days and Jesus days? if not then I feel its the modern food diet that causes it. Sugar, carbs and all this unhealthy chemicals that our bodys were not meant to have.

[laronius]

I think a major problem we face here in the US (and I know this from at least a little personal experience) is that our doctors do not receive a balanced training meaning both artificial and natural treatment of problems. They can tell you all about the drugs they proscribe but all too often they are lacking in understanding of what we eat and the things we do and their effect on our minds and bodies. I once had a doctor tell me "the good Lord made us all different and this is just something you have to deal with. Here's a prescription to manage the symptoms." Two weeks later a nutritionist showed me how my body works and recommended a change in diet and ever since I haven't had any problems. Of course there are times when medication is the only course of action to bring about the desired results but until we give our doctors broader training how can they truly know the best course of action?

[JohnsonJones]

21 hours ago, Vort said:

No. They should throw away their pills and find other, more appropriate ways to overcome depression, perhaps not even in that order.

One in six Americans takes a psychiatric drug. One in six. That's 17%. I refuse to believe that the majority of those people require psychiatric drugs to live in a normal and sane manner. I have seen depression close-up, and I have great sympathy for those who experience it. In some cases, drugs might even be a short-term solution. But evolutionary principles argue heavily against a 17% rate of needing psychiatric drugs. Darwinianism is a ruthless weeder-outer of the weak. What would society be like where one in six was seriously disabled from psychiatric issues? How could society even exist? What would be the evolutionary reason why those prone to such crippling depression would have some sort of reproductive or survival advantage?

The pharmaceutical industry is worth more than a trillion dollars. That's trillion, with a 't', TWELVE TIMES what it was in 2017. And it's only going to go up. If you can't see this for what it is, essentially Madison Avenue expanding into new and profitable territory, then I don't know what to tell you.

I am afraid of the "evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days." Insofar as the medical industry is a part of this secret combination, then yes, I'm afraid of it and want to protect my family from it. Any sane person would feel the same way.

Depends on how long you've tried to neutralize Darwinism.

For example, many of the livestock we keep today for meat we have tried to make so that they provide the maximum amount of meat at the detriment of their other abilities.  Many of these animals, if left to Darwinism in the wild, would never make it.  They would die within the first few weeks on their own.

It is because we have defied the natural order of things in relation to them and the wild.

If we consider that we may have done the same thing with mankind, it is plausible that we have far more difficulties if we lived by the rules of Darwinism rather than the modern way we have created to live in the world today.

I can believe that we have a high number of people needing to be treated by many types of medication that disrupt the natural order things work " or Darwinism" in many ways, and I think it's a good thing.  Heart disease is the number one killer in the US and it could be FAR worse.  We could have millions more die of heart disease, diabetes, and multiple other ailments that we have partially kept in check with modern medicine.  This is a good thing.

If we let nature take it's course, within a generation we would have massive numbers of deaths.  Sure, the Darwinian thing would even out and then deaths would be less, but at the cost of millions of lives.  I think that modern medicine and it's way that we have preserved life in that fashion is a good thing.

[JohnsonJones]

11 hours ago, priesthoodpower said:

Taking a stab in the dark...

Was there no mental illness/depression back in bkofmormon days and Jesus days? if not then I feel its the modern food diet that causes it. Sugar, carbs and all this unhealthy chemicals that our bodys were not meant to have.

Some of it could be genetics and those people that we are preserving. 

A prime example could be diabetes.  Those who have diabetes while younger have a genetic predisposition to have that as something they can pass on to their children.  As we preserve the lives and keep more who are diabetic alive, they pass those genes onto more generations after them.  This causes an increase of that genetic variable...thus more people who have childhood diabetes.

If we allowed natural selection to occur (aka...take away modern medicine) in theory, those people would die...in many instances before they were able to have children and pass along those genes.

Thus, in that way, while we preserve more lives, we also allow more of the genetic variables which may not be favorable to also be passed along and to create greater numbers (percentage wise as well as a general population) of those exhibiting those traits to exist.

The same probably also applies to other ailments including forms of mental illness.

Edit: To be clear, though the above items show that we are increasing the number of those with undesireable genetic traits, I think it is a good thing that we can preserve lives and help those who may other wise die.  Modern medicine is an awesome and terrific thing, and perhaps as time progresses we will find other ways to fix various ailments that have a genetic factor to actually eliminate those genetics variable from passing on while at the same time improving the quality of life and the lives of those who suffer from them.

Edited June 12, 2020 by JohnsonJones

[NeuroTypical]

11 hours ago, priesthoodpower said:

Was there no mental illness/depression back in bkofmormon days and Jesus days? 

Absolutely there was mental illness with humanity, across time.  It wasn't diagnosed or even understood.  Mentally ill folks either learned how to deal with things, or died.  Or were killed or driven off.  

Up through the Korean war, you'd get "shell shock" and get shipped home as a coward.  Around Vietnam times, we started understanding PTSD as something that could be treated.

Up until like 100-150 years ago, crazy women with insane tales about being beaten by their husbands, were branded hysterical and locked in institutions until they could properly discern reality and fulfill the role of wife.  

Yes, 100% certainty, mental illness has been with us since the fall of Adam.  It doesn't invalidate your larger point, that we write way too much up to mental illness when it's actually bad diet or lifestyle or trying to make lies the truth. 

Again, it's not an either/or situation, it's a both/and situation.  

[Guest MormonGator]

3 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

  Mentally ill folks either learned how to deal with things, or died.  Or were killed or driven off.  

Or, they developed horrible ways of coping. Like drinking heavily or acting out violently. It wasn't terribly pleasant. 

[Carborendum]

27 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Absolutely there was mental illness with humanity, across time.  It wasn't diagnosed or even understood.  Mentally ill folks either learned how to deal with things, or died.  Or were killed or driven off.  

Up through the Korean war, you'd get "shell shock" and get shipped home as a coward.  Around Vietnam times, we started understanding PTSD as something that could be treated.

Up until like 100-150 years ago, crazy women with insane tales about being beaten by their husbands, were branded hysterical and locked in institutions until they could properly discern reality and fulfill the role of wife.  

Yes, 100% certainty, mental illness has been with us since the fall of Adam.  It doesn't invalidate your larger point, that we write way too much up to mental illness when it's actually bad diet or lifestyle or trying to make lies the truth. 

Again, it's not an either/or situation, it's a both/and situation.  

Yes. Yes. and YES!

Thank you.