Limpet_Chicken
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2005
- Messages
- 6,323
Know any that will work?
N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | thegreenhand
Pretty sure Sthal's 3rd/4th edition of essential psychopharmacology is available online to dowload in pdf form for free
Not that shit again, that book is way to simplified and generalised, eg 5ht2a blockade is good for anxiety, depression and causes da release and shit like that ppl spread online everywhere, its way more complicated then that.
Know any that will work?
The whole idea behind neuroplasticity is essentially that neurons that fire together wire together and "use or lose it". It's the idea that the brain is constantly making and trimming connections through processes like long term potentiation (LTP) and long term depression (LTD). Altered neuroplasticity is associated with MDD.
I personally think the people that are neurally capable of inciting positive emotions/inciting energy with their cognition (maladaptive day dreaming essentially) have something going on before they ever start using their cognition in that manner. Simply put, they might have an overactive and ruminating type mind.
Has bipolar type II been discussed? Any signs of slight hypomania in previous years? The sodium channel antagonists like lamotrigine have been used with success in bipolar depression.
Anyways, I suspect that the same neuroplasticity/neurophysiology that lends itself to being able to induce positive feelings/energy with the mind by imaging artificial scenarios and such is probably a mind that's more vulnerable to depression because of years of activation of the default mode network, and lack of de-activation of the default mode network when one is task positive is heavily associated with cognitive dysfunction. Those mind wandering circuits are supposed to shut off one when is task positive (that is to say that normally the default mode network is engaged when one is task negative) but when it doesn't, cognitive dysfunction ensues. This is where I think mindfulness can really help, which has proven effective for depression, especially ruminating depression.
I think some people won't be helped by typical counseling type therapies unless it helps lead them to a more mindfulness-like mental state. But that's usually not the focus of most psychologists.
But as to your question, I imagine your knowledge would begin to rival that of your consultant if you studied the aforementioned sources carefully, a neuroscience text or two to give you the basics, Wikipedia where you need it, and then PubMed where the wheels hit the pavement (and there are great review articles on there as well). PMC is similar to PubMed but features full articles.
But earlier my point was that getting at the root cause is important and that it's hard to figure out what your root cause is on your own. For example, if one has insomnia all their life and then gets depressed, you wouldn't necessarily tunnel vision on the depression if the depression is a result of the insomnia - you would treat the primary insomnia. If your current state is because of abberrant thought patterns that have been occurring long before you had depression, it would be important to address that. In that scenario, all the knowledge in the world about depression might not be as helpful as someone else who can connect the dots and treat the insomnia and see if the depression begins to resolve.