The Book of Ashes

On the Topic of Mental Disorders 8:50AM

On the Topic of Mental Disorders

A mental disorder is like depression except with a subtly different twist to the condition. Depression is just a stronger form of mild depression (eg I'm just feeling a little down at the moment) that every one of us experiences at some time in our lives. The scary thing is that a mental disorder is not that far removed from a normal working brain and can occur to any normal working brain. You just have to hit that bad patch and then you're stuffed.

How does depression occur? Effectively its just a chemical imbalance, kicked off by non-productive (sad) thoughts. This can be a self feeding loop. The worse the chemical imbalance, the more bad thoughts you have which feed the chemical imbalance even further.

Is it so simple that our thoughts control our emotions? Effectively yes. You've seen a sad person. Take them out for a trip or to do something cool and they slowly pick up. Leave them to themselves and they just get worse. The thoughts feed themselves. You keep thinking about the bad things and things get worse. But if its all to do with your thoughts, can't you get yourself out of depression? Yes, but its hard work. Like wading upstream against the current. All you have to do is repeat over and over to yourself, I am happy that I have this, and this and this and that I'm not like so and so and I have my health and I can do this, etc, etc. Slowly you will pick up. You have to be vigilant though, the chemical imbalance is still there, trying to push those sad thoughts back in and your happy ones will take a while to have any affect.

So depression is just a mind set? A condition of ever cycling sad thoughts? Well, to some extent. It is never so simple as to will away depression, although the next day when you feel better you wonder at why you were depressed, those thoughts that then seemed overwhelming are now not so bad and can be dealt with. Its the chemical imbalance that makes everything seem helpless.

So what is this chemical imbalance I speak of? You all know what I'm going to say. Its a combination of things but the most well known is serotonin. Another good one is dopamine...

""14. What is dopamine?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and is considered to be the 'pleasure molecule' and the 'anti-stress molecule'. Eurphoria and orgasm are to dopamine release in the 'reward site' of the brain.""

Healthy levels of these two chemicals play a major role in how happy we feel whereas low levels probably mean we are sad or depressed. Dopamine is released when we drink. Serotonin is released when we take E. But they are both released naturally by the body in response to ""happy moments"". To some extent we can control this.