Mental Disorder
Depression is the leading cause of disability globally. In the United States, it affects roughly 18 million adults, twice as many women as men, and ranks just behind high blood pressure as the most common chronic medical condition. Yet millions more cases are never diagnosed because people are reluctant to seek medical help, fearing the tremendous stigma attached to mental illness, or they do not realize they are ill because symptoms can range from mild lethargy to powerful feelings of hopelessness and despair. About two-thirds of those who commit suicide are depressed at the time of their death.
Bipolar disorder occurs in roughly 2.6 percent of the population, men and women equally. It was once called manic-depression because moods swing between manic highs and depressive lows in widely varying cycles. Highs can range from slightly elevated, carefree moods to dangerous euphoria, mixed with anxiety, anger, and occasional rage, before plunging into depression.
Bipolar disorder is especially frightening because conventional medicine has not figured out what causes
these random cycles or how to consistently control them. Viewed as having a lifelong “incurable" illness, many bipolar patients are unable to hold jobs, are frequently institutionalized, or live in a psychiatric drug-induced haze. Twenty-Five to 5o percent of bipolar patients attempt suicide at least once, and if untreated, have a 15 percent higher risk of death from suicide than the overall population.
Medications used to treat these disorders sometimes cause such horrible side effects that many patients hate their "meds,” and many discontinue use. Some patients self-medicate with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, chocolate, sugar, and street drugs—especially when disorders are undiagnosed. They use any substance that makes them temporarily feel good. Ironically, these choices increase brain dysfunction and contribute to addiction, crime, and obesity. Other patients continue taking prescribed medications, suffering serious,even life-altering side effects, unaware that there are alternatives.
Treatment of my own bipolar disorder stands as a sobering example. Although my lifelong episodes of depression were first diagnosed in the 1980s, the manic side was not noticed until 1993, when symptoms became more pronounced with age. I refused lithium because it had not helped my mother and I had witnessed its numerous adverse side effects. Given another commonly prescribed antidepressant that also helps control mood swings, my life immediately became easier and less stressful. Between 1994 and 1995, however, I began growing breast cysts and tumors so rapidly that I had surgery twice in twelve months. Following each operation, more growths developed.
Anxious to figure out the cause of these growths, I consulted a naturopathic doctor who prescribed an anti-inflammatory diet that slowed the proliferation of cysts. I next focused on systematically ridding myself of all possible toxins, because cellular mutation can be caused in part by foreign molecules, like those in psychiatric medications. By the time another tumor appeared in 1998, the only unnatural substance I was still using was the antidepressant.
The psychiatrist who had prescribed the drug consulted available reports that showed the medication caused mammary tumors in mice, although results were deemed inconclusive since the rodents received nine thousand times the dose given a human [adjusted for relative weight). This "clue" came on the heels of my two years of research and elimination of toxins. Since the growths had appeared roughly a year after I began taking the antidepressant, I decided to taper off the drug to see what would happen. My bipolar symptoms had always been relatively mild, so my life would not be in danger without medication, but it might be from cancer.
Within two months, the latest tumor had disappeared and no new growths had emerged. I had discovered many other unadvertised but well-documented health risks from antidepressants during my combing of popular and professional literature. Refusing all psychiatric medications, I resolved to end my bipolar cycles without drugs.
In November 1999, I consulted a brain research center where two genetic conditions were identified that contributed to my mental imbalances (see chapter 1 for details}. Within four months of taking only vitamins and minerals prescribed by the center to compensate for these genetic “errors,” my manic cycles ended.
However, the depression continued and, no longer relieved by mania, worsened. I researched and tried many promising treatments, but nothing provided permanent relief. Finally in 2001, I read a new book on clinical trials of omega-3 fatty acids, found in inexpensive fish oils, which showed that they were helpful in treating bipolar disorder. Within a couple of days of taking three grams of these good fats daily, my depression lifted.
Tremendously relieved to be free of chaotic mood swings and the fear of breast cancer, I decided to share all I had learned. I began writing, lecturing, and organizing seminars on healing without drugs. After I went public with my story, dozens of strangers sought me out,confiding that they or a loved one also struggled with depression or bipolar illness. Understanding and advice from another who had "been there’° seemed to give great comfort, direction, and hope.
In 2004, I spoke on a Recovery Panel at Non-Pharma III, an alternative mental health conference in California organized by Safe Harbor. There I met and interviewed many others who had ended a wide variety of mental disorders without the use of pharmaceuticals. Each story was unique but had one common thread; We did not just treat our mental illness, we cured it-eliminating the symptoms - a feat no drug could claim.
Diagnosis
Feeling “sad” or “blue" following the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a traumatic experience, a divorce, or some other overwhelming stress is a normal, healthy reaction that time often heals. Harder to understand is what triggers depression or manic highs when there is no obvious cause.
Long a mystery, how the brain operates has become one of the most rapidly expanding frontiers of medical science today, thanks primarily to technological advances. Positron emission tomography (PET) is the most exciting of these because it allows imaging a living brain in action, making processes observable. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers a view of brain cysts, tumors, and changes in neuron activity in different regions as they are affected by thoughts and emotions, with better spatial resolution than PET. X-ray computerized tomography (CT) scans provide a view of the brain’s structure but not its functioning. Most mental patients, unfortunately, do not have access to such expensive testing unless tumors or similar physiological causes are suspected.
Depression and bipolar disorder are syndromes, diagnosed based on a cluster of symptoms, presumably related, that collectively indicate a psychological disorder or disturbance. Thus, a listing of the patient’s mental and emotional difficulties is still the cornerstone of all diagnoses. A therapist will typically take a patient’s psychiatric and medical history, noting any mental illnesses in the patient’s parents, siblings, and children. Symptoms and differences between major depression, mild or episodic depressions, and bipolar disorder in adults and children are set out below:
Jump read complete article here : Healing Depression & Bipolar Disorder Without Drugs
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