Quote Originally Posted by Patler View Post
What are my credentials? For this topic, absolutely nothing, just as I have absolutely no credentials for football. However, I do have certain backgrounds and experiences allowing me to form beliefs and opinions about many things that I am willing to discuss with anyone.

One of my first degrees was in chemistry, with an emphasis in organic & biochemistry. That was many, many years ago, and I never worked as a chemist of any type. However, all of my careers since then have been in technology fields. Even now, hardly a week goes by that I am not in a lab or in contact with engineers/researchers about projects they are engaged in. I've not worked directly in any medical field, but at one time I was regularly involved for years with several leading suppliers of medical implants, joint replacement structures, etc. I remain involved with a retired physician who developed several medical tools and is bringing to the market an over-the-counter treatment he has worked on for 10+ years (I have worked with him since the start).

I have spent my adult life reading and evaluating technical reports and studies about things I know quite well. While I don't pretend to know the chemistry involved at any high level at all, when I read reports about the differences in neurotransmitter levels for schizophrenics compared to others, I have a certain rudimentary understanding even if I am not equipped to evaluate the report. When I read about investigations of hereditary connections, I understand the arguments for and against. When I read about studies showing people with certain gene mutations having a much greater likelihood of developing schizophrenia, I understand the logic. Do I know how all of the tests are taken? No, I am willing to trust the data-taking ability of research institutions of good repute. The data for a patient or subject are facts for that patient. Whether or not they are facts for the condition are yet to be determined, but there appear to be strong connections, and it is that body of knowledge that we are scratching the surface of.

I know little about psychiatry, but I know enough about the sciences to understand, even expect the likelihood of physical connections for many conditions. Heredity, lifestyle, environmental influences, etc. are probably all involved to greater and lesser degrees depending on the condition and subject, just as they are with other conditions like heart disease, obesity, cancers, etc.

In the end, why should brain disorders be much different than heart disorders, liver disorders, etc? To dismiss out of hand any physical connection is, in my opinion, naive, and to assume that every suicide is merely the result of flawed character is worse than naive.
OK, so we start out fairly equal, and I fall back on what I said: opinions are like assholes - everybody has 'em.

A lot of what you said is pretty non-controversial - as likely as not to be accurate. Yeah, likely the brain can have things go wrong just like other organs of the body. However, you aren't talking about mere neuroses when that sort of thing happens - strokes, Alzheimers, outside force trauma, etc. can cause a lot of serious shit. That is not what we are talking about at all, though, when the topic is depression or some other neurosis, which I would suggest, is nothing more than dealing with - or ignoring - what everybody goes through - the only variable factors being how rough (or not) a person's life is AND to what degree a person lets things get to him. At the beginning of this whole drawn out discussion, some people whined about cancer, poverty, various other diseases, and various other human conditions. Well, yeah! Of course those things exist, and they are cause for sympathy and maybe empathy. Even an admitted asshole like me is sympathetic about that sort of thing, but my original comeback, which I basically standby, is that the topic of this thread - so many people's beloved suicidal icon - didn't have any of that shit - oh, there was a maybe this and a maybe that, but basically, he was a rich talented guy with a life we all could only dream about, and he chose to off himself - to which I expressed a distinct lack of sympathy and absolutely no empathy. Even people with those maladies and conditions I mentioned only rarely stoop to suicide or drug addiction, but that wasn't even the case of what we were discussing in this thread. The guy had the NEUROSIS of depression - conjured up in his mind in spite of having that great life. Yet he did stoop to hard drug use, I don't know if addiction was ever proven - and suicide. We should be sympathetic or empathetic about THAT? Not me - if a bunch of the rest of you are, fine, that's your opinion/your attitude - be that way if you want to.

You seem to grasp very well the concept that yesterday's "FACTS" - actually "prevailing theories" - are today's outmoded thoughts. Yet you don't seem to grasp the concept that today's "FACTS" - the shit you and others in here eat up so heartily - is - or certainly could be - tomorrow's outmoded crap. And as ridiculous as a lot of it seems, that seems highly probable. "We don't yet understand" this or that data - duh! because it is usually extremely speculative, often conflicting, and when it goes against what the "researcher" hypothesizes in the first place, they throw it out as invalid hahahaha. BTW, you never commented on the HOW aspect of researching "brain chemistry" on a living person. I would speculate that it can't be done, but that's just ...... speculation.