Anxiety Disorders Discoverable by Blood Test

Tomer Yaffe writes to tell us that researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have discovered a technique to diagnose anxiety disorders with a simple blood test. From the article: "The researchers hope that the anxiety blood test will soon make its way into hospitals and E.R. rooms and give doctors and psychiatrists a quick and precise tool for examining, and eventually treating, these disorders." The team has also set their sights on depression, hoping for a similar technique to detect these types of disorders as well.

Comments

What if their anxiety disorders involve needles?

[glen604]

then they'd be really screwed..

Stop squirming away from the needle! We need to run this test on you!

As a psych student

[kaosrain]

As a psych student planning on specializing in anxiety/depression, this is great news. A blood test would make it a lot easier for people to acknowledge that they have an anxiety disorder. Currently one of the greatest challenges a psychologist faces in these disorders is getting the patient to see that they really do have one and it is impacting them negatively.

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to convince them of something they don't have? So you can treat them? wtf?

Re:As a psych student

[hvatum]

This blood test could also help increase the appropriate perscription of scheduled anti-anxiety medications such as Valium. These Benzodiazepines are clinically the most effective treatment for anxiety but many doctors shy away from perscribing them due to their addictive potential for some drug users.

By proving beyond all doubt the existence of an anxiety disorder this blood test could allow doctors to perscribe such medications without fear of having their license revoked for the over-perscription of a scheduled drug.

Re:As a psych student

[kaosrain]

Look in to denial--many people diagnosed with mental disorders go through the same stages that someone diagnosed with say, cancer, would.

Re:As a psych student

[tktk]

I doubt the results of a blood test are going to sway the opinions of many partients. They'll just find a way to explain away the results. You'd be surprised how many people know the idea of a false positive.

And I wonder how the results of this test can be affected by time. When someone has anxiety, it's a pervasive thing that affects their daily living. But what if someone hears anxiety-causing info just before the blood test, or what if hospitals and blood tests make you highly anxious? Will the test be able to tell the difference between pervasive anxiety and momentary anxiety?

Hopefully, this test doesn't get used in place of a trained psychologist.

P.S. I've got a M.A. in Psychology.

Re:As a psych student

[hendridm]

Wouldn't such a test make you less relevant?

"According to your blood test, you have severe anxiety. Take this pill once a day. My receptionist will schedule a revisit in a month to see how you're doing."

Just curious.

/not a doctor

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

"Mental illness" is not generally not "illness" in any meaningful sense of the word. First, some background. In economics, choices are said to be based upon a person's preferences and his constraints. Preferences are what you want, in the order you want them; constraints are anything that stops you from getting what you really want. Normal illnesses can be described purely as constraints. No matter what you want, you can't will yourself to stop sneezing, or de-AIDS yourself, for example. So those are constraints. To understand the difference, you can apply the "gun-to-the-head" test. Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.

Mental illnesses are generally not constraints, but preferences. ADD doesn't need constraints to explain it: the person just has a high preference for variety and a low preference for monotony. A person who habitually steals doesn't have kleptomania; he just likes stealing. You could stop him with a gun.

Now, let's talk about this blood test. What does it prove? If we could tell who was a Catholic by a blood test, would that mean Catholicism is a mental illness? No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right? In exactly the same way, homosexuality was an "illness" because of a moral judgment. Would the discovery of a "gay gene" change this? If you need a better example, think about delusions. You're said to have the mental illness of delusions if you hold systematically biased beliefs. Yet the same standard specifically excludes religion. Now, whatever religion you are, you must believe some other religion's views are systematically biased. But they're arbitrarily excluded, because psychiatrists don't want to offend religious people. When attitudes change, so does what counts as a delusion, just as homosexuality got lobbed of the list.

Just my two cents.

Re:As a psych student

[michaeltoe]

Go read up about panic disorder, it's not a "choice". Nobody in their right mind would want that. You're an idiot.

Re:As a psych student

[Hatta]

As a psych student planning on specializing in anxiety/depression, this is great news. A blood test would make it a lot easier for people to acknowledge that they have an anxiety disorder. Currently one of the greatest challenges a psychologist faces in these disorders is getting the patient to see that they really do have one and it is impacting them negatively.

I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who refuses to admit they have an anxiety disorder. However I know plenty of people who's doctors refuse to admit that they have an anxiety disorder, and refuse to prescribe appropriate medication because of this countries cruel and unjust War on Drug Users.

Now if they could just test fir pain, so thousands of pain patients don't have to suffer needlessly. Fucking puritans.

Re:As a psych student

[ArsenneLupin]

Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.

Considering that pointing a gun at a person's head and threatening to kill him if he didn't stop some uncontrollable (or at least very hard to control...) behavior, actually increases anxiety in a normal person by quite a bit, would this make anxiety an anti-preference?

Re:As a psych student

[michaeltoe]

Benzodiazepines are the most effective drug for treating anxiety, but they are not the most effective treatment. Chronic anxiety and panic disorder are best treated by cognitive behavior therapy, which may or may not involve the use of drugs.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Look, honey, another person modding down a well-reasoned post because he disagreed with it.

That's nice, dear.

Re:As a psych student

[michaeltoe]

I'm not going to spend much of my time attempting to explain to you what panic attacks are, because I know you're too damn stupid to figure it out until you've had one yourself. But that's ok, be as smug as you like. You're just another segment of the population waiting to get knocked on your ass.

Re:As a psych student

[Antonymous Flower]

You mean to tell me people aren't aware of anxiety? Anxiety is one of the most obvious effects of puberty. I cannot comprehend in any way someone who suffers from excessive anxiety and is not aware of the fact. Anxiety is as obvious to people as sex. Anxiety is the core of primitive behavior. (see: fight or flight)

So why are you trying to convince someone they suffer from anxiety?

This is one of the many problems I have with psychologists. The only thing psychologists have done is provide a successful theory of conditioning. Everything else they have done has provided a cloud of mysticism toward the mind that would make the ancient egyptians laugh their asses off.

Re:As a psych student

[hvatum]

Correction, the most effective treatment is the combination of both cognitive behavioural therapy and benzodiazepines.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Actually, I have reported panic attacks despite the fact that, looking back, I probably would have failed the gun-to-the-head test. If people like me are poisoning the pool...

But that's okay, be as smug as you like. You're just another segment of the population getting modded up for bad arguments against an unpopular position.

Re:As a psych student

[Omestes]

And this would explain people killing themselves due to severe depression how? They have a gun to their heads, quite literally.

Your explanation is bunk. A mental illness is a PHYSICAL and PSYCHOLOGICAL state, and being the both are influencing each other, they are not matters of choice.

If you put a gun to a severe depressives head, and told them you would shoot them if they didn't stop being suicidal, they would smile at you, and say "please".

Mental illnesses are as real as a broken limb or a disease, they can be cured, but they are very much real, and very much not a choice.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

The depressed prefer death to continued existence (or so they claim). That is a preference. In reality, of course, the overwhelming majority do not commit suicide, proving that the whole time they were fully capable of not committing suicide and didn't really prefer death.

That you deem this preference "irrational" is your moral judgment. Many have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to work for a wage or borrow money at interest if they weren't being coerced. Should Alan Turing have been locked up for his homosexuality? (In fact, he was, using your exact reasoning.) Should non-socialist laborers be locked up for "supporting the wage system"? (In fact, many were, using your exact reasoning.)

Btw, rational Alan Turing committed suicide.

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently one of the greatest challenges a psychologist faces in these disorders is getting the patient to see that they really do have one and it is impacting them negatively

Eh?

This attitude is strange to me. Why the heck is the patient seeing you if they don't think they have a problem?

In my understanding, someone with one of these disorders notices that their lives are no longer under their control, and they seek (or are convinced to seek) some professional help.

If a person has "mild" anxiety (or OCD or whatever), and their lives aren't impacted negatively, why the heck do they need a test?? So you guys can rack up some more $$$?

Re:As a psych student

[michaeltoe]

Hey asshat. 1/5 of panic disorder sufferers attempt to kill themselves. They needn't present with suicidal behavior prior to suffering from panic disorder, which usually has a rapid onset. But hey, shit... what do I know. I'm not an enlightened genius like yourself. Please tell us how the brain works.

Re:As a psych student

[Omestes]

I assume your use of quotes is in the grand spirit of strawmen, since I never used the word irrational, or drew a conclusion beyond A) mental illness being some part physical, and B) as such there is a limited choice or preferential context involved. FYI, they removed homosexuality from the DSM at least 2 revisions ago (more than 10 years ago), so this substancial part of your argument is groundless unless I assumed homosexuality to be a mental illness, which I do not.

But homosexuality puts your original premise in light. Why would one choose to be homosexual (rationally) if they knew it would cause long term hardship? There goes your rationality arguement. Not to say that it is an irrational statement, more like Arational.

I'm a strong adherent to the arational. Irrational entails going against reason. Arational means that reason, as such, is not involved. I take a Heideggerian view on this, that 90% of our action is arational, reason plays very little role in our day to day lives, we exist, and we don't reason until something goes wrong.

Re:As a psych student

[ZeroExistenZ]

I think it's more hopeful to treath anxiety disorder instead of just performing a diagnose and possibly needless labelling. If anxiety-disorders are detectable by the absense of certain substances in the bloodstream then this could be possibly corrected (and a general cause could be derived from that).
It would be fascinating to see wherever certain external factors, psychological or not, trigger these changes or wherever it's entirely genetical or maybe is rooted in other causes (eating habits, pollution, industrialisation, behaviour, ...).

It could prove to be a great objective indicative to 'detect anxiety' and understand better how it works and is triggered.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

First, call of the dogs. (the people who modded three of my posts in this thread as flamebait and one as trolling, which was clearly unjustified)

You know, this is really depressing. I was actually beginning to think against-the-grain posts were welcomed on Slashdot, provided they were well-reasoned (which mine were). I mean, just recently I built up good karma by denouncing the space program and supporting MS's disposable DVD. People were actually listening to my unconventional views rather than emotionally modding them down.

But then, things like this come along and make me lose faith all over again. Come on guys who modded me down, can you really not come up with a rational response?

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't some of these anxiety conditions related to blood sugar? I think if people concentrated more on what they eat, they would be healthier mentally and physically. I'm hypoglycemic so believe me when I say that diet does make a difference.

Re:As a psych student

[bigpat]

despite the headlines, please don't mistake this for a test for anxiety disorder.

This is a test for the chemical indicators of anxiety itself, a positive test would indicate anxiety not the disorder. Anxiety itself is a natural response to certain perceived situations. A disorder would still have to be identified by careful observation and a history of anxiety in situations most people aren't anxious about or anxiety levels that don't diminish in normal period of time after a perceived threat. So, you would need to test over a period of time and perhaps before, during and after exposing a person to some situation that would normally cause anxiety.

Of course, if needles make you anxious, then the test won't tell you anything except who doesn't like needles.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

You were arguing that their preferences were not rational, whether or not you used that precise word, because your post implicitly assumed there's something wrong (i.e., a moral judgment) with preferring death to life. I happen to agree with that moral judgment. It is still a moral judgment.

As for the next part, I really don't see where you're going? Are you agreeing that people are not consciously thinking in their decision to engage in homosexual acts? My positions is that people who do that prefer the benefits to the costs. You take the same condenscending view as the earlier generations of psychiatrists, that their actions do not really reveal what they prefer, that there is something "wrong" with their minds.

And yes, the earlier edition is relevant. Homosexuality was removed, not from some dispassionate re-analysis of the logical grounding of classifications of mental illnesses, but because it was unpopular to continue so classifying. Just as it's unpopular to call religious people delusional, in direct contradiction of the definition of delusions!

Re:As a psych student

[cammoblammo]

Look honey, another person using flippancy to rescue their karma because they're not able to delete a post they're really, really going to regret.

That's funny, dear. Now come back to bed before I stick a gun to your head.

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope psychologists read the article with cautious optimism.

From the article:
          "In order to devise an effective blood test for anxiety, the team had to take a number of factors into consideration." ... "a standard blood test for anxiety equipped with a set of equations"

Comments like this raise the concern of overfitting the data. Assuming the best, the researchers will somewhere have documented how they arrived at the equations _before_ the saw any of the data.

Re:As a psych student

[Kris Thalamus]

Do you believe in maladaptive preferences? Many people with behavioral problems voluntarily pay medical professionals for help.

Re:As a psych student

[modecx]

Let's see, three people call you on what an asshat you are, and you still don't get the message. Relating economics to the mind, specifically a state of mind is just plain ignorant because you assume even a mentally ill person is capable of consistently making sound judgment. By definition, this is obviously not the case!

Da-nile aint' just a river; it's also a part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Now, you'll excuse me as I neglect to give your thoughts the attention you think they deserve, and hopefully everyone else can do the same.

Re:As a psych student

[Omestes]

Never did I imply a value in my statements, so it is well outside of the realms of morality. I just implied that people are not able to sway their opinions if you were to put a gun to their head, in the majority of mental illnesses. In this we could say that YES these are arational statements, but this is not a statement of value, this is a statement of fact. If I would say that these are wrong statements, in the moral sense, then this would be a moral judgement. But this is both arational, and amoral, meaning lacking both rational and moral content.

I have not seen any studies proving homosexuality as either a choice or genetic thing. You seem to assume that people rationally weigh all of their decisions in life, which I view as erronious, and detrimental to a functioning society. Life would freeze as we all carefully and rationally weigh all choices. Even if you invoke the word preference, this implies a fully conscious urge.

My liking the color green above the color red is an arational preference. No rationality was invoked. Nor is this statement a moral statement. It is purely preferencial.

From what I noticed about the modern generation of psychologists, is that they are excepting more and more somatic causes of mental illness, and less choice/rationally based causes. Your are anxious because, for the most part, x chemical is out of balance in regard to y chemical, this is assumed to be ill because it deviates from behavioral/chemical profile a, which is normal within certain emperical expectations. It is not my preference to have this imbalance, it is not a rational thing, and nor is it a moral thing.

This becomes illness when one is unable to act compatibly within society, or when ceases to act rationally.

This is the appearence of modern psychology.

I don't completely agree with it, as it commits the same sin which you commit, the sin of dualism. You error in the other direction, towards everything being mind, or violational, and nothing being somatic, or physical.

For clarification, is a broken leg preferencial? Is it irrational? What about the flu? Cancer? Genetic illnesses? Are these irrational, or moral? Nope, they are beyond control. As is most mental illnesses. Point out the seperation between a genetic disposition towards ovarian cancer, and depression/anxiety/OCD/schizophrenia. This might help me understand you POV.

Re:As a psych student

[lav-chan]

I didn't understand that part either. I'm not a psychologist or anything, but i have an anxiety disorder (or two or three), and i have certainly been aware of it for as long as i've had it. Maybe not the scientific name of the disorder or the specific symptoms, but it certainly was known to me that what i was experiencing wasn't rational (or 'normal').

On top of that, everything i've read or been told, from Wikipedia to my therapist to the text books, has said that people with anxiety disorders are usually aware of their behaviour. Like if you have OCD, you usually know you're being a little unreasonable. You might not have the ambition to do something about it, but you know it's there.

Maybe it's different for more serious anxiety disorders, i don't know.

Re:As a psych student

[Mad_Rain]

"Mental illness" is not generally not "illness" in any meaningful sense of the word.

Given the abundance of scientific literature pointing to the genetic, chemical, and physiological causes and sequali of mental illnesses such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, Depression, and Anxiety disorders, both you and whoever modded you up as "insightful" have a lot to learn about. For anxiety disorders, there are measurable differences in the hippocampus and amygdala areas of the brain, and an imbalance of neurotransmitters that can contribute to a persons heightened anxiety. These are, in your words, constraints, that cannot be changed, no matter the person's preference to do so.

This is much like a person with a genetic heart condition - they have a measurable physiological difference, that results in changes in the blood chemistry, and one day, their heart will fail. To over-simplify the scenario, lets say that the person can reduce the severity and dangerousness of their heart condition by taking meds, and changing behavior (getting exercise, and changing the diet a little). Does this mean that if they follow through with the diet/exercise/medication regimen, that they don't have a heart condition? Of course not.

Same thing with anxiety disorders (and many mental illnesses) - you treat it the same way, sometimes with medication, changing behaviors, therapy, etc. A person may have a preference for not undergoing treatment - and if you put a gun to their head and said "change," they might temporarily adapt their behavior, or they might not; just the same as if you put the gun to the head of someone with the heart condition. They may change their behavior, they might not ("But I like my french fries and sitcoms and lying on my couch all day") , but in either case, getting them to change their thoughts and behaviors around their illness doesn't change the fact that the illness exists and is there.

And just to cover all the bases here, if treatment doesn't change the underlying illness, what good is it? Well, treatment for psychological disorders leads to a higher quality of life for those with the problems at a lesser cost to themselves and society. Hopefully, the blood test will be useful in an emergency room or hospital setting; this still leaves plenty of room for the aforementioned field of psychology, who tend to diagnose these problems more accurately, less invasively, and at a lower cost (given things like $0.50 for an aspirin at a hospital).

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Relating economics to the mind, specifically a state of mind is just plain ignorant because you assume even a mentally ill person is capable of consistently making sound judgment. By definition, this is obviously not the case!

Do you not realize how poor an argument this is? Seriously. You're defining yourself to be right - a tautology.

Let's go over this again:

I'm denying the existence of a distinct category of "mental illness". I'm claiming their actions are explainable by preferences, not constraints, like normal illnesses are.

Then you come back, and, in a blinding display of genius claim that, by definition, someone mentally ill doesn't follow the laws of economics!

I can imagine another argument you and I might have:

me: Pink unicorns don't exist.

you: A pink unicorn is a horse with a horn that is pink and exists in the mountains. By definition, they exist!

me: *burying face in hands*

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

because they're not able to delete a post they're really, really going to regret.

Is that a threat, anonymous mod?

If you want to attack my well-reasoned posts, attack them with arguments, not modding.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Given the abundance of scientific literature pointing to the genetic, chemical, and physiological causes and sequali of mental illnesses such as ...

I responded to this already in the post of mine that you did read. For the second time (this time listen), I'm sure you can correlate the physiology and the behavior. That's why, in the post that you did read, I presented what people who have gone to college call a "thought experiment". Then I posited a world in which some physical trait correlated one-to-one with Catholicism or gayness and I asked if those would then be considered diseases. Since you definitely read the full post, you have an answer to this; you must have just forgotten to post it this time around. I mean, no one would respond to a post without reading it!

Same thing with anxiety disorders (and many mental illnesses) - you treat it the same way, sometimes with medication, changing behaviors, therapy, etc. A person may have a preference for not undergoing treatment - and if you put a gun to their head and said "change," they might temporarily adapt their behavior, or they might not; just the same as if you put the gun to the head of someone with the heart condition. They may change their behavior, they might not ("But I like my french fries and sitcoms and lying on my couch all day") , but in either case, getting them to change their thoughts and behaviors around their illness doesn't change the fact that the illness exists and is there. ...

That in no way contradicts what I said. Of course it may be a good idea to change behaviors. There are people who try to be less rude, less miserly, less messy around their homes. That doesn't make rudeness, miserliness, and messiness diseases!

Re:As a psych student

[jrnchimera]

As a person diagnosed with bi-polar disorder ( Manic Depression ) with anxiety I can tell you from experience that it is NOT a choice. There is ABSOLUTELY no upside to having this disorder. This NOTHING but downsides. I guess you and others who don't have some form of mentall illness really can't appreciate or understand this....

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Sorry, that doesn't work on me. I too have been diagnosed with the exact same thing. I'll fax you the medical records if you ask.

Let me clarify what I'm saying: I'm not denying you have different preferences. I feel the same way. But these are different preferences we have been endowed with. I would like to change my preferences. But they are not illnesses; they are different preferences. If someone put a gun to my head, I could change my actions. Remember that there are people like you and me who don't like their preferences either, but don't have the political clout to get it labeled as a disease... or removed, in the case of homosexuality.

Re:As a psych student

[jrnchimera]

You are simply wrong. As a person who is bi-polar with anxiety I can tell that having this disorder is NOT a fucking choice. You can't understand this because you don't have the condition. In fact, most people who claim that "mental illnesses" are not real only believe this because they haven't experienced what mential illness is. Just face it... you are wrong on this one.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

...and you haven't noticed my response to your other post yet.

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

Benzos are TERRIBLE as a long term treatment for anxiety-- all that will result is an addict, and an anxious addict as his tolerance continues to increase. They may have some value as a short term treatment while waiting for an SSRI to kick in, which can take several weeks. SSRIs can be terrific as a long term treatment but can increase anxiety in some patients in the short term. Of course no treatment works for everybody, and nondrug treatments can be every bit as effective as drugs-- my brother swears by yoga for his patients.

Re:As a psych student

[jrnchimera]

Your notion that mentall illness is a "Preference" is silly. I would prefer to not have the effects of bi-polar disorder and anxiety. Cognitive behavior therapy can help with symptoms, and in this respect I can change my "Preferences". But I can't simply "prefer" to not have the disorder. If it was possible, I'd have "Preferred" to not have it long ago. In other words, yes, symptoms can be reduced and/or modified by changing the way you think ( cognitive behavior therapy ), but in many cases this does not work every symptom.

Re:As a psych student

[jrnchimera]

I was probably writing my response at the time.. :-)

Re:As a psych student

[poopdeville]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:As a psych student

[pomo monster]

OK, using your terminology, an illness is nothing but an inconvenient set of "preferences" that the patient would rather not have. That's how so-called "disorders" are sometimes seen; they're only labeled disorders because they can get in the way of your doing what you want to do. Manic depression, as I'm sure you're aware if you've experienced it, has upsides to it that some of its sufferers don't want to do away with, and so they don't seek treatment. Same with AD(H)D and all the rest.

No need to invent your own personal lexicon when you could learn the appropriate words and concepts to minimize all the confusion and all the angst in this little flamewar here.

Re:As a psych student

[Anonymous Coward]

Mother and son go into therapy because of a strained relationship. It turns out that mother is a huge narcissist (in the clinical sense). By virtue of her narcissism, she cannot admit that she is a narcissist. Indeed, she constantly claims that the son is "sick" and needs help. Therefore, the root cause of the relationship troubles goes unfixed.

Yes, I am bitter.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

My point was that there's a fundamental difference between conventional medical illnesses and mentall illnesses. The former are constraints; the latter are preferences. We only label mental illnesses as illnesses because they are "bad" preferences. People should change their bad preferences; buy they are not "illnesses" in the usual sense of the work.

That's basically all I'm saying.

And it's not my lexicon; it's the well-understood lexicon of economics. Here's a professor who argues basically what I argued here:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/s zaszjhe.doc

Re:As a psych student

[btobin]

But then, things like this come along and make me lose faith all over again. Come on guys who modded me down, can you really not come up with a rational response?

When confronted with blatant nonsense, the rational response is scorn. That's what you got. Why complain?

Re:As a psych student

[Mad_Rain]

I responded to this already in the post of mine that you did read. For the second time (this time listen)

I see where you were going now - Reread your own opening paragraph of your parent post, that has stirred up the slashdotter hornet's nest. You certainly come across as flamebait by A) minimizing the significance of mental illnesses by making it seem like people choose to have them, and B) comparing mental illnesses to non-illnesses like Catholicism and homosexuality. (After going after religion and sexuality, if you had thrown in race/ethnicity and favorite linux distro, you would have had an all-time flamebait post) All this could have been prevented had you taken a moment to write more clearly and in a more organized way.

Going back to your original post then:
Now, let's talk about this blood test. What does it prove? If we could tell who was a Catholic by a blood test, would that mean Catholicism is a mental illness? No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right?

Let's start with defining a mental illness. A mental illness can lead to an abnormal and unhealthy condition of the body and/or mind, and can be severe if left untreated. When someone has an Anxiety disorder, they can have a number of physical and mental symptoms associated with that, that can lead to long term health problems. When someone is Catholic or homosexual, well, there is no telling how physically or mentally health or unhealthy they'll be. Does that answer your question about where correlations between physiology and diseases start and stop?

Perhaps you mean that what is "abnormal and unhealthy" instead of "anxiety" could be a moral judgment, as some aspects of what is and is not healthy can change with the times. Describing anxiety as a "moral judgment" is just asking for a semantic debate. Yes, a group of learned people (who could be described as "moral") sat down and made a decision about what the "anxiety" label is, and yes, decided it is "bad." That'd be a good place to start with the definition of a mental illness (and hopefully an answer to your hypothetical questions of where mental illness starts, and what is just a correlation between physiology and life). That doesn't make rudeness, miserliness, and messiness diseases!

But those certainly can be symptomatic of a greater problem.

I mean, no one would respond to a post without reading it!

You must be new around here.

Re:As a psych student

[HD Webdev]

These Benzodiazepines are clinically the most effective treatment for anxiety but many doctors shy away from perscribing them due to their addictive potential for some drug users.

Not to mention their interference with sleep patterns which may often result in more problems with the patient.

And yes, I previously struggled with periodic major anxiety/depression* problems. I good doctor helped me modify my sleeping, eating, and relaxation patterns which did MUCH more than any Benzodiazepines could do. In fact, in my case, those drugs only spread the anxiety/depression cycles apart but those same highs and lows were much worse when they did happen.

*Most people think depression/anxiety is just feeling bad or uneasy....it's much more horrible than what those people think.

Re:As a psych student

[DavidTC]

Some disorders, especially mild forms, are trivial to live with.

It's not a 'preference' however, that's just gibberish. That's like talking about how your car 'likes' to drift to the right, but could choose to go straight or to the left. Well, yes, but it's still misaligned. The fact that mild disorders can be overridden is great for people with them, it doesn't make them less real.

And, of course, some people don't mind their disorders, and we can have a great debate whether or not a certain disorder should be called a 'disorder'. (Almost all disorders have some use.) I suspect ADD (without hyperactivity) is going to vanish within 50 years for that reason, and homosexuality already did.

However, that only applies for mild disorders. Someone who suffers panic attacks cannot override them. Someone who suffers from depression cannot decide to be happy. Someone who suffers from bipolar disorder can learn to recognize the mood swings and modify their behavior, but they can't choose to not have them.

If you think of a 'normal' mind as level ground, then disorders are slants. Sometimes mildly slanted ground are fine, we can walk up them, and, hey, we can coast back from the store on our bike, although it's more work going.

But sometimes the whole ground suddenly tilts at 50 degrees and you fall down, or survive by clutching a nearby tree. If that is your sexual orientation, well, fine. If that make you loathe chocolate, fine.

If that makes you panic when your stress levels get too high, or want to die, you're probably going to want to do something about that. You can take drugs to bring the ground to a reasonable level, and then therapy to learn how to walk on the newly level ground.

Re:As a psych student

[(negative video)]

Preferences are what you want, in the order you want them; constraints are anything that stops you from getting what you really want.

Like many econometric models, this is pretty terrible. It essentially says that the cognitive cost of "preferences" is identically zero, while the cognitive cost of "constraints" is more than is available to spend (infinity). This is unrealistic, since any given mental characteristic in a large population varies smoothly over wide range. An arbitrary good-bad threshold is just that: arbitrary.

To understand the difference, you can apply the "gun-to-the-head" test. Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.

Consider four hypothetical people with Tourette's syndrome. The first experiences a few tics (involuntary actions) per week. The second can suppress their tics for hours while solving advanced calculus problems at the same time. The third can only suppress their tics for 30 seconds at a stretch, and requires total concentration to achieve even that. The fourth cannot suppress their tics at all.

These differences have major economic implications. However not only can the "gun-to-the-head" test not find them, the inquisitor can get any answer by manipulating their threshold.

ADD doesn't need constraints to explain it: the person just has a high preference for variety and a low preference for monotony.

Not true. Some ADDers are agnostic regarding variety but are highly distracted by it. Distraction, unfortunately, tends to create even more variety, in a vicious circle. This is a common maladaptive pattern in mental disorders.

Mental illnesses are generally not constraints, but preferences.

Then what of psychopaths? They usually appear normal most of the time. In fact, they are likely to pass most "gun-to-the-head" tests better than the average person, due to their boldness and fearlessness. Yet they are deeply abnormal, as they cannot reliably connect actions with suffering. As a result they tend to periodically drift more and more off course until an outlandish meltdown occurs, something like selling a company car and investing the proceeds in vintage dirty magazines. The resulting outrage and unpleasantness is so extreme that they figure out something is wrong and they need to be more careful, but they never really know why, and gradually drift back off course to the next meltdown. Yet they generally have sufficient understanding to know that being shot in the head is Really Bad, and can hold that thought together for a few seconds, so they pass your test.

No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right?

What garbage. In higher vertebrates, physical stress reliably causes objective changes mediated by the sympathetic nervous system: faster heart rate, increased level of consciousness, various cognitive changes, dilated pupils, contracted peripheral capillaries, reduced digestion, changes in circulating blood volume and therefore pressure, and so forth. When an animal has learned something that predicts stress, exposure to the predictor can cause the changes; in humans this is accompanied by a characteristic sensation called anxiety. Drugs that reduce the learned stress response in animals generally reduce anxiety in humans. Likewise, human anti-anxiety drugs generally reduce the learned stress response in animals. This is all Psychology 101 stuff, and trivially measurable with basic instruments. Get a blood pressure monitor and measure the increase after somebody randomly sticks you with a pin.

The stress response is itself noxious in humans. Most people do not like a racing heart or the inabili

Re:As a psych student

[Znork]

If someone put a gun to your head you could stand on that broken leg. That doesnt make it any less broken, or less painful to do so.

You're mixing up symptoms with illnesses, you're confusing preferences with brain chemistry, and you're attempting to merge many different viewpoints into a single definition.

The symptoms of some illnesses can be covered up, you can suppress a sneeze, you can ignore pain, you can put a smile on your face. That doesnt change the fact that a more through medical examination will reveal low serotonin levels, stress hormones near panic state thresholds or a fracture in your leg. From a medical point of view, they're all specific states of physiology, largely out of the patients control.

You're confusing that with the individual experience of illness. As many physiological states may be less than perfect, but still not entirely debilitating, an individual can choose to seek relief, depending on wether or not they can or cannot, want or will not live with the symptoms, wether the symptoms are manageable, get better or worse. That where the choice comes in.

On top of that you attempt to confuse it with the social point of view, which is the interaction between the individual experience of the physiological state, how it affects their ability to function in society, and how societys perception of the state affects the individuals experience and ablity to function in society.

Society can affect the individuals perception of their physiological state, and that is where we should strive to limit any undue negative influence. However, once there is a specific physiological state that causes an individual a certain amount of pain or functional difficulty, then it falls within the definition of what we commonly call 'illness'.

Re:As a psych student

[hackstraw]

Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.

Personally, I am about there with my mental illness, and at many times the gun does seem objectively as the better option.

Oh, and I can't "stop it".

I will say however that "mental illnesses" are not by definition as clear as a regular illness. Mostly because the diagnosis is fairly subjective with much of the input coming from the "ill" person. And I would agree with your thesis for a more temporary problem, something like a stress related obsessive compulsive disorder that goes away when the stress does.

On the other hand, I have suffered from my problem for as long as I can remember (bipolar disorder) and a smorgasbord of prescription and street drugs is what I do to feel better and be able to get along with people. I'm about to add another prescription drug, and if that does not help, I personally think I am going to give up. I predominately am depressed, and that may not mean much to somebody that does not have depression, but let me tell you it is tough. Imagine having blurred borderline hallucinogenic/paranoid thoughts while feeling like shit much of the time. Sometimes I feel so bad, I can physically feel my face drooping. You know, that "long face" that people get when they are upset. Sometimes I won't even realize that I'm that bad off and I'll notice things like people that I do not know well will not maintain eye contact with me. My sleep is sometimes wacked. I woke up this morning at 4AM dicked around on the computer until 6 something, slept until 10, now I'm at work.

For me, it has gotten to the point that I simply don't have normal feelings anymore, and I simply don't care about much. I'm way behind at my job that is my "dream job", that I don't really care about anymore either. I'm actually a geek that used to date girls and whatnot, but now I've even lost that desire.

I'm sorry, but this is not a preference. If there was anything I could change about myself, it would be this. I can accept everything else, change it, or deal with it. Feeling the way I do much of the time is not fun, and its not fun for people around me.

Re:As a psych student

[tabrnaker]

Umm, that's wrong as well. Glasses fix a persons preference for a certain focal length. Blood pressure medications are for a preference for being uptight. RSI is a persons preference to use their body incorrectly. Back, knee, ankle, wrist, etc... surgeries are usually because the person 'prefers' to have a certain posture, scoliosis as well.

The list goes on. You would say constraints and yet it's all because of how we've 'chosen' to use our bodies. Whenever we 'freeze' into a certain pattern, that's when problems happen. The key to life is being alive/dynamic.

Re:As a psych student

[tabrnaker]

Your preference for green is a rational logical choice as you have a preference for the bigger picture and not details.

Maybe you're talking about consciously rational?

Re:As a psych student

[tabrnaker]

It is not suprising that 'scientific' literature has 'found' objective 'causes' of mental disorders when it can only be used to find objective 'causes' of mental disorders.

How can we outright deny subjective causes when they're impossible to quantify? This is why the details of anecdotal evidence should be reseached to find 'subjective truths' that are applicable across subjects.

As long as we neglect one side of reality we'll never get the bigger picture.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

*sigh*

Another person who misses the point completely.

Look, I'd love to respond to your post, but frankly, I've lost too much faith in slashdotters, at least in this thread. I made a reasoned argument, and in respond, I got modded down at least six times. It's just not worth it for me anymore. Sorry.

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

I was planning on not responding any more to people on this incredibly hostile thread (which as already earned me two dubious "overrated" overmoddings), but some things, I just have an obligation to correct:

Like many econometric models, this is pretty terrible. It essentially says that the cognitive cost of "preferences" is identically zero, while the cognitive cost of "constraints" is more than is available to spend (infinity). This is unrealistic, since any given mental characteristic in a large population varies smoothly over wide range. An arbitrary good-bad threshold is just that: arbitrary.

First, let's get our basic terminology correct: it wasn't an econometric model; it was an economic model. There's a huge difference. Econometrics is economics analyzed through real-world observable data. Many economists are violently opposed to econometric analysis. Since the theoretical separation I described didn't even hint at measurables you would go and do an experiment on, this is not an econometric model. I know, I know, you were just being careless, so it's "no big deal" but it betrays a poor underlying understanding of the issues, and I wanted to help you get it right.

The rest of that passage... I don't even know where you got it. First of all, it doesn't make any good-bad distinction; that's a value judgment, which I specifically warned against using and avoided using in the analysis. Second, you don't even explain how they imply what you say they imply about costs, or even what a cognitive cost is. (Sounds like a buzzword you probably wouldn't be able to define if asked.) Third, in no way does the model contradict the idea of varying traits among the population; it fact, it affirms it. If you have a reason why it would contradict, you didn't give it, and frankly, I don't make people's arguments for them. Just not how I work.

The rest of your post revealed you did not even read what I posted. For example, what is your psychopath example supposed to prove? It affirmed my post. The "psychopath" has different preferences than you would like. He passes the gun-to-the-head just, just like my post would expect him too.

Much as I'd love to hold your hand through the rest of your pseudo-intellectual post, I'm really at a point of diminishing returns here. So I'm just going to say this: read my post again, and this time, try not to treat it like a wiki - I said what I said, not what you added.

Re:As a psych student

[(negative video)]

Since the theoretical separation I described didn't even hint at measurables you would go and do an experiment on, this is not an econometric model. I know, I know, you were just being careless, so it's "no big deal" but it betrays a poor underlying understanding of the issues, and I wanted to help you get it right.

Huh? Your gun-to-the-head test is both trivial to perform and provides a readily-measurable result.

First of all, it doesn't make any good-bad distinction; that's a value judgment, which I specifically warned against using and avoided using in the analysis.

Which is one reason it is meaningless, as I pointed out in great detail. People are hard-wired to seek certain states and avoid others; certain value judgements are built in.

Second, you don't even explain how they imply what you say they imply about costs, or even what a cognitive cost is. (Sounds like a buzzword you probably wouldn't be able to define if asked.)

A cost paid with the coin of thinking, obviously. For a given set of cognitive tasks, a given person can only complete them so fast. The presence of a condition with a high cognitive cost reduces the amount of cognition available for general purpose use, and general cognition (the so called g-factor) is the single most important determinant of personal economic productivity.

Third, in no way does the model contradict the idea of varying traits among the population; it fact, it affirms it. If you have a reason why it would contradict, you didn't give it, ...

It ignores the spectrum of variation, saying a mental trait is either 100% unchangeable constraint and 0% changeable preference, or vice versa. But here in the real world, each trait has both fixed and variable components. For example, you claim that "No matter what you want, you can't will yourself to stop sneezing ..." which is simply false. I have sometimes made myself not sneeze despite the drive to do it; it takes a great deal of concentration and willpower, leaving less cognition for other tasks.

For example, what is your psychopath example supposed to prove? It affirmed my post. The "psychopath" has different preferences than you would like.

I was dispassionate regarding the psychopath's preferences. My point was that his preferences are highly decoupled from his decisions. He consistently does things that hurt himself, generally in spectacular call-the-cops lock-up-your-daughters fashion. If you ask him, he can tell you articulately why he is suffering and how he has hurt others, and how much he would like it to end. Blood tests (of things like cortisol and adrenaline) would show the distress is real. Yet he is helpless to have his preferences inform his decisions.

He passes the gun-to-the-head just, just like my post would expect him too.

You utterly miss the point. A "pass" is postulated to show that preferences cause decisions, and by extension outcomes. However a psychopath will pass even though his preferences are in general poorly coupled to decisions, and cause outcomes that he despises.

Re:As a psych student

[cwelch]

While I'm not a psycho-doc, I think I agree with you. I bet if I went into a doctors office, the whole "White coat syndrome" would kick in and my test would come back positive because I'd be anxious, although I'm rarely anxious about anything else. It's not that I have a problem with doctors or needles, no big deal. It just happens, and I know a LOT of people go through it, because you're not in the docs office very often because you just *WANT* to get poked and prodded. If that were the case, an OB visit wouldn't be so bad for a woman. I feel sorry for my soon-to-be. It's a good things guys don't have to go through it near as often!!

Re:As a psych student

[LeonGeeste]

Huh? Your gun-to-the-head test is both trivial to perform and provides a readily-measurable result.

*long sigh*

If you were referring to the gun-to-the-head test as the "econometric model", you should quoted that part and then called it an econometric model. Read your post: you responded to the preference/constraint dichotomy and referred to it as an "econometric model". It's not. Ergo, you were being very sloppy, or really didn't know what you were talking about. I believe I erred in your favor, all things considered.

But even setting aside this asinine error of yours and granting that the whole time you *really did mean* (wink wink) to call the gun-to-the-head test and NOT the preference/constraint dichotomy an "econometric model", it still isn't something you can readily measure in a lab setting. Experimental ethics prohibit you from putting someone's life on the line like that, so no threat could be credible. Even if it could be credible, the results could never be evaluated by a peer-reviewed journal because of its violation of ethics. That's why it's a "thought experiment". You'll be sure to learn about those in your intro philosophy or physics classes in college. If you make it in, of course (and, no offense kid, I'm really not betting the farm on that one).

me: First of all, it doesn't make any good-bad distinction; that's a value judgment, which I specifically warned against using and avoided using in the analysis.

you: Which is one reason it is meaningless, as I pointed out in great detail. People are hard-wired to seek certain states and avoid others; certain value judgements are built in.

*longer sigh*

Obviously, I was talking about value judgments *about the patient*, not value judgments the patient makes.

Look, I really can't be bothered to respond to any of your drivel anymore. If you can't even get these basic concepts right, I hold out little hope for you even beginning to grasp the point I was trying to make. Just move on, and find something else you can maybe understand.

What if I don't want to know?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't want to know if I have Anxiety Disorders or Depression.
I certainly wouldn't want someone else to know.

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[borawjm]

An anxiety disorder about other people knowing your anxieties. I guess that explains why you post as an AC

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't want to know if I have Anxiety Disorders or Depression.

Why not? Would you also fear being diagnosed with the flu? These disorders are medical illnesses and should be tested for and treated as such. Lying to yourself doesn't make the problem go away and you certainly aren't immune from their effects just because you don't know the cause.

I certainly wouldn't want someone else to know.

Then don't give them your blood?

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know the people that live the longest with cancer are the poeple who don't know they have it?

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[michaeltoe]

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say it's probably because life threatening symptoms haven't presented themselves, and that's why they don't know they have it.

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know...

Nope, I didn't. Care to back that up with any facts?

Re:What if I don't want to know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I was tired of the karma whoring. Besides, I don't use public opinion as a filter.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Hey Pope Felcher . .]

. . . in that case the test would be fairly conclusive.

Anxiety via Test

[Nuclear Elephant]

In other news, IBM tech support agents reportedly the worst among cursing out customers.

Oh wonderful

[USSJoin]

Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we want to do with people with anxiety disorder: suck out their blood. That couldn't *possibly* make anyone... anxious, or worried. Nope. Not a chance of that.

Re:Oh wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a pretty bad anxiety disorder and im not afraid of needles at all in fact for me its like anxity comes and goes as it pleases rather than get triggered by something.

Screening

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect for screening potential employees as well!

Re:Screening

[Anonymous Coward]

My asshole of a boss will want to hire all of them he can find.
  That way, he justifies his salary, even though we have the great sum of 5 (count 'em) employees!
He trusts no one, just like the motto on X files. He screws our customers by hiring all the screwballs, crackheads, and nuts he can.
Screw the staff! Here comes another one of his hires that cannot hold up his/her end of the workload. All in all (and our best customers know it), only TWO employees do the work, the rest just fool around, go on long smoking breaks, and show that they are in fact, disturbed.
  I''m _disturbed_ that the Big Boss never comes around to "clean house". Oh, and BTW, the boss does not _do_ anything else. No work at all!

Re:Screening

[Wizarth]

This is modded funny, but should be considered insightful.

My only worry

[jb.hl.com]

My only worry about this is that some people might just be feeling shitty, and wouldn't want to submit to a blood test. What if a person says they're anxious/depressed, but the blood test says otherwise? What do doctors believe?

In any event, it'd probably be better if doctors got to work on making some antidepressants with less overt side effects before they learn to diagnose it...I mean I've just started taking Prozac, and already I'm getting headaches, and the leaflet with the pills has a whole lot more side effects to watch out for.

Re:My only worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Psh...everyone knows Prozac is a placebo.

Re:My only worry

[jb.hl.com]

I don't know of many placebos with side effects.

Re:My only worry

[foobsr]

Maybe it would be better if the nurture (environment) part would be treated instead of the nature (DNA) side (as the article seems to suggest).

On a side note: My wife took Prozac and turned bipolar as a consequence, so take care.

CC

Re:My only worry

[slo_learner]

That makes sense. Let's develop the medication before we understand what it is we are medicating. No wonder the line is so long at the pharmacist.

Re:My only worry

[einhverfr]

My only worry about this is that some people might just be feeling shitty, and wouldn't want to submit to a blood test. What if a person says they're anxious/depressed, but the blood test says otherwise? What do doctors believe?

If the blood test comes back negative, then maybe it is not the anxiety disorder that the test was designed to test for. It could still be something else, something purely psychological, or something else entirely.

A test never tells you that you are not sick. It can just tell you that you don't have some specific illness.

Case in point. My father in law recently passed away from complications relating to chemotherapy used to treat his MDS (it was thought that it was starting to transform into a type of Leukemia called AML). They ran tests for months before finding the cause.

Re:My only worry

[TonyMillion]

All placebos have side effects if you read the patient information leaflet so you know what to expect.

Re:My only worry

[jb.hl.com]

I'd love to see how you can get headaches, earache or worsened depression from a placebo. Really.

Re:My only worry

[KillShill]

doctors believe blood tests way more than their patients.

they no longer believe in "first, do no harm".

now it's "first, get the money"

drive thru doctors i call em.

in and out as quickly as possible.

sure there are still good doctors... somewhere. i might even meet one someday.

Health "Maintenance" Organizations.... sort of like the PATRIOT act / DRM... named appropriately.

Re:My only worry

[claus.wilke]

It's simple: Side effects are all the things that happen to people while they are taking part in the drug trials. Include sufficiently many people in the test, and you'll find some that get headaches, stomach aches, depression, flu-like symtoms, etc. Now you would argue that these symptoms weren't caused by the placebo, but how do you know whether comparable symptoms in the patients that took the real drug were caused by that drug? Since this question cannot be resolved, the only reasonable way to deal with the situation is to say that everything that occurs during the tests is a side effect, and to compare whether the real drug has significantly worse side effects than the placebo.

Re:My only worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's develop the medication before we understand what it is we are medicating

If we waited, there would be a long list of things that we couldn't medicate. Epilepsy being one.

Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[CyricZ]

While I'm not a doctor, a lot of the most anxious people I know are heavy consumers of caffeine. They're the sort of people who drink three cups in the morning, followed by a Coke while at work, and then another cup of coffee and a chocolate bar snack on the way home, followed by a couple of cups of tea with dinner. And then they can't sleep, so they need to repeat the cycle again the next day, for years on end.

The was one fellow I worked with, Trent, who was in that cycle, and was always very anxious and irritable. He eventually decided to just cut out caffeine completely. So he started drinking fruit juices instead of coffee, water instead of Coke. He stopped eating chocolate. And soon after dropping caffeine from his diet he found he was able to concentrate more, was far more efficient at work, and was a whole lot less anxious.

So perhaps a good way to eliminate some forms of anxiousness is to stop consuming caffeine.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[jd]

That makes anxiety easy to test for. If there's no blood in the caffeine stream, then they're suffering from excessive anxiety. You can then diagnose the type of anxiety by whether the largest fraction of non-caffeine substance is tea, coffee or chocolate.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[ErikTheRed]

So perhaps a good way to eliminate some forms of anxiousness is to stop consuming caffeine.

Try not to be anxious about the hordes of Slashdotters now converging on your location with torches and pitchforks.

In all serousness, though, I eliminated caffeine from my diet for several years (I have an occasional bit now and then these days) and I felt much better physically and mentally afterwards.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[nefarity]

There's a difference between anxiety and anxiety disorders. What you've written is completely off topic.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Frangible]

Stimulants, including caffeine, can indeed exacerbate anxiety in some people, but they are a minority of users. For most, stimulants improve concentration and task performance. A fairly interesting recent study detailing some of the mechanics and effects of caffeine is here.

Personally though, it's been my observation most people are prone to anxiety when having blood drawn or given an injection; I'm not necessarily sure that warrants medication.

Caffeine also has another interaction with this test in that it triggers the release of acetylcholine, and therefore possibly acetylcholinase as part of a negative feedback process as well. I assume nicotine would do much the same thing. Even if neither influenced the subject's behavior anxiety score.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Enrico Pulatzo]

No blood in the caffeine stream? I'm not sure if this was a joke or a Freudian slip. Either way, I enjoyed it.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[MoogMan]

Perhaps anxious people go to Caffeine as an answer. Then get hooked on harder drugs such as Coding and Linux.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Rob the Bold]

For personal reasons, I've done a lot of library research on anxiety. You can have very serious anxiety problems with using any caffiene. Not an MD, just an interested patient with a reading addiction.

Too much caffeine can cause the same sort of symptoms as various anxiety disorders, but that's relatively easy to diagnose and treat. And cutting back or eliminating caffiene is almost always recommended in treatment of people with anxiety disorders. Caffiene can also make tranquilizers and other therapies less effective. Psychaiatrists know this, and you'll also find that info in most books on anxiety at the library -- assuming that your agorophobia hasn't gotten too bad to go out, yet.

A lot of people end up in hospital emergency rooms when they have their first panic attack. It resembles the symptoms of a heart attack in many cases. An anxiety blood test might be very helpful for the ER doc to get you out of the hospital with a referral to a psychiatrist. It might also be reassuring for the patient at that point, being that the condition is generally treatable. Could save you the trouble and expense of a battery of unnecessary heart diagnosics, too.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Skater]

I always love that argument. And this quote is the first thing that hits me: "Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anyone."

Basically, you're saying that someone that is probably taking far too much caffeine is having negative effects. That's not really surprising. I have 29 ounces or less of Coke each day, and that's about all the caffeine I have (occasionally I'll have a chocolate candy bar or something, but that's rare I believe that's roughly the same amount of caffeine as a single cup of coffee, maybe slightly more.

I have no problems concentrating or with anxiety. My only problems with concentration usually come from external factors - the cat jumps on my lap, the phone rings, etc. Sure, I occasionally get nervous/anxious about things, but who doesn't? Some anxiety is normal.

I've seen people (not you) here ranting and raving about how caffeine is evil based on anecdotal evidence similar to what you presented. But the fact is that someone overdosed on any drug is likely to be experiencing side effects. We know what happens when people drink too much alcohol, so why would we think too much caffeine is any different?

--RJ

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[CyricZ]

I'm sure a certain volume of caffeine affects different people to different extents. Nobody, except perhaps you, is suggesting otherwise.

So while that amount of caffeine may not affect you in any way (perhaps because you're a large, burly man; am I right?), it may affect others. And there are people who drink far more than the single can of Coke, or whatever measure it was you used.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record I have been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and border-line clinical depression. Maybe that's why I usually post as AC? Anyway, I used to drink about a can of diet coke a day or a cup of coffee a day. I think when I did that, my anxiety would kick in more often than it does now (I'm mostly off caffeine now). But the severity of my anxiety doesn't seem any different. I think I'm more susceptible to caffeine than your average person as well. Saturday night, my fiancée drank an entire glass of regular coke and about 15 minutes later fell asleep. If I were to drink an entire glass of regular coke any time past dinner 5pm, it's unlikely I'd fall asleep until 2-3 hours past my usual bed-time (~midnight).

I still get very anxious when presented with various social situations, so caffeine isn't the cause. Though its use is related, just not in a casual way. Maybe people that are very susceptible to the effects of caffeine also have some form of anxiety (regardless of whether caffeine is actually present in their system). Note I'm not a scientist, nor a doctor and have done no research to examine such a relationship, I'm just speaking from personal experience.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Anonymous Coward]

So perhaps a good way to eliminate some forms of anxiousness is to stop consuming caffeine.

Blasphemy!

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a Magnesium supplement. Anxiety problem solved + good nites sleep.

Problem solved. Next.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Skater]

No, I'm not a "large, burly man" - I'm 6' tall and 180 lbs.

My point was this - people are affected by drugs. Overdosing on a drug is usually going to produce some very noticeable effects. Taking a little bit of a drug probably won't produce those same side effects. Everything in moderation, in other words.

--RJ

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[rizole]

Apparently people often find ways to maintain those stress levels experienced in early life. If you are bought up on edge then you find ways to stay on edge, be it chemical or expirential.
I guess the point is that these people are not necesarily anxious because they drink coffee, rather that they drink coffee to maintain thier anxiety.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[lav-chan]

I can't tell if this was just a typing error or not, and i know it wasn't really important to your point, but.

I have 29 ounces or less of Coke each day, and that's about all the caffeine I have (occasionally I'll have a chocolate candy bar or something, but that's rare I believe that's roughly the same amount of caffeine as a single cup of coffee, maybe slightly more.

Chocolate doesn't really have that much caffeine in it. It obviously depends on the type of chocolate and the amount, but i think your standard candy bar has less caffeine than a can of soda. And those '29 ounces' (that's a pretty random number, but OK) of Coke have less caffeine combined than a normal cup of coffee.

Re:Anxiety caused by too much caffeine.

[Skater]

It is a typo - there should be a ) after rare. Sorry. :)

How is this any better?

[garcia]

Many people who are reluctant to undergo this examination are left untreated and can continue to suffer for many years.

So, if people are reluctant to undergo examination by a doctor what makes the researches believe that they will appreciate being stuck w/a needle and then have to sit around and wait out their results?

Re:How is this any better?

[Rob the Bold]

They'll get your blood when you show up in the ER with heart attack symptoms. This is often a panic sufferer's first contact with a doctor. You'll hardly notice the needle stick with everything else going on.

Dangerous

[manonthemoon]

I doubt these kind of issues can be singled out by a blood test. I'm sure they are finding some subset of those with an anxiety issue, but they will overlook others with similar issues because "it didn't show up on the test."

The last thing we need are doctors relying even *more* upon tests rather than listening to their patients.

Re:Dangerous

[TrappedByMyself]

I doubt these kind of issues can be singled out by a blood test.

No shit, Sherlock. You've just oversimplified the situation, then complained that it was too simple.

This is no different than any other medical test. Patient complains and doctor takes complaints + test results + research + experience to figure out what's going on. Complaints + results don't jive? Well, then more questions, tests, research, querying other doctors.

Re:Dangerous

[biobogonics]

I doubt these kind of issues can be singled out by a blood test.

Yet another study to take with a large grain of salt. This "news" is a press release. Has it been reported in a medical journal? Has it been replicated by other researchers?

The researchers say they found abnormal cholinesterase levels in 4 groups of people:

"women, African-American, people with low Body Mass Index (BMI) and people who have suffered a previous trauma in their lives"

Perhaps they have weighted their sample with people generally more prone to anxiety. For example, people with some eating disorders may have a very low Body Mass Index. So it's not clear what is cause and what is effect.

Abnormal xACHe levels may be a marker for anxiety, or they may be a marker for some other factors that pre-dispose to anxiety.

About 25 years ago, a blood test was trumpeted as diagnostic for depression. I wonder where the DST (dexamethasone suppression test) is today?

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing we need are doctors relying even *more* upon tests rather than listening to their patients.

Have you ever worked in tech support? Think back to how trustworthy most of the information you got was. Even with the best of intentions, people who don't know computers well tend to provide false or misleading information. It can often take half an hour or longer just to extract the information you need. It's why working tech support sucks. Tech support for knowledgeable people is a joy because they make your job so easy.

Anyway, it's the same problem with doctors. Except worse, because the human body is far more complex, far more important, and far less understood than computers. It's possible to spend a week or two researching a computer problem and become something of an expert on it. You can't really do that with the human body.

If you have the same doctor for a while, you get to know each other. You learn from him about your particular ailments, what causes them, what symptoms to watch for, and so on. As you learn, you become a more useful source of information to him. As that happens, he relies more on you and less on tests. Just like, if you work in tech support with a smallish group of customers, you learn how best to deal with certain customers. Maybe this one is highly technical and can be trusted completely; maybe this one is totally non-technical but usually helpful; maybe this one thinks he's technical, but isn't, and can't be trusted at all; and so on.

My personal experience with doctors has actually been very good, but I suspect the major reason is that my father is a (retired) doctor. So I have a better idea than most people of what information doctors want, what's serious and what isn't. And of course, I trust the professional opinion of doctors more than most people, which I'm sure makes them like me more. (I hate, when working tech support, when I tell a customer "This is the problem" and he says "No, I don't think it is." If you know what the goddamn problem is, then why are you calling me to ask for help?)

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

You're very correct on what a doctor SHOULD do to diagnose any issue. But many doctors don't have or don't take the time. As a case in point, I am bipolar and have mitral valve prolapse. I've discovered that this is an evil compbo, but, life goes on. Thing is, I've complained for years about fatigue (before being told of the BP). Doctors with the records in front of them never gave one thought to the MVP, or, in my case, MVPS (syndrom). A major symptom of a patient know to have MVPS? Fatigue! How many blood tests, pee tests, medicines did we try? I lost count. What it comes down to is this: doctors are human too. As such, some are better than others at putting 2 and 2 together. YOU, as a patient, need to be aware of 1)what you know you have and 2)what the symptoms are. Then, you need to respect yourself in the face of the doctor and SPEAK UP and ASK QUESTIONS. If I had been told of the symptoms for MVPS years ago, I would have been better able to direct the conversation with my doctor and, quite possibly, my BP treatment would have been a bit smoother because I would have thought to tell my shrink. (MVPS has a few syptoms that coincide with BP, thus exaserbating the problem.) Need more info on something you have been actually dignosed with (not something you only think you have), ask your doctors, research it in the library, find it at REPUTABLE resources on the web.

Hmmm.. I didn't intend to write so much. I hope it helps somebody.

Needlephobia

[path_man]

Especially easy to spot during this blood test is the anxiety of needles.... http://www.needlephobia.co.uk/

won't work

[Kohath]

What if I get panic attacks at the site of needles or blood?

Re:won't work

[Rob the Bold]

Interesting question. What they call "Blood, Injury (and Injection)" phobia is actually rather different from other phobias. Most specific phobias produce anxiety and the desire to fight, flee or freeze. BII phobia causes a brief anziety-type reaction followed by light-headedness and sometimes loss of conciousness (syncope). A paper published in Circulation (a journal of the American Heart Association) suggests that it is not a "phobia" at all, but a different type of condition related to neural circulatory control. Text and abstract are here: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/104/8 /903

As a psychologist

[Frothy Walrus]

I find this attitude to be the singlemost prevalent misconception in the field today. In my studied opinion it is far better for the chemical/physical causes of mental illness to be hidden safely away from the subject. The patient should understand that their problem stems from within themselves, not from generations of malignant genes. This places the burden and yoke of recovery squarely on their shoulders, where it belongs.

Re:As a psychologist

[kaosrain]

I disagree. While I feel that recovery should be placed upon the patient, it is important to let them know that they are not responsible for causing the disorder. My significant other was extremely bothered and felt that she was a failure for having an anxiety disorder, but I remind her that "(She) isn't responsible for having the disorder, but she is responsible for her recovery."

Re:As a psychologist

[trentblase]

Well, to some degree they can be responsible.

Re:As a psychologist

[sabaco]

And in my studied opinion, THAT is the most prevalent misconception in the field. Knowing their is a biological component to their illness helps patients realize it's not just them, they aren't just crazy or imagining it, and helps them work on it from a much stronger position.

Re:As a psychologist

[CyricZ]

As somebody in the medical field (or soon to be), are you a proponent of using drugs to treat anxiety? I've heard reports that some of the drugs frequently have awful side effects, and can become very addicting and very difficult to ease off of. There have even been consumer lawsuits against various pharmas, if I'm not mistaken.

That said, if such a test were used to identify those suffering from such illnesses, would you as a clinician prescribe such drugs, or would you focus on alternative therapies?

Re:As a psychologist

[Frothy Walrus]

Yes, but it just as strongly provides a cop-out mechanism with which the patient may absolve herself of her responsibility to recover. Besides, the science of measuring changes in brain and blood chemistry, then these changes for mood swings concurrent with the change, is shaky at best. It will be a long time before humans fully understand neuro- and bio-chemistry and how they relate to the psyche, and until that day I am more than happy to keep my patients in the dark about it.

Re:As a psychologist

[Monkelectric]

Do you make a distinction between depression with an organic cause and depression of the "I dont know how to be happy" type? (is that even a legit distinction?)

Re:As a psychologist

[kaosrain]

It depends on the patient. In my opinion, benzodiazepines should NOT be used for long term treatment (anything longer than 2 weeks or so). What I've observed to be most effective is beginning an SSRI (or in some cases SNRI), and if needed using a benzodiazepine to control the symptoms/side effects until the S(S/N)RI has stablized. Then Cognitive Behavioral Therapy while the patient is on the anti-depressants, and then slowly taking them off of the antidepressants.

Re:As a psychologist

[JesseL]

My opinion is neither well informed or professional. If the cause of a persons illness (mental or otherwise) is chemical or physical, then why wouldn't you want to help them deal with the real problem effectively? I understand that people need to be responsible in helping themselves. If anyone is supposed to make an effort at fixing a problem they need to be as informed as possible about the nature of the problem.

I realize some people would use the knowledge that they have a chemical/physical disorder as a crutch to avoid trying to get better. I think this is where the job of their psychologist/psychiatrist/therapist really comes into play.

Re:As a psychologist

[belmolis]

I won't claim expertise in clinical psychology, but from everything I have seen, psychological disorders are varied, with causes ranging from factors controllable by the patient to severe stress caused by family, job, or other social factors to environmental factors. In some cases then it may be important for the patient to assume responsibility, but in others there is likely not much he or she can do, at least not without chemical assistance. In any case, in disorders where it is hard to get the patient to realize that he or she even has the disorder, a blood test could be an important tool.

Isn't it a fact that for many disorders, including anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia, drug treatment has proven to be far more effective than psychotherapy?

By the way, are you really a professional psychologist? Care to explain why a psychologist would be posting garbage like this?

Re:As a psychologist

[JesseL]

I would also like to mention that I would never trust a psychologist that posts thing like this on slashdot. Troll.

Re:As a psychologist

[nilesh_tms]

As someone who has experienced and recovered from a psychosomatic disorder (in my case what I thought was "repetitive strain injury"), I tend to agree that sometimes its better that patient doesn't know about physical evidence. The mind is clever enough to create painful symptoms where it knows there are structural abnormalities, even though those structural abnormalities don't cause pain. Read "The Mindbody Prescription" by John Sarno if you're interested in what I'm talking about here (or Google "sarno tms" or check out this document)

In this case, I don't really know much about the discovery, so maybe it doesn't apply, but this is what worries me: ok, so anxiety disorders can be detected in the bloodstream. But what is the cause? It can still be something that is purely psychological and something that could potentially be fixed through psychological approaches. Maybe the evidence in the bloodstream is the result of anxiety disorders, but the anxiety disorder itself is still psychological. The mind is capable of making changes to the body in pretty incredible ways (I've experienced this first hand), this isn't really too surprising.

What worries me about this is that this will give people the concept that there is something actually physically/chemically wrong with them that they were born with that they can't fix. They will start to think it is a chronic problem that won't go away, and they just have to live with it, which just leads to using medicine to alleviate the symptoms, rather that going after cause. Maybe it actually is something physically/chemically wrong (an idea I'm very skeptical about after my own experiences), but I'd imagine there is significant number of people who have experienced anxiety who don't have any such physically/chemically problems.

Interesting discovery nonetheless, but interpretting what it actually means is probably more interesting.

Re:As a psychologist

[Omestes]

As an ex-student of psychology I see where your coming from, BUT disagree on principled grounds. I do not think that lying or concealing aspects of ones condition is ethical, EVER. Sure, some preparation and ground work might be needed before revealing the aspects of ones condition is full is a good idea, but this knowledge should ALWAYS be bestowd on one, since one does, in fact, OWN ones condition, it is a part of their being, and thus they should be entitled to know. If one purposely conceals facts about a person from them, you are putting yourself in a contrived state of "godhood" above them, you are more important than them, as related to their being. In a way you are dehumanizing or objectifying them. While your stance has bigger practical benefits, it is an ethical problem. Ethics should always come above and first, and solutions must be shaped around your principles.

Yes, the problem/solution should and is on the patients shoulders. And a genetic cause can be a crutch to those who know nothing of the mutability of genetics in real life. It is then YOUR responsibility to show this, and present them with the full truth of their situation. Anything else is disingenuous.

If you can't tell, I fled psychology for philosophy because of the inherent errors involved in modern psychology that most take as given.

Re:As a psychologist

[guitaristx]

I disagree with your disagreement. My SO didn't believe that anxiety disorders were "real" until she was diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist (after multiple doctor visits and lots of office visit fees). Once she read a few books about OCD, she realized that it wasn't "just the way she is" that makes her nitpick and yell at her husband about a decoration being 0.25" out-of-place. A blood test that could reveal these things would be a very interesting topic.

However, I would be very curious about the accuracy of such things, especially considering that anxiety disorders can be overcome. After reading the literature around OCD, I learned that researchers at UCLA (among others) has shown the areas of the brain in PET scans before and after treatment of OCD. The post-treatment scans look normal. Would that mean that such a blood test would return a negative result for a post-treatment OCD patient?

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

All you people who took this seriously and thought it was a real Psych., I would say that YOU ALL are the ones who need trips to the Psychologist.

When I first read it, I immediately knew it was a joke. Why didn't you?

Thank You.

Re:As a psychologist

[michaeltoe]

Yes, but being able to establish a definite cause and a definite solution is the best way to start recovery. Just because there's a bloodtest to indicate you have an anxiety disorder doesn't mean that you're stuck taking medications for it for the rest of your life. In fact, the vast majority of actual cases indicate otherwise, with 90% of patients undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy showing positive results. Anxiety disorders are among the most treatable mental disorders, and having a test to identify them shouldn't change that.

Re:As a psychologist

[hazem]

Well, the tests must measure the presence or absence of some chemical in the blood. And the brain operates via chemical processes. It's possible that when the brain is suffering from OCD, it produces different chemicals (maybe as a waste process) than one that does not have OCD. It would be kind of like monitoring the exaust of a car. If you have excessive CO compared to normal, you find something's not optimal, even though the car functions.

Re:As a psychologist

[Total_Wimp]

(full disclosure: my daughter and me are both on medication for mood disorders)

I hate to be flippant, but it also gives a very large kick in the ass to Tom Cruise and those who feel like he does. While your S.O. was facing her demons, she was actively being encouraged by others who feel that abnormal brain chemistry is some kind of myth.

This test, and the others to follow, are a scientific necessity. Tom Cruise will be forced to shut his mouth and your patients, and S.O., will come to understand that if the tests come up bad, they should seek help... just like people who's screenings show high blood cholestorol.

TW

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on! This course of treatment (or rather several courses) has helped me greatly. Cognitive therapy works!! Of course handing a patient a Prozac perscription and a copy of "Feeling Good" is all some health plans will cover. It takes time and the help of a talented person to really make changes in your life.

I wish you well in your studies and your practice.

Re:As a psychologist

[Chris Snook]

Oh, so YOU are the one responsible for the millions of people with easily treatable psychiatric conditions who do not seek professional help. YOU are the one telling them that their problems with loving and working are an integral part of their identity, reinforcing their belief that they will never be normal, that they are fundamentally defective. YOU are the one hiding the well-understood biological factors, leaving patients with nothing more than murky definitions full of weak intensifiers and DSM criteria including phrases like "five or more of the following", making them question whether they have a condition that's understood well enough to be treated.

Your studied opinion can go fuck itself.

Re:As a psychologist

[holy zarquon's singi]

Oh good grief! The brain and body are intimately linked, in one whole general mish-mash. Pure mentalists are just as bad as pure physiologists. What part of gestalt do you not understand?

Re:As a psychologist

[JakusMinimus]

being vulgar does not equate with professional aptitute nor lack thereof (well, except maybe for sailors and porn stars). sounds like frothy walrus is a typical male ... or lesbian.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it just as strongly provides a cop-out mechanism with which the patient may absolve herself of her responsibility to recover. Besides, the science of measuring changes in brain and blood chemistry, then these changes for mood swings concurrent with the change, is shaky at best. It will be a long time before humans fully understand neuro- and bio-chemistry and how they relate to the psyche, and until that day I am more than happy to keep my patients in the dark about it.

(Apologies for the AC but I'd already moderated on this thread when I saw your comments)

Ultimately, you get to decide how to manage your patients, and if they're comfortable with your approach, so be it. From my standpoint though, this is patronizing and if I ever found that my doctor was intentionally obscuring information to protect me, I'd walk out the door and would never come back. Actually, over the past 15 or so years, I have left two doctors over trust issues but for different cause (they weren't obscuring information; they were just BSing and they admitted it when I called them on it). Anyway, not faith building experiences. I assume you don't tell your patients that this is your modus operandi up front? I have a hard time imagining them trusting you afterwords.

Anyway, I agree that neurochemistry is in its infancy, and I also agree that science often gets over sold, to the detriment of the credulous. No harm in teaching patients due skepticism. But that's a separate issue, apart intentionally deceiving one's patients for their supposed good.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

As somebody in the medical field (or soon to be), are you a proponent of using drugs to treat anxiety?

As somebody with General Anxiety Disorder I'm a firm proponent of using drugs to treat anxiety. I've found both Buspar and the occasional Xanax very helpful. Neither is the only solution, but both have been very useful in showing me how my life could be different, giving me incentive to do the rest of the work. I aim to taper off both eventually.

A note to my fellow programmers and sysadmins: in retrospect, I think there's a much higher incidence of GAD in our ranks than in the general population. Why? Because being over-anxious helps us to be hyper-responsible about the details, but the in-control-of-your-own-world aspect of computers provides a safe, predictable environment that is very soothing.

If you have a hard time relaxing, if you tend towards obsessiveness, if you are a pack rat, if you are known to snap at people, and if you are hyper-responsible in some things but sometimes freak out and utterly avoid others, it's worth talking to somebody about GAD. All of that was true about me, and all of those things are better now. A month-long trial of Buspar was like a light coming on: Aha! This is how other people are!

In the two years since, here are the non-medication things I do to help:

• regular sleep schedule
• regular cardiovascular exercise
• regular yoga
• a nightly glass or two of red wine (I don't know why, but it has an effect that beer doesn't)
• optimizing my life for minimal stress
• plenty of sunlight
• making sure to have fun

All this has changed my life greatly for the better.

Re:As a psychologist

[(negative video)]

In my studied opinion it is far better for the chemical/physical causes of mental illness to be hidden safely away from the subject.

Mental diagnosis and treatment are currently very limited. However it does not follow that because voodoo is the best you have to offer, patients ought to be ignorant.

The patient should understand that their problem stems from within themselves, not from generations of malignant genes.

Several facts speak against that position:

1. Researchers are closing in on alleles that directly cause migraine, a disorder that is a kissing cousin of bipolar disorder and associated fluctuating affective disorders. I predict that genetic causes will be found for this spectrum of disorders, and that specific drugs will follow. (I have a personal interest here. For most of my life I had migraine with the mood disturbances that commonly accompany it, but with minimal to no headache. Finally at the age of 30 I started seeing flashing lights and an ophthalmologist diagnosed me properly. I was not, in fact, lazy, depressed, or a hypochondriac. I suspect there are many others on the epilepsy/migraine/bipolar spectrum in this same boat. We need objective tests and good drugs.)
2. Twin studies have shown that much mental illness (esp. schizophrenia) can be caused by heritable biochemical factors.
3. Research has shown that numerous parasites reprogram the minds of their hosts, and it frequently takes the form of spectacular and suicidal behavior. Due to lack of volunteers this has not been clearly demonstrated in humans, but it is a virtual certainty that humans are affected. (For further reading look up the common mammalian parasite toxoplasma gondii.)
4. The PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus) hypothesis, that strep infections can trigger production of autoantibodies against important CNS proteins, is supported by very suggestive evidence. Even if it doesn't pan out, it would be shocking if there were no diseases of this type, with bizarre yet highly-stereotyped symptoms.

This places the burden and yoke of recovery squarely on their shoulders, where it belongs.

Many mental disorders are no more under conscious control than migraine is. It wasn't cognitive-behavioral therapy or a fad for personal responsibility that emptied the insane asylums. It was chlorpromazine and the serotonergic drugs, which were discovered by accident and not by psychiatry.

Re:As a psychologist

[brian0918]

"The patient should understand that their problem stems from within themselves, not from generations of malignant genes."

I smell job insecurity. This is the same nonsenical garbage that kept us in the dark about ulcers. Say Goodbye to the Miss Cleo-type diagnoses of, "Why yes, they're caused by your stressful life. You need to stop feeling so anxious all the time. It stems from your childhood oedipus complex", and Hello to actual SCIENCE, "Why yes, it is caused by some bacteria in your stomach causing the overproduction of stomach acid. Take this pill and go away... No, I don't care about your childhood."

Re:As a psychologist

[Ezza]

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but _all_ drugs have side effects.

Also anti-anxiety medication is easy to become psychologically addicted to. Anything that takes the pain away is something people can often be reluctant to stop using.

Re:As a psychologist

[brian0918]

" and until that day I am more than happy to keep my patients in the dark about it."

It is already "that day" for ulcers, and it is beginning to be "that day" for anxiety. I'd like to see just how open-minded you are when confronted with the simple fact that our minds are governed by some magical spiritual force that we can never understand. The reality is that we are who we are because of the types and amounts of chemicals present, and how they interact in our bodies. Saying that "it is because of your childhood" is just as nonsensical as saying "it isn't your fault, it's the chemicals". The only acceptable response is just "it's the chemicals." And whether the patient does something about or not, chemicals are never a cop-out, because they make you who you are.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

How about I break your leg and we seee if you will use that as a "cop-out mechanism" when you have to stand up.

Re:As a psychologist

[corngrower]

Parent is a troll.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why psychologists feel that they should have any role to play in any of this. It's the job of Psychiatrists, actual MD's, to diagnose and treat mental illnesses of an organic nature. Psychologists should continue to treat the worried well. If this test becomes standard of care, they won't even be able to order it, or prescribe the drugs to treat it.

Re:As a psychologist

[winwar]

Well, from your comment above, there is a reason you are a pharmacy tech and not a doctor....

And mostly clueless.

Medications are useful when prescribed properly. And no amount of therapy will help severe depression. Granted, getting the proper medication and dosing can be difficult. And if you think medication is costly, it is often cheap compared to therapy....

"And I absolutely doubt the abilities of a doctor who speaks to a patient for only an hour a week then gives a few pills."

That, btw, would be excellent medical care. Hell, an hour a month would be good...

Of course, I wouldn't want to get any medication from any pharmacy you work in. I have severe doubts about your abilities from your lack of knowledge about competent medical care....

Re:As a psychologist

[(negative video)]

As someone who has experienced and recovered from a psychosomatic disorder (in my case what I thought was "repetitive strain injury"), I tend to agree that sometimes its better that patient doesn't know about physical evidence.

I've experienced it from the other side: bizarre perceived symptoms that turned out to have a real cause. Random aches and pains, indigestion and cramping, mood changes, general feeling of illness, and so forth. (Naturally resulting in an impressive medical diagnostic work-up.) The doctors nearly had me convinced it was somatization, but luckily I started seeing flashing lights and an ophthalmologist helped me figure out it was migraine with minimal headache. Even then it took me weeks to work up the courage to go back to my doctor, on account of the somatization diagnosis.

They will start to think it is a chronic problem that won't go away, and they just have to live with it, which just leads to using medicine to alleviate the symptoms, rather that going after cause. Maybe it actually is something physically/chemically wrong (an idea I'm very skeptical about after my own experiences), ...

I am considerably less skeptical. Research suggests that the noxious sensations of migraine (particularly pain) act upon the pain receiver in the brain to make it more sensitive. In this case, the symptom and the disease process are the same thing, and both arise from a runaway positive feedback loop. To me it seems that anxiety is very similar: distress can make a person more sensitive to detecting additional distress.

Some migraineurs can discover things that trigger the runaway pain process and avoid them (he writes while sitting in a dark room, wearing sunglasses, with his monitor's refresh rate set to 103 Hz). However, they still have a lower threshold than normal people, and spending your life "thinking on eggshells" is less than fun. I think it is reasonable to use a drug to dial down the brain's sensitivity-dependent-sensitivity.

Re:As a psychologist

[DavidTC]

What part of gestalt do you not understand?

Maybe he doesn't understand...all of it! Hehe.

Re:As a psychologist

[DissidentPhoenix]

What is it these days with all of the pseudo-psychobabble crap about people 'owning' their problems?

I think that there is a lot of potential for abuse and misuse of a test like this, despite the fact that in many cases it could be very useful. What about the people who test positive for having an anxiety disorder but that disorder isn't the main cause of their distress?

As (another) psych student, specialising in counselling, anxiety and mood disorders, I feel that it is a huge trap for psychologists to believe that they have all the answers and know more about their clients than the clients do, regardless of the fact that the clients have been living with themselves all their lives.
It is extremely important for professional psychologists to actually LISTEN and pay attention to what the CLIENTS concerns are, rather than simply doing a test and putting a label on them.
Here's a surprising fact: LABELS ARE NOT ALWAYS USEFUL! /yelling.

Recognition of an anxiety disorder can sometimes make clients worse rather than better, depending on the disorder, particularly if they cannot recognise it without a conclusive test.

Working in the field of anxiety disorders, the biggest issue that I've heard from people with various anxiety disorders (OCD, GAD etc) has been that psychologists and psychiatrists don't actually LISTEN to them, that they are too intent on labelling people rather than helping them.
I hope for your sake that you do not become one of these.

Re:As a psychologist

[DissidentPhoenix]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Psychologists in many countries including my own are quite capable and permitted legally to diagnose people with mental illnesses. Not only that, there is an increasing push for psychologists to be able to prescribe psychotrophic drugs.

As well as that, I take offense at the way your comment belittles psychologists. "Treat the worried well". Yes, so we do, but there's a lot more to it than that. I'd love to see you do the same after completing an honors degree, followed by a phd. 6-10 years is a common amount of time for people to be at university before being able to be registered psychologists. Sorry for the flame.

Re:As a psychologist

[holy zarquon's singi]

This makes a lot of sense. Benzos act on the GABA neurostransmitter system. GABA is kind of like a global gain control on the brain, and so, with long term use it's like going around with the volume control on your whole experiential aparatus turned down permanently. People with anxiety disorders have problems with the regulation of their arousal levels, and so if they're going around with the gain on their brain turned down, this exacerbates their problems with the control of their arousal levels and can lead to panic disorder, which is much worse than anxiety disorder.

Not that I've ever tried benzos myself. I will in about a fortnight, due to day surgery (benzo prescription is an elective decision... ).

That's as an ex psychologist by the way.

You'd also want to continue the CBT, or at least have a few followup appointments for CBT after the patient is off the S(N|S)RIs as well.

Re:As a psychologist

[Tomfrh]

The problem is that after two weeks of sweet benzo bliss, most anxiety sufferers are not exactly keen to give up their new found elixir. I am amazed at how few Doctors realise what they might be setting people up for when they hand over that first Valium/Xanax/etc script.

Re:As a psychologist

[racecarj]

This is AC... Dude, I have every idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, psychologists can rx in NM and LA. That was a mistake, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere else. In fact, most other states voted against it. Psychologists aren't trained to prescribe... if you want to do that... goto med school! The bottom line is that psychologists aren't trained to deal with real organic problems, so go back to treated your bored housewives. and continue calling yourself "dr. whatever" even though you aren't.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Psycologists/Psychitriatrists need to realize that SSRI/SNRI drugs can have more severe side effects and withdrawal symptoms than Benzos. These are very serious drugs that are very strong, and modifiy many different chemicals in the brain. The fact that doctors have to blindly try different SSRIs before they find the one that works is reason enough to be more careful before just handing out a perscription! I was perscribed Xananx and Lexapro, then later Effexor for Panic/Anxiety/Agoraphobia which landed me in the hospital due to an SSRI intolerance. It took 2 months of treatment to completely stop the aural and visual disturbances, flu-like symptoms, sweating and tremors. This is in adddition to the usual fun of weight gain and sexual side effects! I now take Xanax XR which is a miracle drug. It does not leave you feeling "doped up" and works all day. because it's extended release it also has a much lower abuse potential. 1 1Mg Xanax XR/day has relieved my panic attacks and agoraphobia by about 90%! Now that I have my panic attacks under control i am able to leave my house and be a productie member of society again. Also, CBT certainly helps but it does not stop the onset of panic attacks which happen at random. 2 years of CBT has greatly helped me in developing the tools to cope with the disorder but it is not a "cure".
benzos have been around MUCH MUCH longer than the latest SSRI/SNRI which I feel are really undertested, and should not be blindly reccomended as a safe and easy alternative.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

right. Or you can learn how to use your body properly and there go all your problems.

You see, learning about your body means being able to contract and RELAX your muscles. You've learned 'doing' but not 'not doing'. when you relax your muscles, you are relaxed. It's as simple as that.

Poor posture at a computer all day causes tenseness, what a revelation.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

Yes, but people with problems always feel like people aren't listening and helping them.

You see, for the most part, those who seek help don't want to do it themselves. They want answers from the outside, such is the way of western civ.

They feel they aren't being helped because, really, nobody can help them. If your approach to interacting with reality isn't working, you're the one that has to change it.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, learning about your body means being able to contract and RELAX your muscles. You've learned 'doing' but not 'not doing'. when you relax your muscles, you are relaxed. It's as simple as that.

Sorry, are you speaking as a licensed psychiatrist here? Or as someone with a diagnosed anxiety disorder who has managed to eschew the need for all of the things I mentioned merely by relaxing muscles?

If it's not one of those, maybe you could go relax your arrogance and narcissism muscles. When you come back, you'll be ready to hear that after years of doing yoga and meditation, I still find that insufficient in managing my anxiety disorder.

And if it is one of those, let's hear the specifics. It has already occurred to me that a solution to being tense is relaxing, thanks. If you have particular techinques that have worked for you, I'm glad to hear 'em. If not, go condescend to somebody else.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

No, it's not a fact. Remember, psych is allopathic. Medications don't cure anything, they are band-aids, that's all. Medications, are targeted at eliminating symptoms not at removing causes.

Probably be more effective to prescribe bliss and ANY communication of the problem to ANYONE.

Psych's are rarely more effective than a good friend who knows you well.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit Sherlock.

Only idiots took this seriously. But hey, this IS Slashdot.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

So... what causes migraines?

I used to have bad migraines, flashing lights with intense pain, pain with flickering lights and low refresh rates, intense pain with bright sun light, etc...

Then i figured out that i was tensing my head in all the wrong places and using my eyes incorrectly. Now i don't need glasses anymore, flickering not a bother anymore (note, hows your depth perception) and not only can i go into full sun without sunglasses or staring at the ground, i can actually stare at the sun now(low uv times). Which was actually part of my 'cure'.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

YOu need to change your attitude and your tone.

I'm not being condescending, it's just true.

We perceive the world around us through ourselves, you need to get rid of your arrogance and narcissism.

Fallacy of genus. I'm a yogi. I also have a specialization in psych. I used to have more diseases than you could count on your hands. Migraines, vision problems, anxiety, panic disorders, arthritis, blood diseases, etc... I'm fine now.

Do you do western yoga? Or yoga?

There are set stages for yoga. You learn a muscle by learning how to tense it. Then you learn to relax it. Then you learn to relax the fascia surrounding it. Then from there you step back and become the observer in all situations where that muscle/fascia gets tense, are there emotional/mental aspects to it. Ashtanga is good for loose people, but hatha is better for tense people. Once the body is flexible then comes meditation to change your data gathering/analzying routines.

Yoga is not about physical routines or proper posture. Yoga is about learning to be yourself so that everything you do is an expression of yourself. It's not about holding yourself straight, or 'trying' to get into a posture. When we relax enough to be ourselves our body is straight. The more advanced you are the less physical movement/effort is needed to achieve any pose.

Specific techniques are hard to describe, but there are tools you can use. The most important being your hands and the other being your mind. Close your eyes and touch your body. Your hands can find every source of tension in your body. Find a source, learn how to move it by experimenting with different motions, is it 'connected' to something else? (e.g. lift your arm up and your shoulder moves) It's important to be able to isolate muscle movements. Where is the tension, origin/insertion? Is the muscle tense in only one location, or multiple locations throughout the muscle mass? What feelings get stirred up when you touch the tenseness? Does it tense up more? What happens when you relax it.

You see, all you need is your hands to gather data, your mind to analyze and learn from it, and your desire to explore and understand yourself.

I do realize that specific examples can help and will provide any if you want them.

Re:As a psychologist

[nilesh_tms]

I've experienced it from the other side: bizarre perceived symptoms that turned out to have a real cause. Random aches and pains, indigestion and cramping, mood changes, general feeling of illness, and so forth. (Naturally resulting in an impressive medical diagnostic work-up.) The doctors nearly had me convinced it was somatization, but luckily I started seeing flashing lights and an ophthalmologist helped me figure out it was migraine with minimal headache.

Incidentally, Dr. John Sarno (of the book I mentioned) lists migraines as among one of the symptoms that can be cured using the approach he describes. In fact, IIRC, he even experienced migraines himself and cured them using the technique. The approach in a nutshell is to find the psychological causes. You basically have to dig up supressed/repressed emotions. Though for my case, just knowing that my problems had a psychologically cause was enough for me to get better (I never went to see a psychologist or anything like that).

The tricky part is that the physical symptoms are real, they not just perceived. For example, in the case of wrist pain, the brain has enough control over the body to cause mild oxygen deprivation to the wrist, resulting in wrist pain.

There's more to it (many pieces to the puzzle), and that document I link to has a better explanation (though more geared towards wrist pain).

I've actually been able to link all kinds of problems I've had in the past to psychological reasons. I've had wrist, elbow, pain, neck, knee pain, TMJ (jaw clenching), allergies, stomach problems. All of that has disappeared after I addressed the psychological causes.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, yes, I do actual yoga, not what a club aerobics instructor does to be trendy.

My point is that you know practically nothing about me, didn't bother to ask, and don't have the medical qualifications to talk effectively about what's true for everybody. You've found something that works for you, which is swell. But your sweeping assumption that it must therefore work for everybody for everything is the part that is certainly insulting and, to my eyes, arrogant.

I have already tried exactly what you describe, and tried it for several years before trying medication. Your sweeping assertions to the contrary aside, I found the medication a big help, and it has allowed me to make much faster progress. Yoga's a great start on what I need, but as I mentioned, years of careful experimentation has led me to include other things as well.

You can show some respect for others' experience or not, but until you do, don't expect them to think much of yours.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

All paths lead to enlightenment. At the same time, there are certain truths that apply to everyone.

You see, the ONLY way that humans interact and perceive reality is through the use of muscles. Lack of flexibility constrains that which you can perceive and react to.

If you still can't relax doing all these things then you don't feel safe. Yes, that's right, we're biologically animals, we tense when we're in unsafe situations. Make yourself a super safe environment then. Easiest way is to hook something up to your anandamide receptors. Bliss=safety. At the same time, thc heightens sensory awareness so it would be easier to recognise/control/relax muscles. However, it heightens sensory awareness. If you don't know how to breath properly you'll discover that quickly.

So you've absolutely pressed on tense accupressure points/beauty marks and examined the resulting thoughts and emotions? Your tensness runs throughout your personality. Are you sure you are the observer? You must step outside the system to fix it. I can see the routines in your typing. LIke others you're like a tape recorder, press a certain button and out comes the same message over and over again. I don't have to know ABOUT YOU, you need to know about you. I can't ask you what's wrong with you because you don't know. Don't you see? If you had true knowledge of what is wrong with you then there wouldn't be anything wrong with you.

Answers aren't outside yourself as you seem to believe, they're inside.

Don't you see that you are the one not respecting other peoples experiences? Here i am saying i've cured myself and you're saying i don't have the proper medical qualifications for anything?

Why are you seeking medical knowledge built upon objective reality when YOU are totally subjective? Your cure is subjective.

Re:As a psychologist

[DissidentPhoenix]

Yes, and the whole world is located in the United States, isn't it. Home of psychological research and really bad therapy that barely draws on the body of research. Just look at motivational interviewing as a therapy model. People still perceive psychologists as people who get other people to sit on a couch and recount their early childhood experiences, which is bullshit and the psychological equivalent of a doctor prescribing sugar pills for people with fibromyalgia.

Fact: Psychologists are as accurate at diagnosing mental disorders as an MD.
Fact: Psychotherapy is as effective as medication at treating these 'organic disorders' you're talking about - and the effects of psychotherapy tend to be longer term than medical interventions.
Fact: Any decent psychologist will have a very solid understanding of 'organic problems' as they relate to brain chemistry.
No, we don't learn this stuff with an aim to prescribe yet, but it's coming. This is something that I don't particularly like the idea of.

I have regularly sat in on lectures in my universities school of medicine, particularly lectures that I know deal with mental illness and brain issues and have found that at times the level of information that these future doctors are given is not as in depth as the information that I have learned in psychology lectures.

Re:As a psychologist

[DissidentPhoenix]

Always? Thats a pretty broad generalization there. I know from my own experiences and those of others that this is not always the case. I know that in the past when I had an experience with depression that I felt like quite a few people were listening to me and helping me - and my depression was quite severe - full-blown suicidal ideation etcetc. But then I was actually capable of seeking the help that I needed. I think that a lot of people who suffer from mental illnesses aren't capable of this and don't have the same extensive support network that I do.

I do agree that if your approach to interacting with reality isn't working that you need to be the one to change it, but really... the role of a psychologist shouldn't be to change peoples perceptions of themselves or reality but to help to enable the client to change for themselves.

In a decent therapy session, the client should be doing most of the work, with only the occasional suggestion or clarification from a psychologist. Maybe a psychologist might amplify an issue experienced by a client, or heighten feelings of ambiguity experienced during a decision making process.

Re:As a psychologist

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon, but as a long-term victim of multiple bad therapists (over a 30 year period), which included one who was clearly a sexual predator, I've learned to recognize the signs of disinterest and lack of help.

I've spent 30 years trying to do it myself and the last thing I need is some weinee (like you) trying to make me feel guilty for not being able to. I can't cure my hypothyroid condition by the powers of my mind alone - what makes you think I should be able to prevail over the long-term abuse that left me with PTSD and a flaming social anxiety disorder that just keeps getting worse as the years roll by?

The last therapist I had dealings with stuck me with a "diagnosis" of GAD, which I patently DO NOT have. I even had a fullblown flashback in his office right in front of him and he couldn't be bothered to write down - after 9 months of therapy and $4000 - the diagnosis of PTSD.

Let's see, I can't make presentations, attend meetings, deal with "boss-types", enter a mall, go to a theater by myself, or even open a bill, let alone sit down and pay it, because all of these situations overwhelm me with anxiety. Crowds terrify me. When too many people show up, I have to leave. If I HAVE to go to a meeting, I have to find a corner to hide in, preferably sitting on the floor below everyone's line of sight and in the back. But this idiot things I have GAD????

Gross misdiagnosis - one sure sign the idiot wasn't listening to me. Other signs - Let's see, he kept FALLING ASLEEP while I was talking to him; he routinely answered phone calls from his daughter during my session because (he explained, seeking my sympathy) he felt his relationship with his daughter was so shaky that she might not call him back later or answer his return phone call if he didn't pick up his cell right away; he couldn't be bothered to remember from one session to the next anything we had been talking about.

How did I find all this out? I had no idea he had diagnosed me with GAD because all we ever talked about in session was PTSD and SAD. I found this out after the counselor at Voc Rehab called me to tell me that I was going to have to go and have a psych eval done after all because this joker had never bothered to give me a Real Diagnosis, and his "notes" consisted of ONE LINE per session written on a yellow legal pad.

She was every bit as apalled as I was. However, I'm the one who has to come up with gas money for the 200 mile round trip to get this psych eval done, not to mention the anxiety anticipating this trip is causing me.

And why didn't I find another therapist? Do you seriously need to ask this of someone who has an anxiety disorder? It took just about everything I had to find this one - and now that I'm no longer viably employed and have been unsuccessful for the last 2.5 years in finding another job, I HAVE NO ACCESS WHATSOEVER to therapy.

I hope to high heaven you are not working in the mental health field in any capacity whatsoever. If you are, you're one of the bad ones, that's for sure.

Re:As a psychologist

[tabrnaker]

What makes you think i'm trying to make you feel guilty? Would you make a child feel guilty if they couldn't read and had never been taught? One of the biggest 'cures' for most disorders is stepping back and becoming the observer.

Why do you interpret peoples messages the way you do? And why do you let them affect you in a negative manner? Remember, when it comes to subjective reality, we are kings of our own domain. Nothing happens without our say so, even if that say so is far back in the past. Lots of our mechanisms for dealing with reality are developed in childhood (big suprise eh? they develop cause we don't have any).

So what makes me think you can get better? Why not? I did. I'm not anybody special, i'm just a normal everyday person. I just got fed up with the run around i got from medical proffessionals and decided to figure it out on my own. You know what? That's the way it works because nobody can know yourself better than you can.

Granted, i might have had some advantages in getting over the ptsd. You see, i used to have a mild form of autism (aspergers). The extreme focus i got from it helped in finding and matching data from seperate fields to come up with answers. But once i had the answers the aspergers did NOT help in actually implementing a plan, which is why i got rid of the aspergers :)

There's an important point that everybody needs to understand. Life is about balance. Everything lies on continuums. Stagnation is death. Practically every child that is born is capable of experiencing all that there is to experience. We freeze though. We pick spots on the continuums and stay there. Democrat/republican on slashdot are funny because both sides don't recognize that they are both wrong. Neither position is inherently wrong or right because it is a continuum.

We have to leave what we think of ourselves behind to change. We are not our frozen positions on the continuums (ego) we are beings capable of experiencing it all. When we relax all the tension from our body then we can feel our own rhythym, it pulses and flows through us. It is this rhythym that allows us not to be overwhelmed by all the discordant 'vibrations' around us.

It's unfortunate that you posted ac because there is one exercise that suprisingly helps quite a bit for ptsd. YOu see, i've gotten over it twice (different events) so i'm pretty familiar with it.

The startle response usually accompanies ptsd. When we're in danger we tense up, freeze first to assess the danger. Sometimes, we stay frozen. It is our back muscles that do most of it, picture a prairie dog. Loosen our back muscles and it gives us the flexability to confront the issue. The easiest and best stretch for all the muscles along our whole backside is forward bend. The method of doing forward bend is important. We DO NOT bend from the abdomen. We stand in a normal position feet facing forward, keeping the back in a neutral position. We DO NOT pull ourselves down. We push through the front of our feet, which pushes the bottom of the pelvis backwards, bringing the head forward. Any forward movement is just to balance the backward movement of the bottom of the pelvis. This is where our front hinge is. When we do this position through balance instead of brute strength, as lots of yoga is taught, we learn to relax our back in a safe manner. This is because the weight of our torso is counterbalanced with our center of gravity still over our feet. When we don't have our front muscles tense to bring us forward it is easier to feel the tenseness in the back muscles.

Listen, i really do know what it's like. I used to not go out for years, and the most i could deal with was one person at a time. You can contact me anytime. You don't have to blindly accept anything i say. In fact, i discourage it. I hate the appathetic acceptance attitude our society has to almost everything. It's time people start learning how to do things themselves again. Time people started to find

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[kaosrain]

In that case you can either give them an anxiolytic (anti-anxiety agent such as alprazolam [Xanax]), or "put them under"--although I would expect that in all but the strongest cases a benzodiazepine would work well enough.

Test Anxiety

[wuie]

This has really got to suck if one has test anxiety.

A shame

[buggy_throwback]

.. that they missed this years igNobles.

Re:A shame

[Anonymous Coward]

.. that they missed this years igNobles.

And this year's igSpelilgn, too!

Research Purposes

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

According to Soreq the blood test will be inexpensive, accurate and will take only a few hours to receive the results. Currently the blood test is not yet available, as Yissum, the Hebrew University technology transfer company, in charge of the commercialization of the research is looking for a partner from the medical industry to help push the research out of the laboratory and into hospitals and clinics.

I was hoping that they would release it for research purposes. For example, if I had the money, I would love to finance a study to see how effective relaxation techniques (TM, Yoga, other breathing exercises, exercise...) are in reducing anxiety. With these blood tests, you'd have an objective measure instead of some questionaire to test for anxiety.

Also, this would be great for testing the efficacy of anti-anxiety drugs such as Paxil.

Re:Research Purposes

[Otter]

What do you mean by "release it for research purposes" that's different from what they're doing? Making a commercial kit available is precisely what's necessary for researchers to start using it, be they yogis or psychopharmaceutical developers. They'll use the same kits doctors will.

Re:Research Purposes

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

What's the hold up? Why can't they release the test to acedemics for research purposes now. What they were talking about in TFA was a version for clinics, hospitals, etc... for testing patients. And you know they're going to charge a lot of money for it. I was thinking of a "freebee" or at least at a steep discount for acedemic purposes. Because to do a study, they're going to need quite a few of these things.

Re:Research Purposes

[Otter]

I'm not sure what you think needs to be "released". People who want to imitate her lab's homebrew technique can read her paper and do it. But any test used for medical purposes needs to be validated and QC'd, and most hospitals wouldn't have the equipment to set the tests up themselves anyway.

Re:Research Purposes

[NoData]

For example, if I had the money, I would love to finance a study to see how effective relaxation techniques (TM, Yoga, other breathing exercises, exercise...) are in reducing anxiety.

Look at the research of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Here's an example.

Re:Research Purposes

[gui_tarzan2000]

"I was hoping that they would release it for research purposes. For example, if I had the money, I would love to finance a study to see how effective relaxation techniques (TM, Yoga, other breathing exercises, exercise...) are in reducing anxiety. With these blood tests, you'd have an objective measure instead of some questionaire to test for anxiety."

As someone who has mild Tourette Syndrome and a severe anxiety disorder I can tell you that relaxation is one of the best techniques for reducing anxiety.

"Also, this would be great for testing the efficacy of anti-anxiety drugs such as Paxil."

I was on Paxil for nine years with very good results. However the side effects are terrible. I switched to Zoloft last spring because the FDA shut down a factory that was making the time release version of Paxil that I was taking and it was one of the best things I've ever done. Almost all of the side effects are gone and my anxiety level is at it's lowest in over twenty years.

People like Tom Cruise make me sick. If you've never dealt with anxiety or any other mental illness and you're not a medical doctor you have no business telling people how they should feel or what they should do. From my experience over the years with psychologists most of them should do something else for a living.

Re:Research Purposes

[tabrnaker]

The thing with relaxation techniques. They're only as effective as the persons understanding of their own body. The more knowledge of the internal workings of your body (from a subjective viewpoint) the more effective anything that requires knowledge of the workings of your body. Since everything requires the use of your body (it's the only connection we have to interact with reality), the more you learn about it the better life is.

Note that 'flow' is equivalent to dynamic balance/relaxation, the most efficient use of energy. It is in fact the holy grail of life, and all it requires is getting to know yourself.

Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[techstar25]

Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise to tell us that it's all in our imagination and we just need exercise to chase those blues away!

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[einhverfr]

Excersize does help because it changes the biological underpinnings of depression, but this is different from anxiety. Nutrition helps. Sunlight helps. So do antidepressants.

If Tom Cruise could actually wake up to the fact that sunlight, Prosac, and excersize have similar though quantitatively different effects on the brain, maybe he would wake up to the fact that Scientology is full of half-truths well told, though he cannot tell them half as well.

Now, anxiety disorders are different than depression. I don't doubt that both could be detected by blood tests. And I hope that this may also lead to new treatments as we understand the underlying endocrine changes better.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[Frangible]

Actually, exercise does increase the dopaminergic tone in the brain, the mechanism involved is a short-lived change in gene expression that upregulates calcium transport. It has also been shown to increase the number of dopamine receptors in animal models.

This is relevant because the common mechanism of effect behind SSRI-based antidepressants involves the sensitization of the dopaminergic system via increased serotonin levels. Some antidepressant medication actually has no direct interaction with sertonin at all.

This study shows an effectiveness of 50% of the use of exercise in relieving symptoms of depression, which is approximately that of antidepressant medication or cognitive behavioral therapy alone. Of course, it is likely the best results would come from a combination of all three.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[ScrewMaster]

Tom Cruise is a typical example of a Scientologist well-treated by that organization because he is a wealthy celebrity. Hubbard himself, in his own writings on Scientology, pointed out that it is important to get as many well known people on board as possible, in order to legitimize Scientology in the public's eyes.

In any event, Cruise is a fruitcake who should simply get less media time for his outbursts. Sure, you don't want to put somebody on a pill because they had a bad hair day or are just going through a difficult time in their lives. But my father suffered severe clinical depression for the last twenty years of his life, and no amount of imagination and exercise would ever have reversed that. It wasn't until he was put on one of the early antidepressants that he got his life back, and returned to being the father I had always known. People like Cruise should either get medical degrees and learn some facts, or just shut the hell up. God, that man irritates me.

I hope he eventually suffers from clinical depression. We'll see how long it takes him to give up his Scientological "principles" and get on the proper medication. Maybe he won't ... and we'll read about his suicide. One can always hope.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[photon317]

And this:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/16/81428/8007

Goes into detail about how sports and exercise can make depression *worse* by feeding you too much adrenaline, which serves to aggravate the anxiety problem in your brain's chemistry. (That's part 2, you should read part 1 as well).

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[Frangible]

That's bad theory based on incorrect assumptions. First, neurogenesis happens to a very limited degree and has not been shown to be a significant factory in any clinical study in depression. Secondly, there is no link between adrenaline and depression, and stimulants such as amphetamines which increase sympathetic nervous sytem output actually make quite good antidepressants. Next, there is no link between exercise and poor sleep, in fact, numerous studies show exercise favorably effecting this. Whoever wrote this does not understand the mechanics of depression, exercise, and could've prevented a lot of misinformation had they spent a little time actually obtaining data. For God's sake his references are a couple Wikipedia articles and some non-journal magazines.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[Anonymous Coward]

...Cruise is a fruitcake...I hope he eventually suffers from clinical depression...and we'll read about his suicide.

I suspect that your anger has deeper roots than Tom Cruise making his opinions publicly known. Focusing on the science, however,...

Anti-depressants as a treatment for depression are not like anti-biotics as a treatment for the bacterial infections of the digestive system that cause diarhea. Anti-biotics will have the vast majority of people feeling better in hours and completely cured within days whereas anti-depressants such as prozac only work on some people, often take weeks to have any effect at all and for those people who are "cured" there is always a risk of relapse. People need to understand that anti-depressants are not anything like anti-biotics when it comes to effectiveness.

Those are the facts. Now, going beyond the facts, there are very few rigorously controlled studies of modern anti-depressants (something the general public also needs to understand) but I will offer my opinion anyway.

Depression has three characteristics: unhappiness, lack of motivation, and hopelessness. The main biological effect of anti-depressants like prozac seems to be that they increase motivation. There is also a strong placebo effect for people who have faith in modern medicine that they feel more hopeful but this can go the other way for people who distrust modern medicine and they can feel more hopeless. Unhappiness is only affected indirectly. Valium derivatives like adivan can make a person less bothered by their unhappiness but valium derivatives generate dangerous dependencies.

If a depressed person is mainly lacking motivation and they believe in modern medicine, then an anti-depressant like prozac can be great. They get their motivation and their hope back and are empowered to change their life to get their happiness back. On the other hand, if a depressed person is mainly so unhappy that they want more than anything to die and they don't really trust modern medicine, then an anti-depressant like prozac will merely give them the motivation to actually kill themselves - and possibly their families, friends and co-workers.

Anti-depressants like prozac for depression are a bit like caffeine for lack of sleep. Caffeine may keep you awake but if you're doing a term paper and what you really need is the ability to think clearly then caffeine may do more harm than good.

Getting back to Tom Cruise, he's right that people should not put blind trust in anti-depressants but his precise reasoning has serious flaws. That he's paranoid doesn't mean that he's wrong.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[Raven_Stark]

I'm glad to hear your father is doing well.

I've been depressed before, mildly so since I was a child. My all time worst depression came when a shrink made me quit SSRIs cold turkey for two weeks just to switch me to another SSRI. It is amazing and frightening just how bad it is possible to feel. After trying SSRIs for 5 years with no benefit and tons of side effects, I weaned myself off of them. While on them I was mildly psychotic--paranoid, delusions, hallucinations etc. For this they treated me with new and wonderful drugs which did nothing except make me into a manageable zombie. After quitting all of the drugs I rapidly improved. I haven't had a single psychotic experience since (used to be a daily thing for the 5 years). I still have down days but they are nothing compared to when I was drugged.

Your dad is doing well and that is great. However, as in my case, these drugs can have horrible effects on some people. I lost 5 years of my life to a hell most people can't even imagine. It happened during my 4th year of a 5 year engineering degree and killed my chances of being a professional. SSRIs and leeches have their uses but aren't nearly as generally useful as once touted. Cruise is party right even if for all the wrong reasons.

Re:Who needs tests when we have Tom Cruise

[ScrewMaster]

My father passed away ten years ago, but he had twenty years of life that he otherwise wouldn't have had. So, I can honestly say that, for him, the various antidepressants that he took during that period were a magic bullet. In your case they caused you injury, and I'm sorry for that. The quality of medicare care you are receiving while taking such drugs is also very important: as it happened we made a considerable, ongoing effort to make sure that my Dad was under the care of physicians qualified to prescribe his antidepressants properly, and who monitored his progress continually. That makes a big difference, and it was a lot of work on his family's part, since doctors frequently just slap you on a pill without much regard for the consequences. We researched everything, avoided interactions with his cardiac and other meds, and generally were one step ahead of his doctor.

However, in your own way you just made my point, such as it is. Properly prescribed antidepressants made a marked, positive difference in the quality of my father's life, and those around him. In your case they did not. But to make a blanket statement (as Cruise does) that these drugs are simply bad and that it is unconditionally wrong to prescribe them would be in error, I believe. He isn't qualified to make such judgments in any event.

I also have two other members of my family that underwent near-suicidal depressions. One of them actually went to a hotel room, slit his wrists and would have died had not an alert manager not noticed something and called the cops. He was absolutely serious and was almost completely exsanguinated before he was taken to an emergency room. Both were placed on antidepressants, and carefully monitored for a few years until we were sure they could be weaned off of them, since nobody should be on them that doesn't need to be.

Tom Cruise can say what he pleases (contrary to another poster's remarks I don't have any specific anger towards the man, I just think he's an uninformed idiot) but antidepressants can be lifesaving drugs. Yes, like all drugs (prescription, OTC, legal or otherwise) they can have serious consequences ... nothing new about that. But, I maintain that it is ridiculous to simply deny that an entire class of medicine simply has no benefits whatsoever, when an entire class of people treated by those drugs would disagree.

I call bullshit

[BrainInAJar]

"The team has also set their sights on depression, hoping for a similar technique to detect these types of disorders as well."

NaCl present in blood, it must be depression

Re:I call bullshit

[polished look 2]

I do, too. I've dealt with many psychiatrists and psychologists and I believe the whole mental-health thing is a moronic exercise in futility. The only way to get well is accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and do what He says to you, not the President, not the leader of the Church down the street, etc. Go into your "prayer closet", close the door, get on your knees and pray to Him. He will hear and answer you.

As former OCD, I am concerned

[Loundry]

For those of you not in the know, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder.

I read TFA.

The problem I see with this kind of testing is the cases where the diagnosed individual refuses treatment. The stigma against being labeled as "crazy" is still crushingly huge, and this is a signifigant reason why many people who suffer from emotional disorders refuse to seek treatment. They see it as a sign of weakness, of "not being able to handle things themselves."

So I forsee and fear individuals getting stuck with a (mandatory) needle then being told, "You are anxious", and "You must submit to treatment". The world knows no shortage of elitist M.D.s who hate the notion of a patient not obeying their very learned whim. Why not use the police to force these people into treatment? Perhaps I'm just being paranoid.

Or maybe I'm just anxious...

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[AaronStJ]

Hopefully, this test will help the stigma of being labeled "crazy." If a psychologist tell you you're anxious, that's one thing. But if a blood test reveals a disorder, that's something else entirely in most people's minds, I'll bet. Hopefully this will help "legitimize" psychological disorders, and stop people from saying things like "just snap out of it."

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

more likely a blood test will be required for employment GATTACA-style

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Sycraft-fu]

Well, as far as I know, people aren't forced in to treatment unless they become a danger to themselves or others. For example you can be a diabetic and not take medication for it. They won't drag you in and force inject you with insulin.

I also think that it might lead to less stigma being associated with mental disorders. If a conclusive, objective test can be given it makes it more like any other disease. Being diabetic is potentially much worse than having an anexity disorder, yet you don't tend to see people be embarrased about it. It's just somthing they are, and they take their meds and are better. Hopefully this will work towards the same situation for some mental disorders (though unfortunately I think the brain is too complex to ever be totally diagnosed on chemicals alone).

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Just Some Guy]

The world knows no shortage of elitist M.D.s who hate the notion of a patient not obeying their very learned whim.

This is somewhat off-topic, but anyway...

My wife's a doctor who hates the notion of a patient not doing what she tells them, but it has nothing to do with elitism. A recurrent pet peeve is telling a patient not to get their surgical site wet. Why? Two big reasons: 1) water is adept at carrying pathogens into the wound before it heals, and 2) know how your fingers get all pruny when they've been in the water too long? That "maceration" is horribly good at ripping out stitches and causing the wound to re-open.

This is hugely important, but people routinely ignore her orders and go swimming, taking baths, or washing out the hog barn (yeah, I live in rural America) and then scream at her and threaten to sue because pus is oozing out of their gaping incisions.

Don't necessarily assume that doctors are being pushy just for the sake of it. Are you being mean when you tell your neighbor not to open an .exe that a stranger emailed to them? No. Same deal.

Sure, there are jerks in the medical profession. An unfortunate amount of that perception is probably due to simple misunderstandings, though.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[theonetruekeebler]

The problem I see with this kind of testing is the cases where the diagnosed individual refuses treatment.

I can see this being the case for many types of mental illness, such as schizophrenia, but anxiety disorders are a little different. People come into the emergency room absolutely convinced that they are dying or having a heart attack or really going full-blown crazy. They know something is wrong, and the overwhelming majority of them will be very relieved to hear the doctor say "You're not dying. You're not going crazy. You have a treatable condition called generalized anxiety disorder. We can start working on it right now if you'd like."

If anything I'd worry about some patients might feel a little let down, having something as mundane as "generalized anxiety disorder. For them, instead of calling it "generalized anxiety disorder" I would call it "Barris's Anxiety Disorder" or some other made-up name---that way it sounds like they're fucked up in a particular way, rather than just generally fucked up. They'll feel special, hell, even brag to their friends. Either way, as long as they seek treatment they'll be happier.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you not in the know, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder.

I read TFA.

Obviously :-)

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[njh]

I agree that a robust test for these diseases are important, but I have two concerns. Firstly, existing pharma treatments for anxiety are basically useless - consisting of chemically hitting the patient on the head repeatedly until they are too concussed to know whether they are anxious or not. The current trend is to prescribe various 'anti-depressants', which have no conclusive evidence that they work better than placebo, and leave the patient on them for weeks at a time.

Secondly, this blood test means that a new symptomatic treatment is likely to be developed. The pharma companies will design a drug which nullifies the effect measured with the blood test, and will then proclaim loudly that they have cured anxiety. And sell lots of lifetime supplies of some random chemical with no useful effect.

Incidently, I spent a year with GAD treated with the usual pointless chemicals before curing myself with kava, reliable sleep and CBT. Kava is fantastic for anxiety, btw - it is not habit forming, has a noticable effect within half an hour and gives you wonderful lucid dreams :) Pity it is banned from sale in most countries.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Coniptor]

Thank you for that link.
I prefer to be informed so I can react accordingly as best I can than fake like everything is ok or sit there and justify that kind of shit by saying, "well they will suffer so that we all might live" horseshit.

Godbless you for the link and mindset and curse to indescribable hell all who would think along the lines of the mentality I gave an example of above.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[quentin_quayle]

"So I forsee and fear individuals getting stuck with a (mandatory) needle then being told, "You are anxious", and "You must submit to treatment". The world knows no shortage of elitist M.D.s who hate the notion of a patient not obeying their very learned whim."

Exactly. As soon as the refusal of treatment can be considered evidence of incompetence to decide, the whole principle of patient autonomy is negated. We have to have a legal rule that the content of a decision about treatment cannot be construed as dispensing with the consent requirement. Otherwise, anything that creates even the appearance of an objective basis for their medical paternalism, is a menace to human rights.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Loundry]

Well, as far as I know, people aren't forced in to treatment unless they become a danger to themselves or others.

And what, exactly, decides when I become a "danger" to myself or to others? Since I have expressed some degree of skepticism in the medical industry, does that mean I am at least a little bit "dangerous"? Some people would answer "Yes!" to that. Should I be forced into treatment?

The decision of whether or not an individual is a "danger" is one made by fallible humans, and it has been abused before. Please check out the link that I posted in the original post if you would like to read about just such a story. Black kids with "AIDS" aren't exactly Natalee Holloway, so they're not as fetching on salacious television spots. I invite you to read the evidence and reason about what you find.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Loundry]

This is a good post, and it's the appropriate foil for mine. Doctors are learned, experienced humans who make a craft of helping and healing people, and they are right to be frustrated by ignorant hicks who can't follow directions or want to be difficult.

Doctors are also fallible humans who are not immune from human phenomena such as elitism, vengefulness, and self-indulgent power trips.

We all need, for our own sakes, healthy, *healthy* skepticism. Doctors are not perfect, nor are they gods. Sometimes, they are evil. It is incumbent upon all us doctors and lay people to remove the evil people from civil, polite, kind society.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Loundry]

Thank you, it feels good to be appreciated.

I think public scrutiny over HIV/AIDS is long overdue. Much of the USA, where most of the millions in "AIDS research" is spent, is white, middle-class, heterosexual, and drug-free. Many of these people don't have to worry about HIV/AIDS because it doesn't affect them. AIDS has become dogma, and to question it is about a million times more offensive to people than questioning the divinity of Jesus Christ.

If you can peg my political stance from that last paragraph, I'll be impressed. ;)

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

Vaginal sex does transmit AIDS (although anal sex does so more efficiently). The virus doesn't care about class or race at all. We are not immune, it's already started to spread among us, and I'd like to get vaccinated before it becomes a pandemic thankyouverymuch. And the risk of AIDS reduces sexual opportunities for everyone, which IMHO makes it even worse than any disease which merely kills people at random.

Re:As former OCD, I am concerned

[Loundry]

I reply to shills because it helps to sharpen my sword.

Vaginal sex does transmit AIDS (although anal sex does so more efficiently).

Since you can't detect the virus you have no way of showing this. All you can detect is antibodies which you have no way of showing are linked to HIV (because you can't detect the virus). Oh, what about PCR and viral load? It multiplies fragments which are alleged to be part of HIV, but since you can't detect the virus, you have no way of knowing if those fragments came from HIV or not.

The virus doesn't care about class or race at all.

But it apparently cares about sexual orientation (since gay men get different opportunistic diseases than straights do) and physical location (since African "AIDS" is nothing like North American "AIDS"). Interesting that we have a disease which happens to match the patterns of geopolitcs and culture.

Furthermore, the "virus" might not care about class or race, but the "HIV tests" certainly do. The test results of every "HIV test" are NOT read, but rather interpreted according to an individual's "risk group". A "negative" result for you might very well be a "positive" result for someone in a different race or class. Say, for instance, black drug user.

We are not immune, it's already started to spread among us, and I'd like to get vaccinated before it becomes a pandemic thankyouverymuch.

I'd first worry about whether or not there actually is a virus before worrying about being vaccinated for it. Since Gallo used exactly the same discredited method for HIV that he did for a previous non-existant virus that he claimed to have "discovered" but later recanted, I don't know what you have to go on. Fear and paranoia, perhaps? "Pandemic" certainly is a scary word!

And the risk of AIDS reduces sexual opportunities for everyone, which IMHO makes it even worse than any disease which merely kills people at random.

"AIDS" kills far fewer people than many other, indentifyable, detectable diseases. But there are far too many scientists and drug manufacturers on the AIDS gravy train and far too many AIDS zealots to let that salient fact interfere with our hysteria and misanthopy.

AIDS is not a disease. AIDS is a religion, and the god of this religion is Death.

Sticking a needle in the patient's urethra?

[CyricZ]

Maybe they'll stick the needle in the patient's urinary tract. If he or she can handle having a tube of metal stuck in his or her pee hole, then perhaps he or she isn't so anxious after all.

Re:Sticking a needle in the patient's urethra?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you get the Karma you had to burn on making this a "Score: 2"?

It couldn't have been by posting crap like this.

Re:Sticking a needle in the patient's urethra?

[CyricZ]

It couldn't have been by posting crap like this.

Yeah, it actually is.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Otter]

In all seriousness, that _is_ a potential source of bias in studies of psychiatric conditions. There definitely is a skewing away from patients with symptoms (anxiety, paranoia) that make them reluctant to consent to blood draws or DNA collection.

effects of acetylcholinesterase

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting to see that they found a correlation between acetylcholine / acetylcholinesterase and anxiety disorders. It goes to show that the physical symptoms aren't just "in your head". Those two chemicals regulate the nervous system. You'll see that most nerve agents, such as VX, are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors.

I would like to see someone take this new information and conduct another study of the people suffering from Gulf War syndrome - both with physical weakness and mental / anxiety problems. I bet they would discover that many of them were either exposed to a nerve agent or an antidote on some level. It's sad that so many veterans are suffering and our government has made no real effort to help them.

Re:effects of acetylcholinesterase

[grimJester]

Those two chemicals regulate the nervous system. You'll see that most nerve agents, such as VX, are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors.

Would an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor reduce, or prevent, feelings of fear? Snorting VX would obviously not be a good idea, but I assume there are other chemicals with the same effect.

Another interesting possibility is desensitizing yourself to fear if it can be chemically induced whenever you can handle it.

Seems subjective

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that they working with a total of 3 enzymes in an "anxiety" system that is far from fully understood. Lots of guesses go into building the scale used to determine "abnormal" levels. Sounds like lots of normal subjects might be false positives. Objective tests for mental illness would be great, but I don't think this is one.

It works like this, simply

[matt me]

If they won't let you take their blood for the test, they've got a disorder!

In other news...

[command_not_recogniz]

Anxiety Blood Test results to be tracked with RFID. IBM corporation swears there's nothing to be anxious about...

Should we make everyone "normal"?

[G4from128k]

Although I can understand helping people who have debilitating neuron-chemical imbalances, I'm not sure that everyone should be normalized. The world needs both risk-takers (hyper-actives) and risk-avoiders (anxiety-prone) to both spur innovation and create solutions that minimize deleterious consequences.

Note: I'm no a fan of PC (politically-correct) diversity, but do see value in variety to maximize total economic performance across a range of conditions and fields of endeavor.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[GameMaster]

I've always kind of felt that the difference between "fixing a problem" and some kind of sick Orwellian police state that drugs everyone up is all about whether the person gets to choose to take the treatment or not. If a person isn't a violent danger to everyone around him/her then I feel that it should be their choice over whether they are medicated for their condition. Granted social pressures may push people to get treatment but it should never be a requirement. On the other hand, I don't feel that we should withhold new treatments for things like ADHD, anxiety disorder, depression, etc. simply because we feel that it might be better for society, in the long run, to have the variations in personality.

-GameMaster

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[earache]

I'm with you, but it should be a choice given to the individual.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[michaeltoe]

Anxiety disorders have little to do with just being "stressed out". It's far more debilitating than that, and I don't think it's really a good thing. 1/5th of all panic disorder sufferes will attempt to kill themselves as a result of their condition. 1/3 will resort to substance abuse. Is that a positive thing? I think not.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[tnk1]

I agree with this entirely. What we need is the ability to deal with different types of personalities instead of trying to shoehorn them into society. There's a certain idea that only one type of personality is successful, but often that is because of the way society and culture is set up, as opposed to the raw talent or ability of a person. Of course, there are limits to what we can handle as a society without shaking apart and there are, what you'd call economies in making sure that "one size fits all". I think that there there is a need for some regimentation and normalization that ensures society's success in the face of certain circumstances. However, the broadening of humanity's promise will coincide with the ability of society to make full use of the talents that a different mindset makes possible. That challenge should not be understated, but it should be pursued nonetheless. It's important to note that some people who are very willing to work hard on certain things are considered lazy because certain defined things like institutionalized schooling don't interest them or they have little capacity to excel at them. Certain people also are considered to crazy who might, in a slightly different world, be quite successful.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[samael]

Only people who aren't coping would be even tested, let alone treated. Nobody is talking about mandatory treatment of anyone.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a wonderful umbrella of anxiety disorders. A bunch of random everyday worries that don't fall under a specific category, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and social phobia.

While I would never take this particular test (I've struggled with getting a flu shot in a 20 minute arguement with my doctor, no way in hell I'd willingly get blood drawn), I do agree with it. It's not about "making these people normal", they know they have a problem and they're seeking help for it. Which is why they're having the test taken in the first place.

There is a difference between "risk avoiders" and people with anxiety disorders. The former have that as a characteristic of their personality, which is you, and should not be changed. The latter is from a neurochemical imbalance that this test detects, and let me tell you, the symptoms are terrible and drastically effect your everyday life. For /years/ I couldn't call people without planning out the situation and calming myself down. Calling people! This isn't a business decision or anything like that.

While I agree with your point of view, I think it's flawed. People aren't being "normalized", and the characteristics that fall into the realm of "anxiety disorder" are a lot worse then you seem to imagine.

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That kind of dissent, you shall be first tested.. ;)

Re:Should we make everyone "normal"?

[Reziac]

People who suffer from anxiety aren't just "risk avoiders". It's more like feeling compelled to hide under the bed because the world is big and there might be bogeymen out there.

I know someone who has such severe anxiety attacks that he's wound up in the emergency room, due to the physical side effects (asthma attacks, passing out while driving, etc.) The sad thing is that he *uses* the problem to avoid having to deal with anything that might be stressful or unpleasant. Unfortuately, that's not uncommon with anxiety and OCD sufferers.

insensitive clode

[Anonymous Coward]

[ALL CAPS]
what!!?? take away my caffein will you!!??
don't you realize it's the only way I can maintain controll!!!???
[/ALL CAPS]

If it works, it's a step out of the dark ages

[Anonymous Coward]

Until now they typically diagnose by asking you some questions ("do you have thoughts of suicide? do you sleep ok?" etc.). If you're having a bad day or have your shit-colored glasses on for some other reason, it will color your responses.

And then they try you on some anti-depressant and ask you the same questions 2 months later to see if it's working. If it's not working, they switch to another medication, rinse and repeat.

This is seriously lame, and in the case of depression, might easily cause you to give up. A blood test would go a long way toward addressing this -- especially if it gives any clues about which medications are more likely to work.

As the victim of many ineffective psychologists

[Loundry]

Currently one of the greatest challenges a psychologist faces in these disorders is getting the patient to see that they really do have one and it is impacting them negatively.

Yes, convincing a patient that they need to pay you all that money must be rather difficult. Yet the Noble Health Practicioner(TM) plunges forward!

I can't help but be terribly cynical and bitter after many wasted hours in the offices of ineffective psychologists (not to mention those shitty drug-dealing quacks -- psychiatrists!). Admitting you have a problem is only the first step. Finding a psychologist who is worth a damn is quite a bit more difficult, and no one, especially not a hungry-for-your-money psychologist, will help you find the one that works for you. You have to do it on your own, when you are at your weakest. It sucks, but that's life.

Re:As the victim of many ineffective psychologists

[polished look 2]

Currently one of the greatest challenges a psychologist faces in these disorders is getting the patient to see that they really do have one and it is impacting them negatively.

A disorder according to whom exactly? The psychologist? Hmmm.... maybe that's anyone that has different beliefs than the shrink his or herself? or perhaps different than society's so-called "convential wisdom".

Institutionalizing methods to persecute someone's beliefs does not lessen the persecution; it only masks the persecution behind a clinical facade to make it appear more legitimate.

Re:As the victim of many ineffective psychologists

[Loundry]

From your message I can guess a few things:

We'll see how well you scored:

1) There is a high chance you are a Scientologist

False. I call myself a Eudaimonist, and I think that Scientology is a dangerous and destructive cult. I have read quite a bit about Fair Game, OT levels, body thetans, and all sorts of other $cientology garbage.

2) There is a high chance you are a Republican

False. I vote Libertarian, and, as a gay adoptive parent, I am keenly aware of the threat that many Republicans pose toward my family.

3) There is a high chance that both (1) and (2) are true.

Since (1) and (2) are both false, so is (3).

You scored 0%, which is an F.

Regardless, your string of strawmen and self-destructive cynicism does not an argument make.

What a quaint way of writing that sentence! It sure makes you look witty and cool. At the same time, an M.D. who perscribes Risperdal to a non-psychotic person has the potential to do grave harm to her patient, and I can confirm such a theory by direct, personal experience. It turns out that this very same doctor was forced out doing practice in her former city because of malpractice. Was I warned of this? By any other psychologist? Of course not. But to be bitter about such a thing, in your view, is "self-destructive". Yet you gloss over the harm done by shitty doctors who prescribe dangerous psychotropic drugs to thier victims when they're at their weakest -- and I was the victim! You are as abusive as you are stupid. No wonder I had marked you as a foe!

Anxiety ... In Isreal....

[zappepcs]

Say it isn't so... surely suicide bombers and general unrest, military police, guns, bombs, and other daily lifestyle activities in the holy city are not prone to create anxiety disorders!

Geez, in a Jeruselem hospital, you only have to take blood from anyone that happens to be there in the waiting room and I bet you find an anxiety disorder... bet that was hard to test out?

Just my thoughts...

Re:Anxiety ... In Isreal....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but that is because in Isreal the number one cause of anxiety is... having a Jewish mother!

Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a point, counterpoint and then a reaffirmation of the first point and nobody said the other one was stupid? Is today OPPOSITE DAY!?

Re:Wait a second...

[cammoblammo]

Plus they all used big words, correctly!

Is it possible we've got informed debate on /.?

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a point, counterpoint and then a reaffirmation of the first point and nobody said the other one was stupid? Is today OPPOSITE DAY!?

Yes shitcock.

Re:Wait a second...

[Ninja Platypus]

I'm sorry, opposite day cannot exist. If today is opposite day then opposite day must be opposite of what it truly is making opposite day the opposite of opposite making it a non-opposite day that is incapable of becoming opposite for the reasons just explained. Got that? I think Einstein said it.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, these things just happen, stupid.

Only 1 researcher in the field

[bigtrike]

Since there is only 1 person working in the entire field of psychiatric research, obviously all research on new anti-anxiety meds was stopped while these experiments were being conducted.

Let's look at the definition, chico.

[CyricZ]

Let us refer to the definition of "anxiety disorder", shalt we?

anxiety disorder
Any of various disorders in which anxiety is either the primary disturbance or is the result of confronting a feared situation or object; they include obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=anxiety%2 0disorder

Indeed, very often anxiety is caused by excessive caffeine consumption. While it isn't obsessive-compulsive disorder by any means, caffeine-induced anxiety can very well be considered an anxiety disorder.

Re:Let's look at the definition, chico.

[Otter]

As he correctly notes, there's a distinction between anxiety and anxiety disorder to which you continue to be oblivious.

I have anxiety disorder

[earache]

Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

I wish this test had been around when I blew my top a few times and ended up in the emergency room. Each visit resulted in a different hypothesis on what was wrong with me, from dehydration to renault's syndrome.

The shit is scary enough when you have no idea what is wrong with you. For most anxiety sufferers, the first half dozen of earthquake sized panic attacks are almost always assumed to be physical problems. I believe I had brain cancer, lung cancer, intestinal cancer, heart problems, etc. Had I been shown a test result that read anxiety, I would have saved a lot of additional anxiety worrying about whether or not my ticker was going to go at any given moment.

Good news.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[michaeltoe]

Agreed, this is very good news. A lot of people don't seem to understand what anxiety disorders are, because they try to compare them with the colloquial meaning of "anxiety" that we use everyday. It's not even close.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Rob the Bold]

Sorry about your experience. I consider myself lucky that my physician was very familiar with the symptoms of anxiety. I assume that she'd probably suffered herself from the accuracy of diagnosis, but perhaps someone close or even a recent continuing ed thing on nervous disorders. Anyway, you're absolutely right that it can be a terrifying road to diagnosis, and anyting that would speed up the process would be a huge boon.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[sapped]

Each visit resulted in a different hypothesis on what was wrong with me, from dehydration to renault's syndrome.

Tsk. Lucky you. I was recently diagnosed with Porsche syndrome. Unlike Renault, the Porsche syndrome leads to increased bloodflow which can only be countered with huges doses of adrenaline to even things out.

However, I still consider myself to be relatively lucky. A friend was diagnosed with Trabant syndrome. Now that is cause for anxiety...

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

YES YES YES!!!

Me too - this is why this is SO IMPORTIANT !!!

I have had experiences where I went to the emergency room - probibly 8 times in the course of 2 weeks. I thought I was having a stroke, or a heart attack, or something quite severe.

Getting a different diagnosis, and different prescription every time you go to the E.R., knowing no one has the slightest idea of what is wrong makes matters MUCH MUCH worse!!!

99% of all doctor's don't know jack shit about how to diagnose, let alone treat something like this.

If in E.R. doctor determine's their patient is stable enough to go home and survive the night - they're job is done.

I suffered for weeks like this - I know a guy who suffered like this for A YEAR AND A HALF!!

(BTW - It was actually HIM that diagnosed me - NOT any doctor..)

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

...and if you ever go to the ER in a Hospital like Sothern New Hampshire Medical Center (Nashua, NH) and *tell* them you're having an anxiety attack - they'll basically blow you off.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Flatulence2]

Disclaimer: IHAAD (I have an anxiety disorder) In Australia (and probably by extension, the western world) medical doctors are somewhat naieve when it comes to disorders like anxiety disorders. The problem seems that whenever someone feels ill, they go to a medical doctor. The medical doctor, who is not qualified to diagnose anxiety disorders, also seems unlikely to refer you to a psychologist/psychiatrist. Personally, I think doctors need more training in order to recognise disorders such as anxiety disorders, and also be encouraged to refer you to a psychologist/psychiatrist. Furthermore, the general public needs to be made more aware of these disorders so there is not such a negative stigma associated with being diagnosed with such a condition. A blood test? I don't think this is going to help all that much personally.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

You overlooked one vital part of the article. This test does not test for anxiety disorder, it tests for the chemical consequences of anxiety. Any one of those physical conditions you listed could also cause enough anxiety to register on the test. So you'd still need to go through a battery of tests to eliminate the physical causes of anxiety.

Re:I have anxiety disorder

[Reziac]

Bah. You don't know what bad luck is until you've been diagnosed with Yugo syndrome!

Breaking down the last barriers

[haggar]

There has been, for a long time, a barrier, a kind of mental wall, even in well-informed people, about the notion that some psychological manifestations are actually neurological, that is, somatic in nature. Many thought that anti-depressants exist, but think they are just used by people that could just as well be treated a la Dr. Phil (I have nothing against Dr. Phil, on the contrary, love him). Tom Cruise is a sad case in point.

Well, if this tests becomes widespread, the notion that anxiety and depression can be, indeed, neurological phenomena, will estabilish itself once and for all even in the average person's mind. And it's about freaking time; people with such conditions have been victims of of prejudice and missunderstanding for way, way too long.

Re:Breaking down the last barriers

[Omestes]

Clarify, please. Please tell me you don't think that drugs are THE answer, as in the ONLY answer. Drugs are the LAST answer, or the stop gap measure to ensure that the patient is well enough to receive the real therapy. Drugs should be temporary.

If I read your statement properly I would think that you are dismissing the mind as cause completely. Being that the mind and brain are one in the same, to say that only the brain causes mind issues is absurd, there is a deep interplay between them, though the word interplay is meaningless since they are the same thing. Damn dualism. Drugs cover symptoms, and NEVER cure in the psychological realm. Cures come via full understanding and treatment of the problem, meaning BOTH somatic and mental.

Drugs are merely stabilizers.

Re:Breaking down the last barriers

[Perky_Goth]

Tom Cruise doesn't believe in it. He will say whatever gets him loads of money and slaves, though.

Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIOUS!

[TheNarrator]

Prozac has changed things but there is this pervasive idea that mood is completely under ones control and that all one needs is determination to snap out of any mood and become the most successful happy person in the world. Happy people tell depressed people naively, "Why don't you just snap out of it?". The problem is is that you can't simulate another persons brain chemistry. You can't even simulate your own brain chemistry from mood to mood. Ever walk by two people yelling and screaming at each other and start thinking, "What's up with them?". Have you ever been those two people yelling and screaming at some point in your life? When we're happy we couldn't imagine how we were sad. When we're sad we couldn't imagine how we could have been happy.

When we eliminate something that wastes the lives of 13% of the population, and if you've ever known someone with an anxiety disorder you'll know how much of their life they waste, won't that improve the human condition more than just about anything else? What's better, is these fixes to mental health improve things throughout society, letting people avoid destructive compulsions and reach their full potential.

This Could Drastically Reduce Diagnosis Costs

[fyrie]

Anxiety disorders are typically "ruled in" after doing all sorts of tests first to look for other serious medical issues that may cause similar symptoms. Having an MRI's and seeing a neurologist, visiting an E.N.T., and visiting a cardiologist can often be the path taken before a Dr. rules in an anxiety disorder (unless of course it's totally obvious, which it isn't a lot of the time).

Re:This Could Drastically Reduce Diagnosis Costs

[kahanamoku]

My mother had numerous tests for a heart problem that she has (and eventually had successfully diagnosed)... during the testing phase the doctor (in a nut shell) diagnosed anxiety simply because all the tests were coming back negative for everything else...

*ATTEMPT AT HUMOR* Seems to me that there has always been a blood test to diagnose anxiety, the results are positive for an anxiety diagnosis when the results of the test come back negative.

*GETTING SERIOUS AGAIN* Good to see that now they can run a single test to weed out all the lazy doctors out there who arent persistant enough to find the problem, and just want to send you home with an answer to shut you up

More info regarding that study.

[CyricZ]

Can you provide more information regarding that study? Namely, how it was funded. Brazil does have somewhat of an industry producing cocoa. They're also amongst the largest (if not the largest) exporters of coffee. So I'm naturally weary of studies promoting the use of caffeine from a nation that depends significantly on the economic potential of caffeine.

Re:More info regarding that study.

[Frangible]

Yes, many studies are funded by interests central to the study, and it seems possible this may influence the study in some cases. I do not know anything about that study in particular beyond what I have provided. There are many other studies on PubMed showing similar results for caffeine, though. Using the query terms "caffeine anxiety", "caffeine stroop", "caffeine concentration", etc may help you find more of what you're looking for.

The Value Here is...

[dslauson]

Many people (like Tom Cruise) consider psychology to be a pseudoscience. However, if we can come up with definitive tests with concrete results in order to diagnose patients with mental illnesses, it makes psychology that much more closely resemble the rest of the world of medicine. This will (hopefully) make people realize that there is a real science behind it.

I know that if my son was diagnosed with ADD, I would feel much more comfortable having him treated with ritalin or whatever if the doctor had a blood test (or something more concrete than "He's all fidgety in class") to back it up.

Re:The Value Here is...

[Lateralism]

This is all fine and well that more science is coming into psychology, but this is only one part of the picture. Psychology is not 100% biology, unless you subscribe to a strictly materialist perspective (which very few do; not many since centuries ago). The idea is that things exist in the body and in the mind, neither of which can be reduced to the other. Tom Cruise can go f*** himself, he has no idea what he's talking about.

Re:The Value Here is...

[Frangible]

This test basically looks for markers of stress, and does not establish a gene polymorphism or biological cause behind anxiety and depression, although I believe some have already been identified and there's likely much more beyond our current understanding.

ADD tends to be characterized biologically by depressed activity in the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes of the brain, I do not believe there are any blood markers you can look for. It is possible to use neural imaging to established the depressed activity but the use of such imaging in psychiatric conditions is considered experimental and not funded by insurance companies or commonly done.

If nothing else, Ritalin is a fun drug, and would certainly improve academic performance in even a normal individual, so you can't go wrong? ;)

Re:The Value Here is...

[dslauson]

I'm not saying that all of psychology can or should be reduced down to pure biology. However, I think that when there are areas that can be aided by biological evidence, we shouldn't be as quick to dismiss them as many here seem to be.

In case it wasn't obvious from my previous post, I share your view on Tom Cruise.

Re:The Value Here is...

[grassy_knoll]

However, if we can come up with definitive tests with concrete results in order to diagnose patients with mental illnesses, it makes psychology that much more closely resemble the rest of the world of medicine.

I fully agree. An objective measurement of a particular patients condition ( or lack thereof ) would do wonders to establish psychology as a hard science in the minds or many people ( myself included ).

As it stands, mental health professionals seem little more than glorified pez dispensers, throwing out medication until the aberant behavior of the patient is surpressed... which doesn't seem as effective as one would hope.

Re:The Value Here is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiight. Let's listen to good old Tom Cruise. Like he's an expert on anything but acting, Scientology and scoring with mindless chicks (in LA they call them actresses, unless they happen to be waitresses).

Re:The Value Here is...

[Raven_Stark]

I'm not a Scientologist.

Maybe it would be going too far to say that psychology is a pseudo-science, but I do think it is roughly at the stage of development surgery was back when barbers did the operations or at the infancy of any other science. It is a field of knowledge that seems to have much unearned prestige and pay.

If it is for real, a blood test for anxiety is a step in the right direction since it introduces some objectivity. Given the track record of many pharmaceutical companies I wouldn't be surprised if they lied about the usefulness of the test.

For now, a loved one would have to be in very bad shape before I'd call on a psychologist/psychiatrist, bad enough that I'd basically be accepting the fact that my loved one would be warehoused or sedated until he got better more or less on his own, if ever.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Rei]

This actually reminds me a bit of the home headache test.

Wife: "Oh, God, I'm in agony!"
Husband (holding strip): "Honey, you don't have a headache."
Wife: "Oh, thank God!"

Would you want a paranoid security sysadm ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I would want one for sure ...

As a psychologist with a different scope of view

[foobsr]

In my studied opinion it is far better for the chemical/physical causes of mental illness to be hidden safely away from the ...

Besides having difficulties in recognizing simple cause-consequence relations in a complex world I sincerely wonder how you in your studies came to the conclusion that disregulations on the "material" side may be rated as a "cause".

CC.

In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A professor at the same Univerity (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) just
won a noble prize in game theory.

Hopefully they'll get this for ADD as well ...

[SuperDuG]

I was going to get tested for ADD, but that would take so long, not to mention I'd have to look up the place to get the test done, then have to go there, wait for them to administer the test, and then wait for the results.

I just don't have the attention span for that kind of commitment. Anyways, time to go find something else to post about...

I know I've stolen this from numerous comedians ...

Re:Hopefully they'll get this for ADD as well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know I've stolen this from numerous comedians ..."

Yeah, and it still isn't funny.

Test for Anxiety Disorder???

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you guys crazy!? Tests? What tests!? I don't need any tests.. I don't have any anxiety disorders... oh damn, I need a cigarette.

Which explains why many psychologists

[jd]

...aren't taken seriously. There is no one cause, no one element, in ANY disorder, so there is no one place you can treat that will remedy that disorder. Simply telling the person to buck up won't help them - but if you charge $200 for every time you tell them that, it might make you very rich. Especially as it won't cure them, guaranteeing repeat custom.

"Fixing" the person is like walpapering a house with collapsed foundations. It'll make the problem invisible... for a while. But unless you fix the foundations, the house will still fall down. Likewise, fixing the foundations alone may prevent further damage, but the inside of the house will still look a wreck.

The job of ANYONE in (or around) mental health is to correct all of the aspects of the mental health problem they are dealing with. A partial solution can be worse than no solution at all, especially if you keep telling the patient that it's all the patient's fault/responsibility.

Establishing a cause, like faulty genes, allows the patient to remedy the underlying problem. Most genetic or biological problems are solvable with the right regemen, but unless you identify those underlying issues, you will NEVER identify the regemen that needs to be followed. And the patient will suffer the consequences of your inaction by deteriorating further. However, such treatment will only ever stabilize a condition. It won't cure it. Curing DOES require the patient to take responsibility for their actions, for their lives and for getting better.

To ask them to take that responsibility whilst their brain is chemically or electically up the spout, though, is about as intelligent as telling the skydiver whose parachute has failed that all they need do is flap their arms faster. Hardware failure requires a hardware solution. Software failure (in this case, the mind of the person) requires a software solution. NEVER assume that hardware will fix faulty software, or software will ever compensate for defective hardware.

Remedy the fault, NOT the fault's owner.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[JhohannaVH]

As a survivor, of both cognitive and pharma therapies together and seperate.... thank you for posting this. A lot. You have no idea. You've helped me a lot.... because you said a lot of things there that are very true, and that I need to remember. I quit going to BT, because it wasn't working. She kept saying the same things about screwed up relationships, past traumas, blah blah blah... but she would never give me any answers or strengths on how to deal with the real issues that I have. It did take her 4 months to convince me to go on meds, and another 4 months of therapy before I (and my insurance company) decided it was not working.

Since then, I've been focusing on making a lot of progress on my own, and have been doing well. But my mistrust in psychiatric professionals is shaken once again. Especially when said shrink calls and bitches me out for missing an appointment that was set 6 months ago, and was in another calendar at another JOB (that I no longer have, and that my NEW insurance won't cover. So what? He sent me a bill and didn't renew my prescription. So now, in order to that, I have to pay him his $250 bucks an hour (of which I get 10 minutes), and listen to him talk about his support for the gay boys of SD. *BARF* All so I can get him to renew a drug that I KNOW and can prove is working, combatting my anxiety and fears, so that I can learn to better face them on my own. :)

Jho

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a shrink to get your prescription fixed. Any old MD should be able to do it as long as you know exactly what it was. Just explain to him/her what your situation is and you shouldn't have a problem. (You still have to pay that doctor, but chances are that'll be cheaper).

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[UnrefinedLayman]

As long as you're lumping everyone together let's say that members of the military will never win a war because the cook aboard the Kitty Hawk is a conscientious objector and never took weapons training. Actors will never star in a movie that generates a hundred million dollars in revenue because Paul Reubens is still acting. Every surgery will result in the death of the patient because Jane Nurse of Cleveland brought the wrong blood type for transfusion. And every psychologist and psychiatrist will tell you the problem is your fault and no one will conquer mental malaise.

Your descriptions are vivid but are relegated to a niche. One thing I notice is that you seem to be advocating that there be the right solution or no solution at all. Medicines, gene therapy, electro-shock therapy, none of those things sound all that hot too me. While they may cure anxiety or depression or any other problem, they're not even close to something I would want to touch.

You appear to be advocating a "do it this way or it will never be fixed" approach. Somehow I imagine that someone else has thought of this only to be asked how they were able to successfully diagnose and provide the framework for a cure for people they had never met, never examined, and never talked to.

What irks me most is that you are nearly stating that if they can't fix everything they shouldn't fix anything. Sort of a We can't get this collapsed building back together and upright, so let's not even bother to clean up the mess. Not all medicine is about cures. There is no cure for HIV, so should we stop dealing with the effects of the disease? I would say no. We do what we can with what we have to best try to affect the change we want.

I'll close by saying that you seem to be as passionate about this topic as I am about others not telling me or others how they should approach healthcare.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[njh]

The only problem with this is that the blood test has no more found the cause than ticking off symptoms on a list finds the cause. Medicine is filled with stories about confusing correlation with causation (c.v. this year's nobel prize for finding the cause of gastric ulcers). And I think that most psychological problems are indeed software or environmental, it's just that we aren't very good at finding the bugs. (it's all very well fixing the foundations, but it may be that the problem with the house is that it is built in a swamp)

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no one cause, no one element, in ANY disorder, so there is no one place you can treat that will remedy that disorder.

We used to say that kind of thing about ulcers - that they needed to be attacked with medications to control gastic acid, huge changes in diet, stress control, very often surgery... Then we found out nearly all ulcers are caused by a simple bacterial infection. A round of the right antibiotic and they go away. See the recent Nobel.

When discussing a disease and I see all sorts of handwaving about how there are so many factors, and everyone is different, and there are 80 different potential causes and treatments... I tend to think it's just a disease we don't understand very well yet. Yes, psychological disorders are probably more complex than many other diseases, but generally I think the science of the mind is largely undiscovered and many times we're just poking around in the dark.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[jcgf]

Medicines, gene therapy, electro-shock therapy, none of those things sound all that hot too me. While they may cure anxiety or depression or any other problem, they're not even close to something I would want to touch.

I've had both medication and ect. Personally, I recommend ect whole-heartedly, as it worked so fast and so well. The meds help but they are nothing in comparison as far as speed goes. The procedure is done while your under general anesthetic so all you feel is the iv needle. After the first treatment I had a slight headache but a tylenol cured that just fine. I had no memory loss at all. In short I definately recomend it.

Jared

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[Anonymous Coward]

She kept saying the same things about screwed up relationships, past traumas, blah blah blah... but she would never give me any answers or strengths on how to deal with the real issues that I have.

Sounds like you've been scammed by some snake-oil amateur. In real Cognitive Behavioral Therapy your therapist will encourage you to avoid dwelling on past relationships and traumas, and will instead focus on your here-and-now, giving you advice, insights and homework for how to deal with situations now. Talking about past relationships and traumas may be useful in the beginning, but only to help with the diagnosis, and after that perhaps occasionally if you feel a need to talk about it, but she'll gently steer you away from dwelling too much on such things. In real Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the main focus is your present.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert, I just have some kind of anxiety problem myself, and a good therapist.

and listen to him talk about his support for the gay boys of SD.

To me that sounds extremely unprofessional! A real therapist will focus on you, and will definitely not burden you with other people's problems, or vent his own feelings, or whatever he's doing.

Maybe it would be a good idea for you to look for another therapist, this time checking credentials carefully, asking around for recommendations, and so on.

In addition to professional expertise it's also a matter of "personal chemistry", spontaneous connection and trust. A therapist who is perfect for one person may be much less useful to another, simply because of this spontaneous connection.

Good luck.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[cerberusss]

There are two things in your post that caught my eye.

Since then, I've been focusing on making a lot of progress on my own, and have been doing well

Watch out with this. I've had and will have long periods of depression, followed by very good periods. It took a while before I noticed the recurring pattern and sought professional help. Even then, I thought about quitting because "it was going fine now".

specially when said shrink calls and bitches me out for missing an appointment that was set 6 months ago

You go on and act like it's his fault. Argue all you want, but who forgot to call the appointment off? You. Not him.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[Prophet of Nixon]

I've never had any formal electro-shock, but I was badly electrocuted while working on an elevator about 4 years ago. It knocked me out for around 3 hours, and when I woke up disoriented and got myself somewhere safe I slept for nearly two days. I had both memory loss and math/logic skill loss, which slowly abated over roughly a year.

The accident happened two weeks before the end of spring semester, I failed my exams badly (ended up with a low B average that semester since previous grades were very high), was sort of 'out of it' all summer, and did very badly the next fall semester (real low C average; I was in Computer Engineering and felt crippled)... I switched to Industrial and Systems Engineering in the spring, which is quite a bit easier (most of the math is probabilistics, which is more of a game than it is math), and by the end of the semester was almost normal. I went ahead and finished Industrial and Systems Engineering (turns out it was far more interesting and varied than Computer Engineering), and I've since gotten back into programming on my own.

Sounds bad, but in hindsight the electrocution was handy, it indirectly made me change majors to something I liked more, and it also drastically changed my mood. Before it, I was cynical, a bit antisocial, got headaches from high pitched noises (televisions come to mind, they always emit a loud peal), and always had heartburn (I don't know that I had an ulcer - I don't like doctors, but some days I had to eat Tums like candy). Since then, I haven't had heartburn once, I don't get headaches, and I seem to get along with people/reality a lot better. Yea, I realize that everyone claims now that ALL ulcers are bacterial, but whatever I had must not have been, unless the bacteria couldn't take a shock.

I still don't like doctors though (except surgeons, they're alright)... not anything personal against any of them or the profession, but I just think everyone and everything is over-medicated these days.

Re:Which explains why many psychologists

[Anonymous Coward]

ulcers are not bacterial, the bacteria is the result of the ulcers.

As a patient

[Anonymous Coward]

I have symptoms that different doctors interpret differently. I've been on several treatments with mixed results, none satisfactory, some worst than no treatment at all.

I welcome a biological test that will help me narrow down my search for a treatment.

OT: Is this where I say "I for one welcome our new finger-pricking overlords"? :)

Re:As a patient

[haggar]

OT: Is this where I say "I for one welcome our new finger-pricking overlords"? :)

Yeah, it pretty much is, except that the "finger-pricking overlords" have about as much overlord-powers as the underpant gnomes.

Re:As a patient

[finelinebob]

It will be a long time before humans fully understand neuro- and bio-chemistry and how they relate to the psyche, and until that day I am more than happy to keep my patients in the dark about it.

So, you'd rather have uninformed patients who smile and take their medicine? It's exactly this sort of "the patient doesn't need to know this" attitude that makes me want to scream at doctors.

It took me over 2.5 years to find a cocktail of psych meds that began to mitigate my condition without worsening it. The only reason it took THAT SHORT a period of time is because I was knowledgeable about what different psych meds did. The major shifts in my treatment plan came about because I pushed for them based on two things: (1) what the medications did and what side effects they could cause, and (2) what was different about my state of mind on any given med. I will grant you that (1) a psychiatrist would know more than 99.9% of his patients about psych meds (and damn well SHOULD), but he can never know enough about (2) to make a sure determination of the effects of a medication.

There are a number of peer-support groups on the web (such as psycho-babble) where patients can discuss with people in the same boat what they can expect from medications and what combinations have worked for others. I've learned more from groups like these than I have from doctors since most doctors I've interacted with around these issues seem to know little more than what drug monographs distributed by their manufacturers have to say about a medication.

Keeping patients uninformed is just a recipe for needless suffering.

Yeah, that blood BOILS in the syringe!

[AnonymousYellowBelly]

nt

not all good

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good in a way, but consider this scenario... Person goes in for chest pain and is frantic. Docs do an Anxiety test and an EKG. The EKG comes back ok, but the Anxiety test comes back positive. So the doc says "you have anxiety disorder, you're fine, go home." What if this person is not fine? What if they have anxiety disorder, but also have some kind of underlying heart condition like clogged arteries?

I used to work in a hospital. Doctors always try to find the easy way out. Some of the people I've seen treated for chest pain and had it explained away had legitimate complaints and came back with even worse symptom (at which time they were properly diagnosed). I've seen people sent home before and had "hypochondraic" noted on their charts.

The underlying problem is that doctors are so overworked that they try to shuffle people in one door and out the other as fast as possible. Most doctors see 2-3 patients at a time and just go between exam rooms, having their nurses do most of the work.

How they do that?

[DamienMcKenna]

Did they walk around with vials of blood to see what would happen? I could just imagine someone walking near a hospital and the blood disappearing under a nearby rock, or getting all bubbly if a [PC|hot chick|fast car] was nearby.

Damien

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 100% correct. I suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder mixed in with anxiety and there is an inherent component of the "disorder" that would keep you from getting help in the first place. Some number of people with true paranoia or strong enough anxiety would not want to contact anyone for help in the first place. As avoidance, being worried about the interaction, denying any actual problem, etc.

Then when you get to taking blood or DNA collection... Jesus. I have enough worries just thinking about medical records, anything written down about me that has the potential to be used against me, especially considering the sorry state of any type of security and the ability of others to gain access to that information through various means.

The paranoid definitely are a group that rarely seeks out "help", this is clear from the DSM and other sources (very few PPD individuals seek treatment compared to other "disorders"), and I can testify first hand that the idea of blood being collected from me, or submitting myself to urine tests or the like certainly is something I would avoid.

(open /. back up for Tor!)

not surprising

[CAIMLAS]

This really isn't surprising, IMO. It's already possible (and incredibly simple) to test for sugar level trends (ie not just the current blood sugar level), stress levels (long term), heavy metal levels, parasites, and any number of other things through very simple wet slide and dry smear microscope tests. I'm guessing they just found the pattern that indicates anxiety.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This test measures elevations that corelate with psychological evaluations indicating an, "Anxiety Disorder". So what? It does not diagnose anything.

If we took a person who definitely did not have an axiety disorder, strapped electrodes on them that would randomly electrocute them without any pattern for prediction, and let them live their life under this constant stress for weeks... would the test say they had an, "Anxiety Disorder"? If so, then the test says nothing about a disease, or disorder. It merely points out what the patient already knows... "I'm constantly anxious!"

This will ultimately hurt big big pharm

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently, Xanax is one of the easiest drugs to get simply because there's no way for a doctor to tell that you're lying when you say you suffer from panic attacks or other anxiety disorders. Most who so claim probably don't, and are either deliberately lying or think that simple anxiousness = panic. *sigh* I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for buzz.

Is this for the greater good?

[ninjagumby]

As someone with extreme anxiety and depression, successfully treated with standard medications of today, if this test were to come back and say I didn't have one or either, would that have pushed me over the edge of insanity?

Is this really adding to the value of anxiety treatment?

Re:Is this for the greater good?

[grimJester]

Are you afraid you'll fail the test?

Another TEST?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will I pass? I don't know if I want to take this test. What if I fail? And what if /. finds out I'm suffering from an anxiety disorder because I posted about it? Aaaaaakkk!

As a crazy person....

[fm6]

I agree that it's great news (if true), but I think "acknowledgment" is the least of our issues. I don't think there's that much resistance to acknowledging that a condition can be psychiatric. If anything, I think people (especially MDs who are having trouble pinning down a diagnosis with cognitive or behavioral symptoms) are too quick to label disorders with a convenient psychiatric labels. After all, concepts like "anxiety", "depression" and "attention deficit" (to name three of the most common labels) are pretty vague. Plus, they name issues that everybody has — some people just have them more than others.

In theory, there are neurochemical abnormalities behind all the above conditions. Which is probably true (at least for most people with these labels), but which is almost never verified in clinical practice. What they do now is "rule out" alternative non-psychiatric conditions, and then when they're stumped, they label it psychiatric. Which I guess works most of the time — but every once in a while you get somebody diagnosed with "depression" when they actually suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, or some other toxicity the primary physician forgot to check for.

(A side note about terminology: to most people "depression" means, "extremely sad". But to psychiatrists, "depression" means "depressed mental function". The two kind of go together, but "clinical depression" is not a fancy way of saying "you need to cheer up." And of course "depressed mental function" is a symptom of a lot of conditions!)

I once knew a psychiatrist who thought that every diagnosis of "depression" should be verified with a PET scan. Fiendishly expensive, but nothing compared to the huge costs of antidepressant prescriptions and talk therapy. But the idea is unlikely to catch on. Indeed a lot of "depression" doesn't even get a proper psychiatric diagnosis. Instead some internist whose HMO only lets him have 15 minutes per patient says, "Well, you say you don't feel good, but I can't find anything wrong with you. Maybe you're depressed? Let's try some Zoloft and see how you do." Having a simple chemical test would make things a tad more rigorous.

It would also help mental illness get proper insurance coverage. Insurance companies don't like covering it, because it doesn't fit in their bureaucratic model. A simple, inexpensive test would make a lot of difference there.

Re:As a crazy person....

[Anonymous Coward]

And with anxiety in particular, there exists a high chance for labeling a physical disorder as "psychological" just because the physical disorder is rare and causes anxiety. There are several physical disorders that can cause discomfort and from that discomfort, a heightened level of anxiety, particularly if the doctors keep trying to tell you it's all in your head. I fear this test will further hurt such people rather than help them by reinforcing the doctor's misconception of "it's all in your head".

From personal experience, about a decade ago I had an undiagnosed peach sized, fluid filled cyst in my abdomen related to a relatively poorly diagnosed female reproductive disorder called endometriosis. The way it first manifested itself was extreme naseua on the bus I took to college every morning. Of course, the first doctors I saw labeled it a panic attack even though I'd been riding busses all my life with no panic attacks before then and had no traumatic incidents involving busses. It took several years before I found a doctor who connected the dots and found the problem. Once the cyst was diagnosed and removed, the naseau and pain stopped. My personal theory was a large cyst putting pressure on the digestive tract combined with the fact busses aren't known for smooth rides was a very bad combination for the happy digestion of breakfast. I'm sure that blood test would register high levels of the anxiety related chemicals during that time frame because being sick on a regular basis is anxiety causing.

Discrimination?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now...

Sorry, we're not going to hire you because our blood test indicates you have a "disorder" and may go crazy.

(Unless, that is, you work at IBM.)

Sorry, both you and him are incorrect.

[CyricZ]

You failed to read the definition of "anxiety disorder" that I so courteously provided to you. Note:

"Any of various disorders in which anxiety is either the primary disturbance or is the result of confronting a feared situation or object; they include obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder."

Re:Sorry, both you and him are incorrect.

[Otter]

Thanks for your courtesy, errr, chico, but you're still missing the point. Obviously anxiety disorders involve anxiety. The part you're not grasping is that anxiety does not necessarily imply an anxiety disorder. Your friend Trent may have suffered from anxiety; he did not, from your description, have an anxiety disorder. Similarly, he had a poor diet, but not an eating disorder.

Re:Sorry, both you and him are incorrect.

[CyricZ]

You're missing the point, chico, that many instances of "anxiety disorder" may just be due to excessive caffeine (or other stimulant) consumption.

Yay for Avoidants

[ChaserPnk]

As someone who suffers from Avoidant Personality Disorder, this is good news. A lot of psychologists argue about the very existence of AvPD! Can you imagine suffering from a disease and getting treatment from somebody who doesn't even believe your disease is real? I hope technologies like this will help advance social disorders to a higher level on the psych radar. I personally believe social disorders are some of the worst and misdiagnosed ailments in human history. They affect your entire outlook and can destroy a life. Any advancement to get rid of social disorder is good.

Re:Yay for Avoidants

[Frangible]

I meet the DSM-IV criteria for APD, but this isn't particularily relevant for us; APD is significantly different from Social Anxiety Disorder, and anxiety is not a factor in it. As far as psychologists arguing about its existance, I don't see how, it's in the DSM-IV.

Although APD has a high comorbidity with anxiety disorders, I do not believe APD would produce an anxiety response or be detectable in this fashion. The treatment is quite different as well.

Re:Yay for Avoidants

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more man. I've suffered with something very similar to the symptoms described in the link you provided for the last 4 or 5 years. I've only just started getting professional help (I put it off for so long, but it is my last resort - self medication probably wasn't the best place to start out), and I can say it has pretty much destroyed my life.

I used to be a very happy-go-lucky guy, but certain events in my life have really messed me up. Alot of people will immediately judge me as a whimp, or a nutcase or whatever, but dealing with something like this is like climbing a mountain every fucking day, in every social situation. Recently I've even had problems sitting around with my family and close friends, which incidentally is what finally pushed me to actively seek real help.

At the moment I don't care what it is, drugs, therapy, whatever, I just want to get rid of whatever it is I suffer from, because without trying to sound bleak, I'm really struggling to carry on here with the way things are.

The fear of the fear ends up ruling your life. And what's worse is how illogical that is, I code for a living, like many people here, and arguably programming is about as logical as a job gets, yet I can't deal with it when it's going on inside my head rather than a computer screen. It's completely fucked up, but just how exactly do you control your sub-conscious?

Re:Yay for Avoidants

[zlyoga]

"As far as psychologists arguing about its existance, I don't see how, it's in the DSM-IV." The DSM isn't set in stone. It's evolved over time and likly will continue to evolve. Homosexuality was listed in an earlier version of it and now it's not in there anymore.

Re:Yay for Avoidants

[ChaserPnk]

Sorry to hear about your situation. There are a few Avoidant groups around. The best one (ironically for a /. user) is on msn groups http://groups.msn.com/AvoidantPersonalityGroup.

Another sure way of self-diagnosing AvPD is if you have trouble forming words or slurred speech.

Good luck

Psychotherapists go to school you know....

[Anonymous Coward]

Psychotherapists and Psychiatrists go to school for a really long time before they can make an informed decision about someone presenting criteria for a disorder. The moment people start trusting needles over education is going to be a poor one indeed.

Re:Psychotherapists go to school you know....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met enough incompetent doctors, engineers, and scientists to know that school doesn't automatically make you qualified or talented in anything.

A piece of paper is just that. The best thing it says that you know how to get through classes.

of course this works

[Splork]

only the anxious people will think "oh my god! i've got to get tested" and go and voluntarily get poked for a test.
zero false positives. ;)

Of course caffeine isn't always the cause.

[CyricZ]

Of course caffeine isn't always the cause of all anxiety. That isn't what was suggested. But as you pointed out, it did have a severe impact on your existing nervousness and jitter.

Yikes..

[JimiSpier]

What if someone indeed has the markers in their blood, but because they grew up in a healthy environment, learned how to successfully manage their outbursts? Data cannot correctly determine who a person is nor how they will react. I can see this being a good "prevention" technique, otherwise, there are tons of psuedo doctors called shrinks that would love to keep their jobs..

One more step...

[Chris Snook]

There's actually a great significance to this. When you can diagnose something by a blood test, people think of it as a medical problem. Most people still don't think of psychiatry as a medical field, and think of psychiatric problems as indivisible from a person's identity. This will be a huge step towards helping people recognize the medical nature of treating psychiatric problems, and remove the stigma of seeking treatment. Anxiety disorders tend to exhibit positive feedback, so catching and treating them early, before they're so severe that friends and family are hauling you in for treatment, is critical.

Re:One more step...

[dancpsu]

Based on the responses to this thread, I wouldn't be so hopeful.

Re:Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIO

[Anonymous Coward]

When your life sucks, it sucks.

You are oversimplifying emotions to nothing more than brain chemistry. Real life situations also dictate emotion. If real life makes you depressed, should you really be taking prozac to make yourself unaware of the misery around you?

Re:Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIO

[Cyno]

Yes, but you're fighting the symptoms instead of solving the cause of these problems.

Until we learn what is really making us depressed, no amount of MDMA will make us truely happy.

If the problem is emotion and brain chemistry. Why live? What's the point of living your life void of emotion in some padded white room? To be safe and secure and emotionless until you die?

I'd personally rather sleep for an eternity. Or at least as long as everyone continues to believe everything is hunkey dorey.

Look, who wouldn't feel frustrated and depressed being told repeatedly that humanity's future is uncertain, their children's future is uncertain, their own future is uncertain. And everyone expect more of them at work, at home, friends, family, etc. Eventually someone is going to snap. Sucks for them, but that was their choice.

If you suggest we take drugs, might I suggest we give everyone the freedom to take whatever drugs they enjoy? Let's all be blissfully ignorant and party. I got some black lights and good tunes...

Either that or let's get to the heart of the problem. Its not like we don't have 500 psych books available as links off of www.google.com. If we really wanted to do something about this we could. But we don't. Its just not profitable to solve problems, when its more profitable to patch them.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Rob the Bold]

Actually, "Blood phobias" often result in syncope if the stimulus is not removed, so putting them under is not necessary. Unfortunately, passing out in the hospital is a Bad Thing as it may lead to admission. And Xanax doesn't help -- at least not for me -- for Blood Phobia.

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this insightful? Anxiety is a preference? It's either trolling or flat out stupidity.

Anxiety misdiagnosed...

[Douglas Simmons]

Quite often people are diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and are treated with benzos or schedule 5 drugs like BuSpar when in fact they do not have GAD, their root disorder is depression, a common symptom of which is anxiety. When this is the case, the anxiety can be successfully treated with antidepressants and not necessarily addictive benzos.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Actually a valid point

[symbolic]

Like so many other "discoverable" attributes, this could easily backfire. If an employer/insurer is ever in such a position to perform a blood test of any kind, there's not a whole lot sitting between your sample, and them acquiring a lot of extra information about you.

Insurance rates!

[FathomIT]

Sounds like it could be helpful for people who don't already know their stressed.

The bad part of this is the possibility for another health insurance category and rate hike for those of us who are having stressed-out days.

Moral Judgement

[Descalzo]

No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right?

I disagree. I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.

To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine! :) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.

I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.

Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.

With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be responsible enough to look at the direction in which the child is going and take steps to ensure the kid gets the help he needs.

You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.

Re:Moral Judgement

[LeonGeeste]

What's this? A level-headed post? I think you need to get with the program: you know, the five people who modded me down in lieu of actually responding to my arguments, or the six people who flamed me.

You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.

Okay, let's see:

I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.

True. But this doesn't make it a disease. People try to control and get help for their rudeness. That doesn't make it a disease. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him be less rude. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him do something of which he is anxious (Cf. Fight Club).

To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine! :) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.

You made my point for me, even better than I could. You just admitted that delusions are called delusions, not because they're wrong, but because they lead people do to things many of us would not like. That's a moral judgment. If you're defining something as a medical illness, you can't make moral judgments at all. By your own admission, if someone holds delusional beliefs, but doesn't do "bad" things, it's it's not an illness.

I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.

I think the best definition is what I gave: you can only count it as an illness if it's a constraint. You can't see well without lenses. If someone put a gun to your head you would not be able to correct your vision. Do some mental "illnesses" interfere? Sure. But all preferences interfere. That's what a tradeoff means - to compromise a preference.

Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.

People do realize it's getting in the way. The evidence is right in front of them. We as a society don't want to have to admit that the person is acting based on a preference for that temporary satisfaction over the needs of his family. Is that a bad choice? Sure. But that can never be a criterion for classification of illness.

With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be re

Re:Moral Judgement

[Anonymous Coward]

The gun-to-the-head test isn't valid for mental illnesses. Adrenaline and terror are real. I don't merely decide to panic, I literally can't avoid it. Even if such drastic changes in brain chemistry happen to solve the problem, the subject can't keep that sort of thing up all day every day (and they'll create another disorder if they try!)

Re:Moral Judgement

[Descalzo]

Thank you for clarifying, however, I think your gun-to-the-head test is flawed, in that if they really need the gun-to-the-head test, then there is still something wrong with them. Let me see if I can explain my reasoning here: If a kid is in class, and CAN pay attention to his spelling test, but only when the teacher is standing right next to him and prompting him, then this kid needs help (not necessarily medication, but that's another discussion). If the only way an addict will stop doing drugs/reading porn/gambling is when you're sitting on him or following him around, then he needs help, real help. Now I don't think that addiction is really a disease, so maybe I agree with you more than I thought I did. Hmmmm.

Thank you very much for an interesting post and an interesting discussion.

Re:Moral Judgement

[tabrnaker]

How a person chooses to use their eyes is behaviour.

YOu see, focal length changes with were your eyes are focused. Do you have a narrow focus, or bigger picture.

The big problem most people have is that squinting doesn't help. And yet, everybody with glasses will mention this.

Simply because people with glasses understand control, to focus on things you use your muscles to direct your eyes. They simply don't understand that 'proper' eyesight doesn't require effort, it requires dynamic relaxation. When you truly understand this you won't need glasses.

Re:Moral Judgement

[Descalzo]

And how do I achieve this?

That sounds like a sarcastic question, but how does one achieve that sort of relaxation: the relaxation of muscles that most of us don't know how to control consciously. While I was waiting for my night class to start, I decided to try to change the focus of my eye (I took off my glasses and closed one eye), and I could make it worse but not better. I thought about what you had said, and noticed that I could not relax past a certain point.

Anyway, I am serious about these questions.

Re:Moral Judgement

[QMO]

"The big problem most people have is that squinting doesn't help. And yet, everybody with glasses will mention this."

Maybe you didn't mean what it sounds like, but squinting does help. That's why people squint.
It may only help temporarily. It may not help enough. It may not help in all situations. Squinting too much may actually damage eyesight.

I sit here looking at a paper on the wall that I can't read, unless I squint. Squinting DOES help me see some things better. (It also blocks light when it's too bright.)

So, squinting does help some. That's why people do it without even thinking about it.

Re:Moral Judgement

[tabrnaker]

Sorry for the delay. I've been trying to think of the best way to start since I got there through months of trial and error.

The easiest way i think is by working from gross/known to specific/unknown. Problems with the body should be looked at in three ways, physical, emotional, and mental. Physical is where we start, because it's very evident. Working out the physical restrictions will bring up the emotional attachments and mental reasonings that cement that physical problem in place.

Picture our vision faculty as a camera. There are several things that have to go right for a good picture to be formed. The camera has to be steady, easily moveable for pans, zoom has to work, lens has to work properly for focal length, amount of light has to be adjustable, viewframe has to be resizable, low signal to noise ratio, etc...

Increasing our ability to recognize and control tension on a small scale is achieved by first removing large sources of noise. With vision we can get away with clearing up just the neck and head/face.

So does your neck work properly? What does that mean? For our purposes, you need at least a smooth left right pan. As an exercise observe people with/without glasses and how they move their heads. An energy efficient pan uses only the internal neck muscles, it is just the head rotating smoothly on top of the spine, this means you are not using your head balance muscles (cords on the side of the neck and back of the neck).

If your neck works fine, time to look at skull and eyes. Just look for sensitive spots on your skull, you should be able to feel all the bones without pain. If you find tension, find the bubble. Every tension spot gets a little bubble where if you press it long enough it either just releases or has to be pushed in a certain direction to release.

If your skull is fine then check your face. The biggest problems i still have is my nose which was broken multiple times, so hopefully you don't have a broken nose. Look up accupuncture points along the eye. You could look into what they're connected to, mainly digestive/elimination, but if you don't have these problems skip it. Accupressure points are places where tension can build, so you can search out those spots with your hands (recommended) or look them up online.

This may seem pointless, but it's very important. I can see perfectly, but like everyone else, as tension builds in our necks/shoulders/head we start to lose focus.

For the eyes, look up the bates method. You could read through the whole boring book if you want, but the exercises themselves are enough. I would say the most important one is sunning. Nothing aids relaxation more than the warmth of the sun seeping into your tired muscles.

This is getting long, and i don't think i can cover every situation since everybody is different. I think email would probably be a better venue for this as i could get more specific details, such as do you know how to blink(blinking is effortless, it is not squinting fast)? When you look at something what is the first thing you see? the object as a whole, or a detail of it? When you walk down the street, where is your viewpoint? Do you avoid eye contact? What was vision like before glasses? Some are physical, some are mental, and some are emotional ways that our vision can be impacted.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[SteveAyre]

Actually I think they were refering to needle phobias. My girlfriend has one.

It's nothing to do with *what* is being injected/taken out. It is the sight of the syringe or needle. She cannot watch anyone else having one done without feeling sick and used to be unable to even look at a photo of a syringe on its own.

As far as having an injection, such as for a vaccination she gets hysterical and loses control. In the past several people have had to pin her down while she has the injection.

I have always thought the extra trauma of this probably just makes matters worse. Giving her a temporary anesthetic which lasts only a minute or so would be far nicer.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Johnboi Waltune]

I suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder mixed in with anxiety

You should know that posting as an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot is not truly anonymous. A hacker with sufficient skills can discover your real login name, email address, and IP address. In some cases, these malicious villains can even find out where you live, break into your hosue, and hide under your bed while brandishing sharp objects.

Then when you go to sleep.... BAM!

Re:Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIO

[daigu]

Brain chemistry is to mental illness as metabolism is to obesity. There are methods to dealing with each and medication is typically only good as a short term solution for most people.

More on point, you cannot sell me a medically induced personality. Perhaps I like my destructive compulsions and the fact that I am only realizing a fraction of my full potential. Perhaps society is what causes the problem in the first place - all this focus on productivity and playing well with others. Either our way or we'll force feed you these fucking drugs and make you "normal". I'd like to say a word for keeping it a bit crazy and putting more waste back into life - best days of my life were the "wasted" ones.

I'd rather more of us waste more life than those 13% start gulping pills - modern day lobotomies - and reaching their "full potentional", whatever that means.

Just curious

[Descalzo]

Have you tried cutting ALL caffeine out of your diet? Perhaps you only think there is no problem with your concentration or memory because you have never experienced anything better?

I have no problems with anxiety, but I DO have problems concentrating, and I don't drink caffeine at all. No coffee, and very, very rarely do I have a Dr. Pepper. Hardly ever any chocolate, either.

I am just wondering if you have experimented with this or not, and what was the outcome.

Re:Just curious

[Skater]

I enjoy Coke, and I'm not having a problem...so why change?

Besides, I've found myself immersed in Doom and other games for hours on end, and I have no problem driving my motorhome for 8 or 9 hours in a day on trips (which definitely requires concentration, especially when I'm towing a car behind it). My problem is more of a lack of desire to concentrate at work rather than a lack of ability. :)

I believe that a lack of memory has more to do with not using it, not exercising it, rather than most causes people like to blame. Or, in the case of names, not actually hearing the name clearly the first time. I have no problems with my memory - I can remember names, phone numbers, credit card numbers, license plates, song lyrics, appointments, and plenty of other things without a problem... I think I do better than most people, actually.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Johnboi Waltune]

(By the way, I am just joking.)

Another nail in the future employment coffin

[Catbeller]

Seriously, every one of these "tests" will be used in the future by potential employers to screen job applicants. They won't be stopped, as if our government for the forseeable future will ever pass a law controlling what tests HR departments administer. The Supreme Court is being stacked with Federalist Society judges who will shut down attempts to circumsribe the freedom of corporations to hire and fire.

The hell of it is, along with just about every other test, including lie detectors and personality analyses (holy Dianetics, Batman) the test for these disorders are not failsafe. Hell, they might not work at all, or the eager beaver purveyors of these tests are misrepresenting what they are testing. Lie detectors are widely used, tho scientists have called them horsecrap for a half century. Drug tests have false positives, a monkey could walk around personality tests, and background checks rely on shadowy security companies who don't exactly keep their information current or accurate.

Another "test" that tests for, what, exactly? Some marker that current hypotheses deduce may or may not indicate anxiety disorder. But, like all the other tests, long after they are discredited, we have to march over to the testing lab if we want to get a job.

Anyone hear about fMRI's? Ah, the ultimate. Mind reading via MRI's! Oh, I can't wait for that crap to take off.

Follow the money. These tests are going to make screening companies billions of dollars. Whether or not they actually test anything in the real world is irrelevant.

And Americans will whistle and go along, because they have no imagination, no sense of their own history, no sense of what it means to be a free people. As if business is the only activity of mankind that deserves civil liberties.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 100% correct. I suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder mixed in with anxiety and there is an inherent component of the "disorder" that would keep you from getting help in the first place. Some number of people with true paranoia or strong enough anxiety would not want to contact anyone for help in the first place.

Yeah. I recently entered therapy for SAD (or 'social phobia'), OCD, and apparently depression, and in particular the anxiety (and to a lesser degree the depression) is what kept me from getting treatment years ago. It's hard to get help when you have a phobia about rejection, authority figures, strangers, public places, et cetera. I imagine it works similarly for other disorders.

Hey, its a scientologist!

[gad_zuki!]

>A partial solution can be worse than no solution at all, especially if you keep telling the patient that it's all the patient's fault/responsibility.

Who the hell does this? Im so sick of these ill-informed attacks on psychology a la Tom Cruise.

When a person is diagnosed with, say, generalized anxiety disorder (something many anti-social types may have) the last thing that is done is some blame game. Figuring out a treatment schedule is what's done. And no, its not some big "$200 per hour" scam, its Behavioral Cognitive therapy and perhaps medication to treat short term symptoms. Believing in conspiracy theories, marginizing treatment, and pissing on doctors in general only hurts patients who hear all this and then never bother seeking treatment. "See a head shrinker? Not me, I'm not some loon," is heard all too often. Meanwhile, millions suffer in silence and friends and loved ones can't figure out what's wrong with someone they care about, but who can't manage to hold down a job, finish school, etc.

I hate to break it to you, but depending on the causes of the disorder stuff like "talk" therapy and CBT actually work (CBT clocking in at 90% success rate) and have helped millions of people.

Lastly, ff you have issues with what doctors' charge, then that's a political issue on whether governments should be subsidizing or socializing medicine. Or a commercial issue on whether your insurance is actually serving you or not.

Re:Hey, its a scientologist!

[jkmartin]

Cruise has been attacking psychiatry, not psychology. Please learn the difference.

Psychiatry has a long and varied history of abuse, misuse, and just being outright wrong. I am sure there are good psychiatrists out there, but the past abuses by those in their profession means that anything a psychiatrist says should be viewed critically.

As for the blood test, who really cares? People can generally tell when something isn't right with them. The problem is that the treatments (whether drug or other) have questionable effectivness and take weeks to months to work (if they ever do) and then come with an assortment of side effects that can be worse than the original condition.

So congratulations future patients, something is definitely, scientifically proven, wrong with you! Treatment will be long, painful, and may not work at all. Bring money.

Re:Hey, its a scientologist!

[jcgf]

Cruise has been attacking psychiatry, not psychology. Please learn the difference.

Exactly, psychiatry is real medicine and psychology is something else (not that I have anything against it though). Oh and btw scientology doesn't think too highly of it either.

Psychiatry has a long and varied history of abuse, misuse, and just being outright wrong. I am sure there are good psychiatrists out there, but the past abuses by those in their profession means that anything a psychiatrist says should be viewed critically.

The same can be said of surgery and internal medicine in general and do you think psycology is always right or that psycologists can't abuse their privliges? Come now, that's obviously not the case.

I don't meen to come down on psycologists, but then talk therapy never worked for me and meds and ect (which was a miracle worker for me) can't be administered by them.

Jared

Re:Hey, its a scientologist!

[Anonymous Coward]

People can generally tell when something isn't right with them.

Not at all. Since early childhood I've had an anxiety problem without knowing it, it was discovered very recently, at the age of 49, when I received help because of a different problem (burnout). As I've always been tense I never knew you could be much calmer, and, because of the calm, more confident. For me, this is a truly fantastic experience.

The problem is that the treatments (whether drug or other) have questionable effectivness and take weeks to months to work (if they ever do) and then come with an assortment of side effects that can be worse than the original condition.

In my case the combination of SSRI medication and CBT therapy that I'm receiving works great.

The side effects were quite horrible while the medication was started and the dosage slowly increased. But my therapist had warned me, so I knew it could become difficult, only it became far more difficult than I had expected. I could have stopped the medication if I wanted, and then the side effects would soon disappear completely. But I didn't want to give up, and now I'm very glad I didn't! This new calm and confidence that I've never experienced before is truly wonderful.

To think that most people take this calm and confidence for granted... To think that I've spent some 45 years in tension and insecurity just because this was never diagnosed before...

It seems to me that this blood test may be a very good thing.

Re:Hey, its a scientologist!

[tabrnaker]

And that's the sad part. Why should it take somebody so long?

Is it so hard to teach in school that your body's natural state is relaxed? Or that touching, yes, actually just touching your body, will relax it? It's the simplest thing in the world that should be taught to everybody and yet, western civ just doesn't get it for the most part.

Real anxiety disorders are probably not so.

[vorpal22]

This may be true of the people that strike you as being anxious, but it is unlikely that these people have anxiety disorders. As someone with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I can tell you that to an individual who suffers with anxiety, it is absolutely paramount (and a huge source of stress) that, apart from perhaps close friends and family, absolutely no one knows about it. The majority of anxiety sufferers are incredibly anxious that someone will discover that they are anxious (with good reason - try to explain to someone that you're just having a panic attack when you're in the midst of a panic attack and your limbs are seized up and jerking and your heart is racing at an insane pace), and hence, they often come across in public as very cool and collected despite the fact that underneath the surface, their minds are racing with anxious thoughts. People tell me that I'm seemingly one of the most mellow and relaxed people that they know. I'm one of the few anxiety sufferers I know that isn't shy about disclosing my anxiety (as it minimizes it to simply announce it before it causes problems), and everyone is absolutely amazed to hear that I have an anxiety disorder, and people who don't know me well are quite skeptical of that fact (despite the fact that even with extensive daily relaxation exercises, benzodiazepines, and 5-HTP, my quality of life is still significantly less than the average person).

Oh Yeah?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need you sticking a needle in me to figure out I'm depressed! I'll just tell you. What a bunch of fewkin' morons! Oh, wait, I'm angry. Never mind. Shitheads.

One Designer for Another

[Ieshan]

"Establishing a cause, like faulty genes, allows the patient to remedy the underlying problem."

You have, at last count, around 30 thousand genes. You have 10^15 synapses. Looking to genes, rather than environment, in trying to correct and shape behavior, is just like going to the pew every Sunday to fix the problem. You're just exchanging one all-powerful creator for another.

Re:One Designer for Another

[jd]

My point is that where you have an environmental factor, you SHOULD be treating the environment. Where genes are a problem, treat the genes (or the effects thereof). Where the brain chemistry is a problem, alter the chemistry. And so on.

Typically, a hostile environment will result in the brain chemistry becoming wacked-out. At that point, just altering the environment will no longer be effective - all you're doing is not making the problem worse, but you're not correcting it. However, just treating the brain chemistry won't help either - you'll temporarily fix things, but they'll eventually slide back downhill. You'll constantly have to add more and more of an offset, just to keep pace, and eventually the body will become resistant or die of an overdose.

The correct cure, in such a case, is to remedy the environment (or how the person interacts with it) PLUS medicine to offset the changes to the brain, possibly also some counselling to understand the errors in perception caused by the environment and/or brain chemistry.

What won't help is someone telling you it's all your fault. (If you know better, it's useless information and if you don't, it'll make things worse.) What is needed is not blame but perspective, some sort of solid ground you can aim for, and some plan of action on how to get there.

Another poster suggested I was a scientologist! What a laugh! They've no perspective at all! Anyone who can say that brain chemistry is never an issue is deluding themselves and others. Virtually every experience we have will alter our brain chemistry in some way, and if that way is harmful and becomes semi-permanent - or even permanent - then you will need to take medication to counteract that.

Brain chemistry rarely alters itself (although that does happen), so if you need medicines, there's an excellent chance that you'll need something else to deal with whatever caused the problem in the first place.

Does therapy have a place? Yes - but it's down the list. You might go to a physiotherapist after breaking bones severely in an accident to retrain your coordination. But you wouldn't go until AFTER receiving treatment for your injuries and AFTER your bones are mended. Bleeding to death on the physiotherapist's floor isn't going to help you very much.

ONCE you've got the underlying issues taken care of well enough for you to be able to have perspective (it doesn't have to be perfect, you just have to not be dead) THEN therapy makes sense. If you can't have perspective, all you're doing is wasting time and money. Therapy relies on you wanting to change, but you can't have a want if you aren't in a position to choose.

Re:One Designer for Another

[Ieshan]

"The correct cure, in such a case, is to remedy the environment (or how the person interacts with it) PLUS medicine to offset the changes to the brain, possibly also some counselling to understand the errors in perception caused by the environment and/or brain chemistry."

You raise fine points, but distinguishing between environmental and biological causes, if such a dichotomy exists, is rarely so simple as you put it. I think most people would argue that they are so intricately linked in a real diagnosis that there is no separation of treatment. "Brain Chemistry" really isn't quite so simple as you describe it.

That said...

"What won't help is someone telling you it's all your fault. (If you know better, it's useless information and if you don't, it'll make things worse.) What is needed is not blame but perspective, some sort of solid ground you can aim for, and some plan of action on how to get there."

That's certainly true. While in many cases it *is* the patient's fault, it's patronizing and off-putting to the patient, especially the previously *ignorant* patient, that they were the cause of their own disorder. I don't mean ignorant as "stupid", but rather "uninformed".

Mod Parent Up...

[Mad_Rain]

Hooray for someone who understands the concept. =)

Re:Mod Parent Up...

[Derek Pomery]

I disagree. The parent didn't catch that they are checking for a defect in the enzyme that breaks down the anxiety chausing protein.

The parent talks about the needle thing as if that'd matter at all. It wouldn't. They'd still be able to test for the absence of the enzyme.

Re:Mod Parent Up...

[bigpat]

I reread it and I don't see that stated anywhere in this article. Unless you are referencing another article? It was abnormal levels in the enzymes that they tested for not a defect.

They cheated

[sconeu]

It's from Hebrew University.

Blood test: compare DNA sample to that of a Jewish mother.
If there's a relationship, then the testee has an anxiety disorder.

Disclaimer: I'm Jewish.

what if...

[ecumenical_40oz]

..Your anxiety is provoked by a fear of needles or blood?

No!!! to quicker means to psych test us all

[almound]

How convenient that a "simple blood test" has been found to test for such subjective mental states as anxiety disorders and depression. The President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health "recommends" psychological testing for all Americans, and wants to ensure by law that every school-age child has been offered such an exam.

History time and again records governments continually abusing the power accorded by such sweeping initiatives, interpreted as mandates by sycophantic minions. Why should modern government be any different?

The real questions are: Who determines what is to be considered a mental illness? Which authorities control who is tested for mental illness and how? What will be done to the mentally ill under the aegis of treatment? Who stands to profit from it all?

The Columbia University TeenScreen Program is the pilot program mentioned in the report as the model program to administer such a CBT test. Their pilot test is already being given to kids in at least 27 states, in at least 69 schools.

At the Teenscreen website, under the "Setting The Record Straight About TeenScreen" page, the group argues that the language in the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, couched in terms of "universal screening" does not mean "mandatory screening."

Yes, Teenscreen does not advocate forced psychological testing at their website. However, Teenscreen can only vouchsafe for itself.

Teenscreen may indeed be an organization of integrity; the question is not how are the recommendations of the President's Commission being tested, but what will be the future of the initiative advocated!

Governments do not have a good track record being trusted to endorse and administer psychological testing of the citizenry. More than plaintive appeals as to Teenscreen's integrity are needed to dispell the fact that governments in both the distant and recent past have used official definitions of "mental health" as a means to control, imprison and torture citizens. The more wide-spread such programs become, the more likely they will be used nefariously. American forms of eugenics are alive and well.

Teenscreen cannot speak for the aims of government, nor for what government does with the information once it is collected by organizations such as Teenscreen. Presumeably such information will be subject to government review.

With the acknowledged surveillance of all network communications by Navy operations it is doubtful that client-professional privilege could be maintained, even if private organizations were to retain some semblance of separation between their testing of individuals in public settings and the government's pervasive snooping.

For more, see: www.inforwars.net

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right you know. I knew a guy that posted Anonymous Coward on slashdot. Ten years later, *BAM* herpes.

It will make things worse and not better

[aeoo]

Has it occurred to anyone that people have anxiety for a valid reason?

What if taking the pill will simply mask the underlying cause?

In other words, what if people are anxious because the world really is messed up, as a result of us people being messed up (too greedy, too hateful, etc.)? Then taking this "medicine" will allow people to ignore this and go on collecting more pleasures. Thus, a slave can be made to forget his miseries, but should the "medicine" ever stop, the slave is SCREWED. And if the slave is bad, there is always the thread of withholding the medicine. Remind you of anything?

Re:It will make things worse and not better

[Anonymous Coward]

Brain chemistry is regulated by feedback. If the pill suppresses anxiety, it will work if my anxiety hormone gland is just being overactive for no reason, but if I'm supposed to feel anxious, my brain will notice and fight the effect, generating even more of the hormone until the correct level is reached (or maybe too much, if the pill worked very quickly and abruptly).

For instance, you can put a normal person in a chaotic environment until they're having trouble focusing on anything, but giving them Ritalin just makes them hyper. It doesn't help them concentrate because they don't have the specific flaws (usually serotonin and noreprenephrine reuptake) that cause ADD.

Re:It will make things worse and not better

[brumby]

Has it occurred to anyone that people have anxiety for a valid reason?

I don't. That's the whole point of it being a disorder. If there was something actually going wrong, then I'd have a reason to be anxious. Instead, the mechanism is working backwards, I'm anxious, constantly, and I keep thinking something normal must be going wrong.

Peripheral measurement of CNS events

[mictho]

I am an endocrinologist. I see and treat persons with hormonal disorders that can often be diagnosed with measurement of hormones in the peripheral bloodstream. I have long told patients that psychiatric disorders have a biologic basis, but cannot be assessed with a simple measurement of substances that show up in the systemic circulation. I would be skeptical that events (ie measurable substances) beyond the CNS Blood-Brain barrier would show up with sufficient sensitivity and specificity to diagnose a condition that takes psychiatric specialists to assess. I think the most promising means of assessing CNS neurochemistry may be specialized imaging studies like PET scanning of metabolic activity of different regions of the brain. Psychiatry is where endocrinology was 50 years ago. Until we improve means of measuring the biologic basis of psychiatric disorders, I would be hesitant to make ER-based decisions on management based upon a peripheral blood test result.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[man_eleven]

The needle is the test!

Original article in PNAS.

[ivaldes3]

Here is a link to the scientific article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which may be more informative. Abstract: Anxiety involves complex, incompletely understood interactions of genomic, environmental, and experience-derived factors, and is currently being measured by psychological criteria. Here, we report previously nonperceived interrelationships between expression variations and nucleotide polymorphisms of the chromosome 7q21-22 acetylcholinesterase-paraoxonase 1 (ACHE-PON1) locus with the trait- and state-anxiety measures of 461 healthy subjects from the Health, Risk Factors, Exercise Training, and Genetics Family Study. The AChE protein controls the termination of the stress-enhanced acetylcholine signaling, whereas the PON protein displays peroxidase-like activity, thus protecting blood proteins from oxidative stress damages. Serum AChE and PON enzyme activities were both found to be affected by demographic parameters, and showed inverse, reciprocal associations with anxiety measures. Moreover, the transient scores of state anxiety and the susceptibility score of trait anxiety both appeared to be linked to enzyme activities. This finding supported the notion of corresponding gene expression relationships. Parallel polymorphisms in the ACHE and PON1 genes displayed apparent associations with both trait- and state-anxiety scores. Our findings indicate that a significant source of anxiety feelings involves inherited and acquired parameters of acetylcholine regulation that can be readily quantified, which can help explaining part of the human variance for state and trait anxiety.

As a mechanic

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this attitude to be the singlemost prevalent misconception in the industry today. In my studied opinion it is far better for the mechanical causes of car trouble to be hidden safely away from the owner. The driver should understand that their problem stems from within themselves, not from interactions of flawed components. This places the burden and yoke of repairs squarely on their shoulders, where it belongs.

Re:Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIO

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my compulsions... I consider myself a Neurotic, obsessive, compulsive (N.O.C.) and I Like It!

The reason? Its whats driven me to be good at everything I apply myself to which is a wide variety of activities and has left me reasonably well balanced.

As far as anti-depressants go, my mother and sister are on them and they're a fucking joke. I'm sure their doctor just gives them drugs to shut them up and good on her! Doesnt seem to work enough though.

Anxiety, who doesnt get that doing something new, do it enough and it becomes second nature. Meetings used to scare the crap out of me, now they're like a big ego stroke.

Advice: Exercise and eat properly and do a wide range of activities - yes I get 'depressed' but I live by this: FIGJAM and I have the evidence to back it up so I'm happy

My response....

[DocJohn]

From my view as a psychologist...

This research/test is:

1. Not something scientifically-accepted yet.
2. Is not less expensive.
3. Is not more accurate.
4. Does not take less time.
5. Involves more professionals, a needle and blood draw, and likely more inconvenience for the client/patient in most circumstances.

I don't see the benefits, sorry.

Read my full analysis and comments here:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2005/10/10/b lood-test-for-anxiety-does-this-help-anyone/

They needed a blood test?

[the real darkskye]

I thought the black clothes, make up, long hair, New Rocks, Finnish power metal and pot smoking was an sure give away!

Or is just that for me an my friends?

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[ameline]

> (By the way, I am just joking.)

Of course, if you were really out to get him, that's what you'd want him to think eh?

Scientological Explanation for These Results

[billstewart]

Scientology has Proven (tm) that the causes of your problems are related to the past lives of uptight dead space aliens called Thetans, and that you can cure your problems by getting your Inner Space Alien (ISA) into a better mood. But that's no contradiction to these results, because Scientology can make use of any other "real" science, and only objects to fake sciences like psychotherapy. You see, String Theory tells us that everything is made up of little tiny strings, and when your Thetans feel anxious and need to get your body to react anxiously so it's ready to fight or run away from whatever they're worried about, they start pulling on the little strings that trigger the neurotransmitters to let your body know what to do. The reason they do it this way is that Xenu can't read the chemicals remotely, though the little strings are triggered by mental energy that can be read more precisely with a very complex expensive device called an E-meter.

The big difference between Scientology's theories and Pastafarianism's is that anybody can make up stuff about the Flying Spaghetti Monster out of whole cloth, but only El-Ron and a few of his successors are Allowed to make up Official Scientology Stuff unless they want Bad Things to happen to them.

Re:Scientological Explanation for These Results

[JRWS]

The really nasty thing is that Scientologists are actively campaigning against scientists. For instance, they actively sponsor a campaign against a Columbia University program called TeenScreen, disseminating and publishing all sorts of editorial, disguised to look like science, about mental health screening.

The other nasty thing is that they get to capitalize the name of their organization, and use the word Science in it. There is no basis of actual scientific method or accountability in their publishings, just convoluted anaylsis that to some, looks like science.

Gee Doctor,

[JumperCable]

all the tests are coming back stating the patients are hypochondriacs.

Silly question

[Anonymous Coward]

"(She) isn't responsible for having the disorder, but she is responsible for her recovery."

Something i've always wondered: What do you do if the person ISN'T going to be responsible for their recovery? What then? I've had plenty of people tell me "You're the only one who can change things" (or some variation thereof), and I know in my logical mind that its true. However this doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, I still feel hopeless and like any progress made is irrelevant. Yes im on meds (Citalopram Hydrobromide + Bupropion Hydrochloride, aka: Wellbutrin SR), yes i've been seeing a pdoc for the last 5 months, yes i've made progress. Still, that doesn't mean im at all motivated or encouraged by it. Maybe tonight is just a real deep mood swing (and listening to that awesome new NIN CD probably isn't helping ;)) but I still feel anxious, depressed, and even occasionally suicidal when contemplating my existance. Sort of a apathetic "Why bother struggling to fix something thats a) going to require a lot of effort to fix, and b) will never be satisfactory?" (Yes, i'm a depressed perfectionist. Like painting a chamelon neon yellow, its a fucking wonderful combination). I know its rather silly to be so indifferent about my very own life, but its the way I feel and i'm not very good at changing it.

Anyways, was just kind of curious what happens after every psychological professionals predictable "one two punch" (meds + therapy) fails.

Cheers! (Oh, and if they need any volenteers for that test? I'm game :P)

Re:Silly question

[tabrnaker]

Maybe you're just a lazy child that refuses to grow up and take responsability for your actions?

Sure, neuro-chem and all that. The question is, how did it get like that? Why is it still like that?

Bodies aren't static as much as medical science and the population at large would like to believe. Your body reacts to the kind of inputs that you expose it to, and to what you choose to pay attention to in life. YOur body/mind is the culmination of every choice you've made in your life as well as every choice that you have refused to make up until this point.

Here's a big tip. Every decision you are faced with takes energy. If you don't make those decisions all your energy is sapped up by them. You want to fix yourself, get off your ass and make your decisions.

Absolutely nobody in the world can make those decisions for you which is why drugs don't cure..

I have a few questions about this...

[Koil]

I have never been to a doctor about my symptoms, but I am genuinely curious about whether or not I have the symptoms of something like General Anxiety Disorder, or if its just from the way I was raised and the tendencies my parents had, which I find myself having as well.

A lot of the...we'll call them symptoms for now, that I have noticed about myself are the following. (Once again, I don't want to claim this as an excuse...just wondering sort of if there is help for such a thing, or if I just need to 'suck it up')

A little back history is that my parents are absolutely horridly irresponsible. THey're horrid with money, meetin obligations, making promises they never intend to fulfill, etc.

Now I think that there issues have created issues of my own:

I tend to freak out if a situation is something that I can't control, or able to control other peoples actions. (i.e. people not doing what *I* consider to be the right thing in a situation, regardless if it is correct or not. An example of this is, as dumb as it may be, I will smoke on the front porch of my apartment (4 apartments share an open, but common area), and when its just me, I don't have a problem with it, but when someone else is out there with me, and they sit on the stoop, I get anxiety because I am worried about a neighbor coming out and getting pissed off because we're smoking the area out.)

I worry endlessly about bills, obligations to meet that I know are on the horizon (taxes, car tags, going to a doctor or dentist), so in knowing that they're coming, I will just ignore them completely. Which, of course, just goes to increase my anxiety that much more and cause me to spiral myself into a bit of a depression.

If I don't have something immediate to worry about, I always seem to find something. Usually this always involves money.

I will do my best to keep appearances. Its very important to me for people to think that I havemy shit together, even when I absolutely feel the complete opposite.

Basically, my conclusion to all of this is that I was just brought up in an environment where things that are normal to other people (responsibilty, confronting issues as they come) wasn't there, so I have taken on those qualities as well. I do my best to not have them, since they effected me ALOT as a child, but they still seem to creep into my life, despite my best efforts.

I won't take any responses as being straight from a doctor, but just want to get the /. feel for what I describe.

(My apologies for this rambling)

Re:Humanity will be made better by this, I'm SERIO

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I DID just "snap out of it". I suffered from it for 10 years until last month. Maybe that's because I didn't know what was wrong, but I was reading about it, gaining understanding of it, and tried "forcing" myself to be happy after making the decision to change things. Even now I still have to "force" myself sometimes, but it's becoming more natural every day. The thing is though that the individual has to be the one to decide to do something.

Caffeine: the gateway drug

[redheaded_stepchild]

I remember my first time doing Coke. Man what a buzz! All my cool buddies were doing it. Pretty soon I was trying coffee, staying up late configuring my new install. I quickly moved right on up to Bawlz with a Red Bull chaser for those late night frag fests. Now, I can't even pee without shaking it all over the place. And let me be the first to say, I pee a lot, cause this stuff goes through you like...water.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Social Anxiety Disorder as well, but I'm finding getting help here in Australia pretty difficult. Our government is fairly miserable when it comes to mental health services.

I guess I need to hurry up, graduate, and get a good job so I can afford the huge sums of money for a psychologist...

I've lived with it for 8 years, what's a few more?

Well, I know I have anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

But what does this do to convince other people that my problem is real, and that their suggestions of just get over it, or stop being lazy, or other such hurtful and hateful reactions which don't help a bit?

Maybe it'll convince some of them that I'm not just begging for attention, but I don't know...

I just know I wouldn't be anxious if other people weren't giving me a reason.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Reziac]

Learn more about paranoids -- follow them around. ;)

Something to test for

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

One of many possibilities is hypoglycemia.

Here's how it works for some people. Blood sugar drops. The control circuity tries various things to raise it again.

Sometimes, when nothing less drastic works, the control circuitry will ask for epinephrine. If blood sugar levels remain too low, it will ask for more. Lather, rinse, repeat, until someone who had no objective reason for a fight-or-flight response is experiencing the heart-pounding and trembling of mortal terror.

Don't jump to conclusions without medical advice, though. You don't get computer security advice from your doctor, so don't take medical advice from me.

Beta blockers help too

[neologee]

I recall from psych. class that beta blockers have a certain affect on the blood flow in the brain to the amygdala, area in the pre-frontal cortex where negative affect has an effect according to PET and fMRI research. Beta blockers also slow down blood flow i think?

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Basehart]

I actually signed up for a Needle Therapy study for the UW Dental School. I figured I was freaked out about injections in te mouth enough to be agood subject, yet not so bad that I wouldn't show up for any of the tests.

Needless (sorry) to say, the first few visits were pretty horrific, watching people have injections etc then habong to talk about it. But the surprising thing was when I was shown how bendy the actual needle is, when I actually flexed it against my finger and saw how bendy this thing really was, my fears evaporated. Simple as that.

Turns out I was one of those people who is afraid it would snap off in my gum, but once I realized that was a very small propability my fears went away.

Being taught how to breathe slowly and not think about the injection also helped, as well as asking the Dentist to make sure the gel is left on the gum for a full minute or two to take away the initial pinprick feeling.

Cartoon

[Anonymous Coward]

Woman at pharmacy:
"I don't approve of psychiatric drugs but could I have some of whatever Tom Cruise is on?"

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[DariaM84]

Would it work to numb the area where the needle was going to go and then blindfold them or something? I just hope that the abense of a positive diagnosis from bloodwork doesn't lead to people who need help being denied it, i.e. insurance companies denying converage for psychiatric help just because a person's blood tests came out negative. :-(

Heh! That's a good example.

[jd]

My point is not that things are necessarily complex, but that they're often not isolated. The heliobacteria that are linked to peptic ulcers are a good example - treating the obvious symptom (the acid) is useless, because you've not removed the underlying cause (the bacteria).

Even the bacteria itself is interesting, because the coating it has to protect itself from the vicious environment of the stomach is sufficient to make antibiotics on their own useless. To attack the bacteria, you must first attack the bacteria's protection.

In the treatments used, the antibiotic is often combined with the highly toxic metal bismuth. The bismuth will somehow weaken the defenses of the bacteria sufficiently to allow the antibiotic to be effective. Neither one, on its own, will have any beneficial effect.

There are some rare forms of stomach cancer that can result from heliobacteria and the resultant ulcers. Treating the bacteria won't eliminate the cancer. Eliminating the cancer but leaving the bacteria will just allow it to return, in time. You have to eliminate both to guarantee a complete cure.

In all these cases, the cause is relatively simple and so is the cure. But equally, in all these cases, the cause is not a single, unique thing and neither is the cure. Why, then, should we expect anything else to be any simpler?

MENTAL DISORDER 101

[newpath4comVersion2]

So far being bipolar has helped me make a new engine that runs on air & water: http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm . I used biofeedback and commanded the electrical surge to stop, so in 2002 I stopped going into the Manic Phase for the first time in my life gained control. Doctors say it can't be done so they want to stick EVERY ONE OF YOU GUYS to prove they're right and I'm wrong. The Lithium overdose the doc gave me for 13 years reduced my health to where I had no stamina in 2002. Now in 2005, taking nutrition supplements these past 3 years, I've rebuilt my health and stopped the sleep apnea. Which is, OF COURSE, another one of those beasties the doctors say YOU CAN'T CONTROL. Why, I guess the HUMAN RACE JUST CAN'T SURVIVE WITHOUT DOCTORS THEN. hahaha So next year they'll stick you for sleep apnea too. Anyone of you has problems, do yourself a big favor and try a product called Oxy-Nectar. It's available from http://www.vitaglo.com/ best price, 1.3 lb. can for $22.49 . Free shipping orders over $50. Or get it local and pay $36.00 . If your child isn't doing so good in school give them a taste too. You'll see. It has Chinese celery, spinach, carrots, astragalus (herbal expectorant); all powdered and potent yet in small enough amounts. You can actually raise your health much higher than where the meds try to hold you down to...

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you, but I'm pretty sure this test is primarily aimed at people who go into the emergency room complaining of chest pain and all of the other diaphanous symptoms that accompany panik attacks, but could also singal an entirely "physical" issue the would need to be addressed with more radical forms of medical practice than a xanax scrip.

this blood test could save the anxiety sufferer thousands of dollars in unnecessary EKG and CAT scat test.

a very good thing.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[DennyK]

I also have a phobia of needles, though not as bad (I have gotten immunizations without going physically nuts, but it's extremely stressful). If your girlfriend's is anything like mine, a local anesthetic won't help a bit. It's not the pain that bothers me (most injections don't even hurt that much...), it's the thought of the needle piercing my skin and injecting crap into me (or sucking crap out) that just freaks me out. Can't stand 'em...

Legalize Marijuana

[Associate]

Only anxiety now is from the law.

I USED to have anxiety disorder - no more!

[kitkatsavvy]

With reading all of this stuff about anxiety and panic disorders, I can thankfully say that I USED to suffer very badly from panic disorder - but not anymore! (My panic disorder cure site http://www.psychopanic.com/ ) With the fear of say needles (as with any fear), you have to learn to deprogramme the fear out of your head, prepare for the fear, and then confront it. With needles, you have to realise that they are a lifesaving tool, and that one day a vaccine or blood test could infact SAVE your life. You have to think in your mind that it is infact only a needle - and that if you prepare your mind for the little tiny prick of pain - that it won't be so bad compared if you start to freak out and fight it. You can tell those inner thoughts that needles are a fact of life, and the pain is very minimal. Once you have prepared yourself, it's time to face the fear with this bit of coaching. Eventually, you can learn to push your irrational thoughts out of your mind. I will just write a quick solution for panic disorder to try and help those fellow sufferers out here:

Go for a long, peaceful walk

Focus on something else other than any pains or thoughts in your body/mind

Watch some tv (comedy is preferred)

Focus on a surrounding sound and listen to it

Think of a good, relaxing song in your head

Read a book

Use diaphragm breathing techniques

Deprogramme your thoughts

Lower the stress/workload in your life

Listen to some muscle stretching/relaxation tapes

Confront your fears

Use thought blocking techniques I'm sorry to plug my site and all, but due to my panic disorder which I used to have, I started writing my own website to help others out there. One more thing - antidepressants are HOPELESS! Infact ANY medication given to you is only going to suppress the problem - not SOLVE it! Isn't what we slashdotters are - problem solvers? I even have some breathing techniques too - a panic attack is caused when TOO many thoughts occur at once when your response to a situation ends up freezing your thoughts - the "incorrect" breathing method of mainly using your chest versus your diaphragm to breathe causes oxygen loss, and then you end up hyperventilating. To stop a panic/anxiety attack, just breathe in deeply with your nose for 5 seconds WITH YOUR diaphragm, hold for 5, then breathe out for 5 with your mouth. Here's my site http://www.psychopanic.com/

Lie detectors?

[tuomas_kaikkonen]

Derivative work: Lie detectors?

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[grumpygrodyguy]

This is 100% correct. I suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder mixed in with anxiety and there is an inherent component of the "disorder" that would keep you from getting help in the first place. Some number of people with true paranoia or strong enough anxiety would not want to contact anyone for help in the first place. As avoidance, being worried about the interaction, denying any actual problem, etc.

I'm in the same boat as you =/, taking Seroquel for Paranoid Schizophrenia...you're absolutely right about the disease making the patient even more reluctant to seek help because they're so afraid of the consequences. Really a terrible illness.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[ShagratTheTitleless]

Actually I think they were refering to needle phobias. My girlfriend has one.

Then stop "stabbing" her.

Re:What if their anxiety disorders involve needles

[ShagratTheTitleless]

I'm in the same boat as you =/, taking Seroquel for Paranoid Schizophrenia... Vote Republican? [uuforum.org]

Paranoid Schizophrenia plus a distaste for Republicans. No fucking way.

Excercise works well

[Anonymous Coward]

Excercise when you can do it works really well. As well as helping the body it's a good distraction. I find cycling more relaxing than driving for example and arrive generally less stressed after it.

I imagine if you can't do excercise then things like video games could help - then we get back onto the violant video game discussion. I blat punch bags or fictitious opponents in karate (though when learning Kata I tend to think of the form not the opponent - oh well), some could destress by blatting pixelated aliens in a video game.

Control Group

[figa]

Note that the test data was from 461 U.S. citizens. I imagine the researchers had difficulty finding people in Jersualem that aren't anxious.

Not really a preference...

[ponos]

You have a very simplistic view of mental illness. Those suffering from schizophrenia cannot stop hallucinating (even if you put a gun to their heads!). Those suffering from panic attacks cannot simply "calm down". Those suffering from conversion disorder cannot stop feeling pain (even if the pain is proven to be "functional", i.e. not pathological).

Furthermore, even if you manage to force someone to do something against his anxiety (by putting a gun to his head) or against his phobia you HAVE NOT TREATED THE ANXIETY or PHOBIA. Even if the person appears to do what you want him to, he won't be able to function if you withdraw your external pressure. Many of these people are very miserable with their illness and are unable to live a normal life. Do you think they "prefer" living this way?

From another point of view, does this mean that "healthy" people are unconstrained? If you put a gun to someone's head will he be able to run a marathon race, or win an olympic medal? If he does not, does this mean he is physically ill? All people are constrained by their bodies and their health status. As a matter of fact, it is possible for someone who has suffered a heart attack to have more endurance than a "healthy" person. Which of the two is healthier?

You also seem to believe that the attribution of "mental illness" contains a moral judgement. This is of course true to some extent. In the exact same way that one's ability to walk is automatically compared to all "normal" people (and not, say, to fishes), one's behaviour is also compared to "normal" behaviour. However, this is not the only or the most important criterion of mental illness. You also need to consider: a) whether the person is happy (someone who can't get laid and is miserable may suffer from social phobia or depression, but the Pope can be perfectly happy without getting laid) b) whether the person can succeed in his goals and adapt to some environment c) whether the person is dangerous for society. Take your example: can a deeply religious person succeed in his goals and be happy without hurting others? Probably yes. Can a person with some paranoid delusion succeed in his goals and be happy without hurting others? Most probably not.

Normally, the list of mental illnesses changes because the way we think changes faster than the way we walk or the way our hearts beat. In that way, the measure of mental illness does not depend that much on what exactly you believe or do, but how well you manage to adapt and function. This of course, does require that you comply (to some extent) with social standards. In the end, medicine does not pass moral judgement. Society does that, usually...

P.

Choice?

[Descalzo]

I have not seen any studies proving homosexuality as either a choice or genetic thing.

I don't think we need a study. If a man has intercourse with a man, he was either choosing it, or he was raped. That's not genetic, so it is either a choice or a rape. Granted there might be other factors that might effect a man's decision, but it finally comes down to his choice.

As to the rest of your post, about irrational and moral, I think you make some good points. I've often thought about that. I've often wondered what kind of control the brain really exerts over the body. People with good attitudes seem to heal better and faster, no? People give up and just die from time to time. I wonder how far that goes. Still, I have to be careful not to go to far. Hmmm.

There is so much to discuss here, and I feel like I am not doing the subject justice.

Re:Choice?

[Omestes]

I don't think we need a study. If a man has intercourse with a man, he was either choosing it, or he was raped. That's not genetic, so it is either a choice or a rape. Granted there might be other factors that might effect a man's decision, but it finally comes down to his choice.

I somewhat lean towards the "homosexuality as choice" camp, as un PC as that is now, but it does bring up some interesting thoughts on choice, biology, social conditioning, etc. Since at first sight homosexuality does not seem a logical decision, and there is some evidence of very early homosexual preferences, before social conditioning could lead to such a choice.

The act of homosexual intercourse is, of course, a choice, just like any act of heterosexual intercourse is. But the guiding force behind homosexual intercourse is what is interesting, what causes such a choice to become appearent. To me as a straight male, the choice to have homosexual sex is there, but does not become appearent ever, unless I take the philosophical view of thing, but pragmatically it does not exist to me (i.e. when I see a male walking down the street, I do not see them as an object of sexual desire, as opposed to an attractive woman). What makes this choice evident in the homosexual faction of society? Why do they seem to ignore/repress/lack the seemingly normal heterosexual urges, and instead go for the other side? We must examine the deep causes.

I don't think, at this point in time, there is an answer. We cannot pin down personal volition as the cause, nor can we say some form of biological predestination. Granted both of these, taken individually, are overly simplistic. But an answer to the deeper source of these urges would be valuable to philosophy and all the biological/behavioral sciences.

In regards to concentration.

[QMO]

Um, being able to immerse yourself in a computer game for hours has nothing to do with powers of concentration.

Now, being able to think about one chess move for hours - without your mind wandering, of course - would indicate concentration.

Some parents will sit their child in front of the television and remark at how their child has such an amazing attention span, since he/she can sit and watch the television for hours. What they don't understand is that engaging in an activity that constantly re-engages your attention (such as television, computer games, driving when it's difficult, etc.) doesn't require a long attention span or powers of concentration.

Perhaps you didn't really mean that long hours of DOOM and driving the motorhome implied good ability to concentrate, but it sounded like it.

Re:In regards to concentration.

[Skater]

You're telling me that driving for 8 or 10 hours doesn't require concentration? I'm guessing you've never spent a day on the road (or two or three) alone. I can think of a couple stretches of extremely boring highway where there's a strong temptation to just let your mind start daydreaming...and that's bad. The mind wanders, it requires concentration and discipline to bring it back to the road even when nothing is happening. If you wait for events to re-engage your attention to the road, it'll be too late when something goes wrong.

If you really believe driving doesn't require concentration, please stay off the roads; we have enough people out there too busy to think about driving.

You kind of touched a nerve: I take my driving VERY seriously, because it's something I enjoy. I think many people drive as if it's a series of unrelated events, but I see it as one long, smooth operation that requires constant analysis and an attention to details. :)

Besides - I can write documents, code, etc. for hours on end without a problem. I recently finished a project to scan and categorize all of my photographs (something like 70 rolls spanning 12 years) - even though I worked on it in chunks of a couple hours each, there's no way I ever would've finished that project without at least a reasonable ability to concentrate.

By the way, I can't think about a chess move for hours on end. That's not because I can't concentrate, it's because I'm just not interested and don't need to do it. I can concentrate when one (or both) of the above conditions are true, but chess? Nope. (I know how to play, but the game just doesn't interest me very much.)

Sorry

[QMO]

I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I didn't mean to imply that you can't concentrate, just that your examples didn't show it.

The way you described it the second time, driving does require concentration.
I also think that your example of writing for hours at at time is a good example.

Mod parent up

[PsiPsiStar]

The parent post makes an important point. Misdiagnosis in general, and psychological scapegoating in particular, is a huge problem in the modern medical industry. If you know what your problem is, you can research it and develop an understanding of the condition which is far better than what a doctor will explain to you in a hospital visit and treat yourself accordingly. Because of this, diagnosis is, arguably, the most important function of modern doctors.

And they often screw it up.