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| Pill Induced Psychosis |
One in five Americans over age 18 suffers from a diagnosable mental illness in any given year. That's upward of 40 million potential voters. So why have we heard virtually nothing about mental health care from either candidate during this campaign?
Just to provide a little context, according to the American Cancer Society's latest numbers, about 12 million Americans are living with some form of cancer; 400,000 Americans suffer from multiple sclerosis; 1 million from Parkinson's and 1.2 million are living with HIV/AIDS. So 40 million is a significant constituency of sick people. But mental illness isn't pretty and nobody wants to bring someone suffering with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia up to the podium at a political convention.
In 1988 when I graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, I had already had a major depressive episode. But I was a decade away from being properly diagnosed as bipolar. I had no idea how profoundly the illness would eventually affect my future, how disabling it would, at certain points, prove to be. At the time, psychiatrists knew very little about the illness. Even today, research into mental illness and the development of successful treatments lag far behind that of other diseases. Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, has said that in terms of mental illness "we are about where cancer was 35 or 40 years ago." We are still diagnosing by observing symptoms rather than by way of biomarkers." According to Insel, by the time severe symptoms show up, "the illness is already in Stage IV of its development and the brain has already been deeply impacted."
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50% of population have solitary nodule identifiable at autopsy... Patients with autoimmune thyroiditis tend to have symptoms that lead them to explore abusive and addictive behaviors to help deal with the devastating effects of this condition. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, extreme fatigue and weight gain can be very difficult to deal with. Alcohol is one outlet for such people as it is readily available and provides instant results when one is feeling down. The problem is of course an increasing need to drink regularly to deal with like symptoms. These people truly need help and can be led to full recovery. These are also the patients who are sent to a psychiatrist for medication specific to their symptoms. They end up on thyroid hormone and then antidepressants or anxiety meds which further impair thyroid and immune system function.
ReplyDeletehttp://drhedberg.com/2011/02/10/autoimmune-thyroid/