I’ve felt for long that I have some form of brain-damage which led me to google for results, as this vacuum in answers is driving me nuts.

When I wake up after a long sleep there’s this deep, degenerative feeling headache. I feel vulnerable outside as it virtually impossible to feel in control. Trying to focus on controlling myself often results in forgetting my footsteps, and I hit curbs and almost people. Sometimes my hands shake, but mostly when the brain feels very depressed. I walk aroud trying to hide the mess, and doing so takes away from walking straight. And concentraion and reaction are poor, that I’m worried about walking into people, which happens, and I don’t know what to say. There are no answers, since not even science knows, let alone ordinary folk.

Sometimes that deep headache leads to vomiting. I swear it’s that vomiting releases endorphins and is the body’s way of restoring mood somehow. It’s like you hit the rock bottom, emotionally, and the body reacts brutely to try to recouperate. Nothing else helps at that point that i know of.

When things are ‘better’, there’s mainly a dominant sad mood that makes it very difficult to interact with people. It feels as if the parts of the brain that generate joy have died. Thus the sad feeling doesn’t go away. And avoiding people more or less is a natural consequense, since it’s so far from normal that it can’t be ignored and people ask if your on drugs. Processing what they say is diffuclt. It’s as if there’s a face just staring at me, and I have to make a concerted effort to focus on the talking part of the ‘face’. Can’t simply date, having friends is challenging, etc. It leads to existential problems on top of a neurological degenerative mess. There’s no room for to deal with other problems on top, so your teeth and other health aspects take a toll, as there’s simply no energy to deal with them.

It’s fucked-up. There are no answers, even after years. I hate it. It’s just a naked existence, that I swear most people wouldn’t have survived. They’d likely kill themselves or big-time despaire after just 2 hours. I remember, being more fully experiencing, and trying to imagine something like this would’ve been almost impossible, it’d be just too off and uncomfortable to do. Only having hope keeps you going. But not hope alone, not without working toward something, but it often seems futile. It’s a joke.

Now that people begin to learn more about harnessing the power of neural regeneration then….is it likely that directing the birth and integration of new neurons in all major areas of the brain awaits in the somewhat near future? How much cognitive boost could occur by doing this?

The world is not as clean cut as merely punishment and crime, friend.

The difference was that Ghost in the Shell is actually VALID fiction for thinking about the future. It doesn’t prescribe a certain ending for the technology, it just introduces the possibilities, both bad and good.

And I think the difference will be that the poor helpless hopeless idiot kid will turn to a fictionalized world rather than the harsh reality, effectively sealing himself off. I think that the fiction will be that seductive.

And I honestly think that it’ll be easier for the government to just give these kids an IV, maybe give some limp pretense of trying to draw them out of their hikikomori-like trance, and shut them off from society forever. Sort of like putting old people in nursing homes because it’s too much trouble to try and fix them, but unethical to just let them die.

In fact, the idea of them being dangerous to society may make it easier for the other members to accept this state of affairs as well. All it’ll take is the equivalent of one columbine style attack and everyone will be sealing these dangerous kids off on their own. Hell, it may even become the de-facto method of dealing with troublesome kids. Send them off to Candy Land! Where they can dance and sing with the mushroom club and we don’t have to keep their little asses in line anymore.

Humanity is a sad species, becoming more and more selfish by the decade.

Hell, some tech or political change may happen a month from now making this scenario impossible, but it’s still fun to think about.

There will probably still be some depression, because some depression will definitely come from the ghost in the shell… And while I think that most people will just choose to live in an ultra-real world of warcraft world to get out of it, it’ll be better than our current reality, where anyone with a mental problem is going to start causing problems for everyone else, shooting up schools, starting fights.

I don’t think we’ll lose our humanity. It’ll enable us to be more human than ever before, in both bad and good ways.

Then again, that might suck more with all the lack of humanity and junk.

I don’t know what to think, so I’ll stop.

“The new theory also explains the other factors that are so often coincident with depression — memory problems, smell and taste sensory deficits, and basic bodily process problems with weight control, sex drive, and sleeping” How do we know that these spmtoms are not also the result of a “chemical imbalance” as opposed to brain damage?

We need to be cautious and remember what the word “theory” means.

When will the time come when drug manufacturers stop saying: “the actual mechanism regarding how this drug works is unknown?”

If someone can be in a coma for a long period of time and come out of it with out brain damage – there is the possibility that depression is not always a cause or result of brain damage. Also, if anyone had dementia or alzheimers – wouldn’t it stand to reason that the frusurating aspects of that disease would lead to depression?

The jury is still out. There is evidence of neurogenisis and so on and so on.

The one real frusturating aspect regarding treatment of depression lies in the descripiton of the action of an antidepressant. This is usually worded something to the effect of ” the mechanism of this medication is not truly known in how in interacts or treats the biochemical aspects of depression. I personally think that just one of the reasons for this is what incentive would a drug manufacurer have to further their study once the drug was approved. This goes in line with their disclaimer that ” beyond six months the effect of this drug is unknown” An incidence of depression lasts for at least 9 months and left untreated is likely to re-occur. However, why would a drug manufacturer concern themselves with that aspect.

One final note is: what is the effect on a person who takes “prozac” *drug used only for illustration) for over twenty years. NO studies have been done.

We talk about depression and brain damage and the possibility that antidepressants “may” assist in neuorgeneise.
What else might they do? Who is in charge of studying that aspect?

It would help if the medical profession (not the researchers, .. but run of the mill doctors) would bother differentiating justified unhappiness, which is probably an adaptive response and not any form of imbalance/damage/malformation, from clinical depression.

A good psychiatrist or psychologist will differentiate, and ask plenty of questions about what’s going on in your life before assuming clinical depression. Unfortunately, it’s like any other profession—plenty of cruddy and/or lazy doctors out there. It doesn’t help that a lot of general practitioners assume they know enough about psychiatry to prescribe psychotropic meds to people; they’re often the ones most guilty of handing out anti-depressants like candy. (How many general practitioners actually use the DSM when evaluating patients for depression?)

I remember hearing once that it was thought that rather than there simply being a physical disorder called clinical depression, or a physical disorder called bipolar, there are probably actually a number of similar (but slightly different) disorders. Part of the reason for thinking this is that different people respond differently to different medications. One person with bipolar might respond great to lithium, while someone else doesn’t do well on it and needs depakote or even carbamazepine. Some folks do all right on just that one anti-spasmodic, while others need several other medications to control other aspects of the illness.

And of course, there’s the fact that the combination of drug therapy and some sort of psychological therapy has been found to be twice as effective as either one alone.

If there are different varieties of clinical depression, then I find myself wondering if it’ll turn out that some are inborn while others follow a ‘damage’ model. Or perhaps the damage is caused by something genetic. After all, last I heard it sounded like researchers were pretty sure that several things like bipolar and ADD were largely genetic.

I have no idea how coherent this is, mind you, since it’s past my bedtime and I didn’t sleep well last night. :) Anyway, thanks for posting about this—it’s fascinating.

…but I probably won’t because life is meaningless and I’m no good.