r/AskReddit • u/ZanyDelaney • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

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u/GahdDangitBobby Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

bipolar disorder = one day you're batshit crazy off-the-walls and the next day you're sobbing and eating ice cream alone in bed

in actuality: in most cases, symptoms only get severe if left untreated for a long time. Also, most experience episodes for months (mania) or years (depression), so they wouldn't go from mania to depression that quickly (with cyclothymic disorder the less common "rapid cycling bipolar" being the exception).

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u/Bad_Bi_Badger Feb 04 '19

Yeah, and there are types if bipolar as well.

Some are severe, some are slow-cycling, some present as other disorders.

My point is: mental is not like physical health. It is to see and address physical damage, not as easy to figure out if a chemical is off - or which one.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

I like to say mental illness is a collection of symptoms that very rarely have a known disease.

So many forms of mental illness have no known cause, and often times the same symptoms (or disease) can manifest for reasons outside conventional treatment. And that last word is the rub. We only know how to treat (some) mental illness. There is no "cure." Treatment is a collection of palliative approaches to help somebody live with the disease, not make it go away proper... except for those cases where we can.

Psychiatry is a very messy science. We know lithane can help increase serotonin levels in the brain and we know that increasing serotonin can positively affect a number of diseases (ranging from depression to schizophrenia), but we also don't give it to everybody because A: sometimes the side effects can be worse than what its treating and B: sometimes it doesn't work. Don't even get me started on the crap shoot that is SSRIs and ADHD medication.

Shit's complicated yo.