(May 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm)Caecilian Wrote:(May 16, 2010 at 1:23 pm)John_S3V Wrote: One must keep in mind that the reasons for suicide might be impossible to understand from an observer's perspective, because sometimes it has to do with damage or improper functioning of the brain. Low serotonin levels can cause depression as well as fatigue. In some cases, even if some one's life seems perfectly satisfying to the outsider, the person living the life may not even be capable of enjoying it because of chemical imbalances in their brain.
Quite frankly, I think researching the mind and trying to determine how to make it run properly and most efficiently, which will in turn make people happy, is one of the most important endeavors humanity can pursue. Without the ability to feel happiness it's hard to find reason to live. Furthermore, such research could yield results that could increase the happiness of people already happy or mildly happy.
I couldn't agree more.
One of my closest friends killed herself around 12 years ago. Objectively she had everything to live for. She was beautiful, very smart and incredibly articulate. She was a documentary film-maker, and stuff that she made actually got shown on TV (Channel 4 mainly). But then she got clinically depressed, and ended up taking a massive overdose. I still miss her. Dominique Harvie RIP. If only they'd had a pill that could have helped you.
Psychiatry is maybe a century behind the rest of medicine in terms of what it understands and what it can do. Some conditions, such as mania, it can treat pretty effectively. Others, schizophrenia and depression for example, it is much less successful with. New medications are coming out all of the time, and the newer drugs tend to work better with fewer side effects when compared to the old ones. So there is progress.
But there really is a great deal that we don't know about the mind- for sure we don't know more than we know. For example: 'schizophrenia' is so badly understood that there is widespread disagreement over whether its a label for one underlying syndrome or many. Other phenomena, such as 'consciousness', 'intentionality', and 'mind' do not even have a generally accepted definition.
It's baffling to think that we could invest so much effort into our physical health and then more or less over look our mental health. The two go hand in hand. Without one the other decays. I have a cousin who suffers from schizophrenia. It just came out of nowhere and was ruining her life. Thankfully, they did find a medication that could help her out, but she still doesn't feel like herself when she's taking it. There's still so much to know about the human mind. My hat goes off to the neuro-scientists.
Come my brethren and feast upon one another! (S)He who triumps and has eaten us all will be blessed with the knowledge of all those with whom (s)he has consumed!
