The Case for Self Regulation

This is a follow-up to my post this weekend about the nature of psychiatry. 

If psychiatry can make people happier, what’s the issue?

The future. If your brain is dependent on time-sensitive drugs to be happy, how can you possibly raise children without the same flaws.

If these mindsets are inherited, which I think they are, your kid will likely pick up this mindset, whether or not you’ve masked it with pharmaceutical drugs.

From an evolutionary standpoint, we were trending positive for thousands of years, naturally. It’s not all that complicated, crazy people aren’t suited to be heads of the household, so society would trend toward less crazy. It’s much more pleasant to be around people who aren’t depressed, bipolar, or whatever you call what plagues you.

Now you may have no idea what list of drugs it takes to keep your partner sane. And chances are, you don’t care. Because psychiatry has successfully pitched the chemical imbalance theory to the world. But if you dig a little deeper, you realize they have no idea what is going on. If your symptoms are improving, their job is done. But if the brain is reversible without medicine, then what does that say about the status of these subjects. Are they cured? Or have we found a way for them to continue without addressing their underlying issues?

The scariest thing of all: the nature of time in the human brain is not constant. So they don’t know how long it’s going to take to get in your system or how long it’s going to last. Chances are great that it’s going to vary, as your mind works in different capacities over the course of the day and the week. You notice the pill bottles will say take once daily, or something like that. But if the mind does not perceive time at all, much less at a constant rate, how will we stabilize anyone? Especially if the amount of the drug in your system declines over time. 

So when time doesn’t matter, how do you tell people when to take their pills? They must self regulate. They must be taught to identify unhealthy thought patterns and make appropriate adjustments in real time. Unless they plan on living the same day with the same amount of stress, internally and externally every day, they must self diagnose. It’s not complicated. You eat when you get hungry. You sleep when you get tired. You [insert regulating behavior here] when you get [insert mental health abnormality].