I really believe that there is something biological in my head that isn't making the right kind of chemistry and I need to take a pill to keep things balanced. Just like a diabetic needs their insulin, people with mental illness need to keep their meds in check. There isn't the stigma with diabetics though. For some reason, it's ok for your pancreas to need help but if your brain needs help then your'e a 'nut case'. Stupid.
C
I'm also sorry to hear of your suffering, C. Your belief is also backed by science. In normal clinical depression, there's a huge amount of evidence that two neurotransmitters-- messengers between the thinkin cells in your brain-- are totally messed up. Noreprenephrine and dopamine are the putative problem molecules, as the science stands right now. Depression is a physiological, biochemical imbalance-- it's nothing wrong with the person's mind (by mind, I mean personality and stuff like that), it's all in the brain chemistry. That's a fact, not an opinion.
In the case of bipolar disorder, things are much more complicated. I'm actually in the middle of writing an extensive paper on the chemical basis for bipolar disorder. My inspiration for doing so is all the women in my family. Except me (and the odds of it staying that way are abysmally low) every woman in my family suffers from extreme bipolar. Right now, the best guess is that two enzymes in the brain are too active, and these enzymes are at the beginning of a giant cascade of signals... think of it like a domino affect. These enzymes are effected by dopamine and serotonin, similarly to clinical depression although the biological repercussions are vastly different.
Nether one of you are alone-- I know that 2.3 million Americans suffer from bipolar, and about 18.8 million adults are clinically depressed. Clearly it's not just "in your head"... so try to ignore the social stigma. It's encouraging to me that things in the scientific community are really changing-- even 10-15 years ago, these disease were exclusively the purview of psychologists. Now, chemists, biochemists, and medicinal chemists are all tackling the "how' and "why" questions. These disease don't have the stimga in science that the larger society has, and I hope this shift in mindset will eventually impact society as a whole. And, people are working on cures-- not just random treatments, but trying to find comprehensive cures. So don't lose hope.
