Tom's Crusade Against Psychiatry
though they were interchangeable words with the same meaning. They are not, but his mistake reveals that he does not truly know that much about psychiatry.
By contrast, Brooke Shields has written a book about her experience with depression. She was on Oprah recently, and used her experience to help others. Experts joined in to help explain the more medical aspects of her experience. After Brooke quit taking her meds, she became rather dangerous to herself and her baby, but happily, she got better when they were re-started them. Here again, we see more indirect evidence for those that don't believe that depression is really a treatable medical condition.
Now, as briefly as I can, I'll turn to the "direct" evidence. It is coming and will be found in genetics research. Both drug companies and universities around the world are feverishly working to figure out what is a very, very complex issue.
I'll break it down as best I can for readers who are unfamiliar with genetics. Your genes tell your body how to work. They define how you look, and how well your body functions. Despite how different we all look, we are 99.9% genetically alike. (Hard to believe, I know, but true!) This means that a very, very, very small bit of variation in the genes can make a very, very big difference between any two people. Of the 6 billion (yes billion) base pairs (the rungs on the ladder of the double helix - DNA structure) there are only 3 million, or 1 tenth of one percent that are responsible for the differences between any two people. Some of the differences are very small and are really only slight variations. Small difference can be located anywhere on a gene or within a cluster of genes. Sometimes these differences are relatively simple to understand such as in eye color--but oftentimes they are not. It is difficult to know exactly where on the genetic map to look for the genes responsible for any particular disease. It is difficult to know which variations don't cause any problems (diseases) and which ones do. Some of the variations that scientists are looking at are called SNPs (pronounced snips). The ultimate goal of SNP research is to use a blood test to predict if a patient will get better from a particular medicine and if they will have any serious side effects.
The first EVER success in
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