Brain scans are not based on a normal population, there is not enough data to support them yet, and a New York Times article from a few days ago covered this topic, saying that doctors admit you can't use them for diagnosing depression or other psychological disorders like ADHD, etc. The brain scan can be affected by whether the patient is sitting or lying. If you are not using an area of your brain, it will not light up as much, if you are, it will light up a lot. It is simple. So just because your brain scan is dark, doesn't mean you are depressed or have ADHD. It just means you aren't using it at the time. It doesn't mean you can't use it, just that you aren't. Depressed individuals do not have the inability to feel happy because of a brain malfunction, they are depressed due to circumstance, and doctors need to be real teachers and not just druggers. People recover not from having their minds blunted, but from creating positive outlooks, having love and interesting lives, and having others help them realize how to heal and cope.
If you want to use personal anecdotes as examples of proof that the drugs work, why don't you consider the 60% of people for whom the drug does not work, or the equal group of people in clinical trials for whom an active placebo worked just as well, and the many people who died because of "medication?" For example I have a relative who recently started taking antidepressants, has no insight whatsoever into what should really help, and has only gotten more depressed and more sad and more negative and pessimistic on the drug. But I am sure you wouldn't consider that proof that they don't work.
Some people try to use brain scans to diagnose and show evidence of improvement, but so many experts are admitting that you can't use brain scans to diagnose disorders other than parkinson's and other things like MS or alzheimer's which have a degenerative aspect, and the only other thing those are good for is finding tumors. I posted this in a previous message which was a quotation from a neuroscientist friend and you can also find it elsewhere. I think of brain scans as a lot like a thermal imaging scan of the body. You can't diagnose a psychological disorder on the basis of size of areas of the brain or which blood is flowing where. If a fat person had their body scanned, many organs would appear larger and hotter, but that doesn't make them healthier. A heart scan can show you where blood flows which is important, but only because you want to make sure the heart is not too big or full of blockages. You can't get down to a person's thoughts and behaviors and see what is going wrong based on an image of a brain. Psychology should be all about healing the spirit but instead people blame everything on a chemical imbalance that is not evident in any living human patient. The only chemical imbalances that can be treated are those that are evident from other areas of the body, i.e. hormones. Neurotransmitter targeting drugs affect the way the entire brain works, and incidentally they affect the body as well. Serotonin is key in development and health of smooth muscle tissue such as heart tissue, etc.
Last night I visited a very sad website called www.ritalindeath.com. I did not know that ritalin could kill you with long term use. This one was not a suicide as far as I can tell, it was just that ritalin ruined this boy's body.
Is your mom taking her antidepressant regularly? You're not supposed to start and stop it suddenly over and over, either take it every day or slowly cut it down and stop taking it. That is dangerous. I can't see why you would say she doesn't go through withdrawals if she hasn't stopped it before. Antidepressants have a longer half life than Ritalin so you don't go through daily withdrawal like you do with ritalin, which is cleared from the body in one day. To feel the withdrawal from an antidepressant you need to stop taking it for more than a day, and sometimes more than a few weeks before withdrawal sets in. All antidepressants are addictive in some sense, worse for some people than others, because all have withdrawal effects. They are similar to cocaine and LSD and PCP in what they do to your body.
When Tom Cruise gave his opinion about the drugging of America, he created a firestorm of controversy. Are we an overmedicated nation? Dave and Jill feel as if their 7-year-old son is holding them hostage in their own home. He's on three medications, but his uncontrollable fits of rage are destroying their marriage. Is this a real medical issue or a parenting problem? Then, two women with powerful personal stories debate the "Cruise controversy." They both think their opinion is right, but what does Dr. Phil think? Plus, an outraged father confronts his ex-wife and demands that she stop medicating their 9-year-old son. Talk about the show here.
