[pachyderm]

I think this is a very balanced and thoughtful article about “chemical imbalance” as the cause of psychiatric illnesses:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archive...cal-imbalance/

[madisgram]

good article pachy.
i agree with the comment that meds don't fix everything. therapy along with meds has enabled me to rid myself or reduce symptoms caused by flawed learning during my childhood. these false beliefs fed into my depression and anxiety. i can think more rationally now having better coping skills.
as for the chemical imbalance term....i'm ok with whatever they term the cause of my bipolar/depressive. guess the researchers would like to better understand the causes. but i am just thankful that meds and therapy work for me!

The other article written and referred to by Dr. Pies entitled, Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the “Chemical Imbalance”, is also quite enlightening: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blog.../10168/1902106

Dr Pie concludes:

In short, we cannot afford to view our patients’ afflictions in the balkanized terms of “mental” vs. “physical”, “mind” vs. “body”, “psyche” vs. “soma”. Neither can we afford the luxury of supposing that only one type of treatment—medication or psychotherapy—will be effective for the illnesses we treat. On the contrary, the best available evidence suggests that each modality, or their synergistic combination, may be effective—depending on the specific illness. To be sure, as my colleague, Nassir Ghaemi MD, has cautioned, we must not be drawn into a haze of promiscuous eclecticism in our treatment; rather, we must be guided by well-designed studies an the best available evidence.6 Nonetheless, there is room in our work for both motives and molecules, poetry and pharmacology. The legend of the “chemical imbalance” should be consigned to the dust-bin of ill-informed and malicious caricatures. Psychiatry must now confront the mysteries and miseries of the brain-mind.

[Oxidopamine]

The term, "chemical imbalance" I think is often used, as mentioned, to give a simplistic answer to the patient. For example, if a patient wants to know why they are depressed, there are multiple answers that can be given but, "chemical imbalance" sums much of it up in two nice words. I've also seen ads for anti-depressants use the same words to explain why the medication works, as it is alleged to restore the chemical balance. The problem with it that I have is that it's a, "masked answer", in that it pretends to highlight the root cause but in reality, it doesn't.

Another problem I have with it is it suggests medications are the only answer. This however is false because psychotherapy alone has been shown to be just as if not more effective than medications alone. At first glance, this shouldn't occur because medications are meant to fix the imbalance, not simply talking. This isn't a universal statement because it only applies to certain mental disorders, such as depression and not to schizophrenia.

In sum, I think they're just buzz-words.