Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-16-2009

[andrewducker]

• Killings are lowest in 20 years
  Overall crime is down by 5% and violent crime has fallen by 6%, and gun crime has seen a 17% fall. Rape is up, as is burglary and mugging/picking pockets.
  (tags: crime UK)
• Ireland outlaws blasphemy
  Gah!
  (tags: ireland law religion blasphemy)
• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
  From the people that brought you Pride And Prejudice and Zombies...
  (tags: funny book JaneAusten)
• When people complain about needing a criminal records check before being allowed to work with children
  Get them to read this...
  (tags: Child_abuse children law UK crime)
• X-Men Universe Relationship Map
  Dashed line indicates one of the parties is from an Alternate Universe
  (tags: comics relationships funny comic xmen visualization)
• Just what is a big salary?
  Which tells me the figures on my poll are for people who are paid normal salaries - and doesn't include self-employed people (i.e. contractors and the like). Read the comments - and feel your brain melt!
  (tags: money statistics)
• Researchers use light to move physical objects
  A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a repulsive light force that can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.
  (tags: light physics science)
• The myth of the chemical cure
  A mental health expert talks about psychiatric drugs and what they really do. Hint - they don't fix you, they put you in an altered state that you may prefer to your natural one.
  (tags: depression bbc psychology drugs serotonin health)

Comments

Re: The myth of chemical cure.

[andrewducker]

Having taken the odd substance that alters personality, while I in no way believe that the mind is "static", I do believe that chemicals change the brain in some way that I'm not up to being pinned down on right now :->

If you think of the phase space of possible brain states as a nice simple circle for a moment, you might start off somewhere in the top right quadrant, and then, due to stress at work, you are currently somewhere in the bottom half of it, off to the left. By taking BrainBeWell pills you can move that state to the top half of it, off to the left.

You've been put into a different part of the phase space than you would have been without them, and possibly into a part of it that you would not enter without the aid of these drugs. Which isn't to say you _couldn't_ get there without drugs, just that it hasn't put you back into the area that you were before you started. It hasn't "fixed" the problem the stress caused, it's put you somewhere else in brain-space that you prefer to the place you'd ended up.

Some people might be happy with this. Others might want to work on the stress to the point where they can stop taking the drug and return to something like they were before it all started. They'll never be exactly the same person, but they will be someone they recognise more as themselves, and are happier being.

Re: The myth of chemical cure.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

I agree that psychiatric drugs can be a "sticking plaster" for mental health problems. I just think that the "altered state" analogy is a bit pants really.