chorlton wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 12:45 pm Good, however many have depression because of their natural brain chemistry so there isn't an underlying problem to cure.

We all know that when you take selfies, you take 30 pictures, throw away the 29 where you look bleary-eyed or double-chinned, and pick out the best one to be your Tinder profile picture. It turned out that the drug companies – who fund almost all the research into these drugs – were taking this approach to studying chemical antidepressants. They would fund huge numbers of studies, throw away all the ones that suggested the drugs had very limited effects, and then only release the ones that showed success. To give one example: in one trial, the drug was given to 245 patients, but the drug company published the results for only 27 of them. Those 27 patients happened to be the ones the drug seemed to work for. Suddenly, Professor Kirsch realised that the 70% figure couldn’t be right.

It turns out that between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year. I had thought that I was freakish for remaining depressed while on these drugs. In fact, Kirsch explained to me in Massachusetts, I was totally typical. These drugs are having a positive effect for some people – but they clearly can’t be the main solution for the majority of us, because we’re still depressed even when we take them. At the moment, we offer depressed people a menu with only one option on it. I certainly don’t want to take anything off the menu – but I realised, as I spent time with him, that we would have to expand the menu.

This led Professor Kirsch to ask a more basic question, one he was surprised to be asking. How do we know depression is even caused by low serotonin at all? When he began to dig, it turned out that the evidence was strikingly shaky. Professor Andrew Scull of Princeton, writing in the Lancet, explained that attributing depression to spontaneously low serotonin is “deeply misleading and unscientific”. Dr David Healy told me: “There was never any basis for it, ever. It was just marketing copy.”

tightenupvolume1 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:39 pm Jamie?

charlie

taabarang wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:37 pm "If any are feeling bad, really bad, just get help. Call or contact a professional organization you trust..."

Whom would you suggest in Cambodia, especially one who is fluent in both Khmer and English?

He asked them to explain, and they told him about a rice farmer they knew whose left leg was blown off by a landmine. He was fitted with a new limb, but he felt constantly anxious about the future, and was filled with despair. The doctors sat with him, and talked through his troubles. They realised that even with his new artificial limb, his old job—working in the rice paddies—was leaving him constantly stressed and in physical pain, and that was making him want to just stop living. So they had an idea. They believed that if he became a dairy farmer, he could live differently. So they bought him a cow. In the months and years that followed, his life changed. His depression—which had been profound—went away. “You see, doctor,” they told him, the cow was an “antidepressant”.

Anchor Moy wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 9:19 am

He asked them to explain, and they told him about a rice farmer they knew whose left leg was blown off by a landmine. He was fitted with a new limb, but he felt constantly anxious about the future, and was filled with despair. The doctors sat with him, and talked through his troubles. They realised that even with his new artificial limb, his old job—working in the rice paddies—was leaving him constantly stressed and in physical pain, and that was making him want to just stop living. So they had an idea. They believed that if he became a dairy farmer, he could live differently. So they bought him a cow. In the months and years that followed, his life changed. His depression—which had been profound—went away. “You see, doctor,” they told him, the cow was an “antidepressant”.

A handicapped rice farmer is extremely low on the social scale. By giving him a cow, they improved his social status - and therefore, improved prospects for his whole family. He will earn more money, but there's more to it than that. As a cow-owner, he has more respect from the village.(Owning one cow does not make you a dairy farmer, but its sure as hell a step up from being a rice farmer who has to rent a buffalo from his neighbours.) Status being what it is here, that could be a powerful anti-depressant.

There's even a little NGO who does this - donates cows to poor Cambodians - Cows for Cambodia. It's an Aussie thing.
http://www.cowsforcambodia.com/info/joi ... -cambodia/

pczz wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 9:43 am
Alternatively you can wind up causing social unrest in the village. I do some charity work in 1 village but it is causing a ruckus because the people who are not dirt poor think its unfair that poor people are getting al the help. So if you give1 cow, you better have a whole herd to hand out to maintain social harmony in the village

Anchor Moy wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 10:26 am

pczz wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 9:43 am
Alternatively you can wind up causing social unrest in the village. I do some charity work in 1 village but it is causing a ruckus because the people who are not dirt poor think its unfair that poor people are getting al the help. So if you give1 cow, you better have a whole herd to hand out to maintain social harmony in the village

Yeah totally agree. However, as an individual remedy for improving someone's mental state, I imagine the gift of a cow would be quite efficient, and the person concerned would rather be hated than pitied.
But, as you say, this also raises questions about treating the individual in a communal society, or upsetting village eco-systems.
I don't know anything about the cow NGO and how it works, or how they choose who gets a cow and who doesn't. But I can see it could get tricky.
It would probably be better if the cows were sold rather than given - pay later or something.

taabarang wrote:"If any are feeling bad, really bad, just get help. Call or contact a professional organization you trust..."

Whom would you suggest in Cambodia, especially one who is fluent in both Khmer and English?

epidemiks wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 12:28 pm

taabarang wrote:"If any are feeling bad, really bad, just get help. Call or contact a professional organization you trust..."

Whom would you suggest in Cambodia, especially one who is fluent in both Khmer and English?

TPO Cambodia, Sunrise Mental Clinic, Indigo International