I think there is something to be said for enviromental factors bringing out a genetic predispostion.

This drum needs re-banging now more than ever. It's certainly true in my experience, for generations down the line.

Environment, smoking, genetics, birth months, age of fathers at conception, let's bring on the list.
No answers. Russian roulette with meds and guesses.
This is why the 21st Century is failing the mental health world.
Is anyone else completely outraged that the same indignities patients(friends, mothers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandparents etc)dealt with in the 1950's still apply to 2006?
If you are not outraged, you should be.
Get in the papers and on the news.
5 second bites here and there add up.
It's like a good budget.
People hear eventually.
Do not ever think, for one minute that 30 seconds of your story does not count.
Money in the bank.
Silence is what keeps us all under the rug.

I know it feels this way Gwen. Be strong, you can rise above it. I promise.~stephany

Gosh Philip, this post of yours has left me with some hurt feelings, your blog means a lot to me, you know that, right, and you want us to share our truth here, so I'm back and will just say for now that the trauma model of mental illness is very much alive, though I realize it's considered bullshit by some.

It's worth asking who considers the trauma model bullshit, and what interests are served in its devaluation. I spent over 20 years in therapy, with an emphasis on working through an abusive history so undeniable, documented and concrete that there was never any question of what the therapeutic approach would be. We did trauma, by god, it's about grief, day in and day out but I know it's what I needed to come alive and I do praise my therapists for knowing where we had to go. They were all mainstream, Rogerian humanistic treaters, and evidently a dying breed.

Today it saddens me to know of so many people, and I do, who grew up in similar conditions I did, who get psychopharm shoved down their throats, labeled with a personality disorder and taught CBT error correction as the solution to their psychological problems, and no one to tell them these problems are ordinary and intelligible consequence of growing up horrified. It's utter authoritarian garbage, amounting to re-victimization of a guilt-ridden and docile population of trauma survivors.

My treatment was not anything like what is gaining ground today, and because I am still officially mentally ill I often personally bump up against the new paradigm, and when that happens I rebel. When I seek social services today and am stigmatized, labeled, and grilled on medication compliance I stop everything and analyze the dynamic, protest the adversarial set-up and language that demeans my personal agency and denies my human dignity. Therapy taught me how to do that. It's an abomination that anything less would be happening in the name of mental help.

But it does and it has to stop. If not for 22 years of currently unfashionable psychotherapy I'd have no other orientation and leg to stand on, as coming generations will have no such experiential reference point. But, as your post indicates the trauma model is not quite yet in the dumpster, as the current "bio-psycho-social" buzzword speaks to the need for inclusion. There is lip service at least, but bullshit's probably the right word, little clinical practice and even less resident training in anything but the "bio" postulations, which, remain merely postulations, well, sweet Christ on a muffin top is no one concerned that we've come to this.

i am going to say one thing. Life is crappy. Ive walked so many blocks with so many reasons i should be down for the count...but what I want to say to make us all laugh..I love Muffin tops.
I even own a muffin top pan to make muffin tops on their own!
We are here. Oh we all have stories.
Let us smile and eat the top off of a freaking muffin top on Saturday morning and smile, that were victorious.
I am not making fun of anything, I am dead ass real.
Your words are eloquent 'flawed'.
One day at a time.
I pick blueberries for those tops. I have to admit when I had my enormous garden, I would wake up early on summer mornings and eat the bluberries (damn brain cant spell and think)
before my kids woke up.
Now I moved, and go to a U-pick.
How odd is this post?
I take small things to get me thru big things.
The phrase muffin tops reminded me that life can be good. We can, do and are able to rise above a lot. Dont give up.
Take care~Stephany

I have to say one more thing as usual.
I have every environmental reason to be fucked up and I am not.
Controversial issues and topics are the only way we can problem solve and find solutions.
That being said, this is why so many theories are out there.
No one has answers, and it is up to each individual to get through the day the best we can: knowing one thing that is true:
We are all the same.
We are all the same.
Some people take great lengths never to admit it.
There is no perfect.No normal.
We are all human beings.
Let human kindness and compassion rule.
I go here and there with my posts as you all can read.
hard days I may be negative.
good days I am a dreamer.
I am one person.
It's all there, and so are you.
We all count, are worthy, are wonderful.
Dont forget it, if its the last thing I ever type.

Suicide attempts linked to the menstrual cycle
16 June 2006

Psychological Medicine 2006; 36: 901–12

Attempted suicide appears to be more common at specific times in a woman's menstrual cycle, UK researchers have found.

In a review of 44 published studies of suicidal behavior, Kate Saunders (Warneford Hospital, Oxford) and Keith Hawton (Oxford University) found an association between aspects of the menstrual cycle, particularly those when estrogen levels are low, and non-fatal suicidal behavior.

The studies analyzed included 13 pertaining to suicide, two to both attempted and completed suicide, 23 to suicide attempts, three to suicide attempts in women suffering form premenstrual syndrome (PMS), three to suicidal ideation, and two to repetitive self-harming behaviors.

The researchers note that a variety of methodologies were used in these studies and no firm conclusions could be drawn.

However, there was some evidence to suggest that suicide attempts were associated with the menstrual cycle and were potentially more common during the first week of the cycle, when estrogen levels are relatively low. "Interaction between estrogen and the serotonergic system may provide a possible mechanism," the researchers say.

Indeed, the correlation between menstrual cycle and suicidal behavior appeared to be strongest in women with PMS. And serotonin reuptake inhibitors have proved effective in reducing behavioral and psychological symptoms in these women.

I am just adding this to the discussion per no where else to type it.
There just are no definitive answers.
We are all trying to figure it out together.

Just another take on this subject. As a teen and young 20 something, I lived in the psych dept at my University. Took every class possible, sociology included, skipping general requirements and gaining approval from Profs.to enter upper level classes to get every thing learned as much as possible, then picked it apart. This was my way of doing that psycho-therapy. Self-taught and fought my way into being who I am now.I never wanted anyone invading my thought process. If I saw a therapist, theyre gonna have to think like me, and the 2 I did see in my life have no way of keeping up with my out of box thinking...tossed that therapy idea out a long time ago. Im pretty sure environment or parenting doesnt 'make' us anything, mental health wise. It can prevent us from becoming the best we can be or it can help us realize its all part of an end result, and its up to us to sew that quilt.
I do believe in trauma affecting us, and I do believe it is real, many of us survive it.Some cant.
I also see pychiatrists unwilling to allow trauma into their small-minded pharma-based treatment for patients. Psychiatrists in general need to see the whole person they are treating. You know what pisses me off? here's my honest word of the day:
I did come from a really traumatic background, and I am here, standing, have a lot of insight, and know I am a survivor, cause I survived a lot of crap, and you'd never know it if you met me.
My daughter had no trauma in her life, until she got tossed into the mental health hospital wards as a now legal adult.
The psychiatrists dont ask themselves if she may have been traumatized by this, thus her being mute for 17 days after being in an adult ward per her 18th b day...instead, they grill ME.
They scrutinize me. Hell.
Don't you love it. Then they pharma her brain and leave out the rest. This pharma-no-therapy-except-bead-bracelet-making-coloring-book- mentality of psych hospitals is what leaves people drugged up and confused, and discharged without therapy to even discuss what the hell may have happened to them in the pscyh wards, or how it felt to be there.
Indignities of this world.
--Flawed--I am glad you are able to stand up for yourself.
The word dignity is the word of the day.
I've used it many times and demanded it many times for my daughter who lives in a psych hosp right now.
It is such an undignified existence. I have met so many people along the way and reminded them they were dealing with a human being, not 'just another psych patient'.
In the end, I hope those people remember me and my daughter, the day they are treated without dignity.

Well, Namaste dagnabbit. To survival with dignity. I just think it's a big step forward that psychiatry uses this "bio-psycho-social" model in its theories now and I think we should hold them to this standard.

Of course on one hand it's laughable, their efforts to capture the totality of me, "bio-psycho-social layer cake?" Um, keep trying honey.

Would it be asking too much for modern psychiatry to incorporate notions of "soul" in their pedagogy? Sadly yes, and here's the punchline, that's what "psyche" means, in Greek; "soul" ha ha ha. How our poor misguided soul doctors have gone astray. I blame psychopharm! And psychiatry's step-child status, no soul doctors them, they are neuroscientists! They will be taken seriously, whatever the cost.
It's all careerism.
For me to poop on.

Doctors have souls?
"bio-psycho-social layer cake"
Makes me think of the scene from "One Fine Day" where George Clooney (I think)says he has a 'dark chocolate layer'.
Food analogies get me everytime.
Cheers, to survival with dignity. Shit I want that on a tee shirt.