Comments: Is There A Gene For Skepticism?
I agree. There is not enough advancement in the care of this illness; esp considering it's been around quite some time. I am personally disgusted at the lack of advances taken to create a fine-tuned medication-therapy program to enhance the lives of mental health sufferers in general.
Once my daughter landed a bed at Children's hospital while completely psychotic, they came in with the entire genetics lab. Though it could feel comforting, (false hope)it was touted as "ruling out" everything possible to find that elusive reason, as to why she was psychotic.
Though med trialed 13 meds, genetics testing for every possible syndrome that came along with psychosis as a side note: no more answers than we had previous to all of that testing, head measuring and interviewing of family members.My head actually measures into a "reg flag area" for size of skull and mental health link.
The family all became paranoid for a day measuring our heads, and noting that one has a big head vs. another.
Served up a nice dose of skepticism, and false hope.
If we had found a gene amiss, or some genetic factor as to "why" my daughter or (myself and other kids for that matter)was/is the way she is:
Still need to treat it successfully.
That's the key to the box of elusive stability:
Get to the bottom of it and get on with better medications and real life ways to deal with mental illness.
I fear that I will not see it get better in my lifetime, and I used to hope for a cure by the time my daughter was 20. She is almost 19 now, and that hope just ran out.
The genetics doc was the most grounded of all docs I have met. She had a good dose of optimism all the while keeping my feet on the ground not wanting to bring false hope to the table, she always reminded me, if she found a genetic answer, my daughter was still who she was "presenting" as a case. Basically, there was not a lot of hope in the genetics tests, due to the fact that there are inadequate medications and treatment for her symtoms.
I was told by one doctor my daughter appeared to him as a "morph" of many things wrong.
Once you start entering the why's and how's and all of that you can lose your mind trying to figure it out. I hope researchers realize real people need real answers. Now. Not in the future.
Posted by Stephany at October 31, 2006 10:44 AM