I mean, i heard of autoimune diaseases where the imune system is treating itself as a threat or viruses, bacteria or cancer and big organs diaseases, but a chemical imbalance seems unique and so different, why is this even possible?
Is the body producing to much dopamine?
A lot of things are possible but we don’t know exactly how or why.
How did life appear?
How do species evolve from one another?
What is consciousness?
Etc
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Chemical imbalance is just a hypothesis nothing more
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I’m pretty sure this concept got debunked more recently. I feel like its mostly a phrase non academics use to explain things they don’t understand.
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There may be changes to the brain during puberty, too much inflammation, heavy use of drugs in some cases, heavy use of alcohol, head injuries, family history etc etc.
Dopamine, serotonin, etc are chemicals. There might be organic hypersensitivity to the neurotransmittors.
There’s many other sources hosting similar articles (just search something like “is chemical imbalance real”)
Its a myth
Nobody can prove that
In psychosis maybe dopamine is high
Cos when people take meth or coke they get psychosis from high dopamine
But long term sz probably has nothing to do with higher dopamine.
And the dopamine antagonist meds are poison imo. So damaging to ones health.
I read there’s more dopamine than usual in one part of brain and less than usual in another.
I also read it may involve an unusual glutamate level.
From some scientific journals
But still, who knows
Jim Folk, the author of the article, does not believe in psychiatric medicine at all. His organization sells talk therapy. The article was reviewed by a nurse.
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Okay thanks for pointing that out.
But there are other articles out ther. I just picked that one because it was like the right sort of level of compehension for me (not super in depth but also not glossing over facts)
My circulation runs through my heart backwards to yours and everyone else. I was born like that. Stuff just happens.
Maybe you were talking about something similar re immune system?https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/ern.09.59?scroll=top&needAccess=true
The traditional view of chemical imbalance theroy is as others have stated incorrect.
The dopamine hypothesis was formed from the observation that early antipsychotics reduced symptoms. Then determining that the mechanism of action of APs was to block dopamine receptors. So while there is disrupted dopamine signalling and maybe even a chemical imbalance in certain brain regions. For example
negative symptoms are hypothetically linked to malfunctioning mesocortical circuits and may also involve mesolimbic regions such as
the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain’s reward circuitry and thus plays a role in motivation.
Negative symptoms are linked to low dopamine not high dopamine. So thinking of chemcial imbalance in too much or two little is incorrect. Futher it’s not really just dopamine that is inlvoved there is various neurotransmitters. Moreover there are brain abnormalities and disrupted brain signaling. Chemical imbalance is part of it but not as the pharmaceutical companies would have you understand it. Thinking in terms of chemical imbalance is erroneous.
I really like this video it proposes an alternative explanation.
If you think in these general terms you can apply the same concept. Psychosis is probably caused by over-activity of the brain, antipsychotics are sedatives so they slow down that brain activity correcting the issues with signalling. I’m not necessarily saying that is definitively what is happening but it does describe the action of antipsychotics more accurately then chemical imbalance. Using very blunt narratives of what is happening, this is a better explanation. You could probably come up with your own version which might be more accurate then mine. However replacing the chemical imbalance story with this kind of explanation is ultimately going to be more accurate if not less specific.