Re:Spain: Parliament passes law legalizing assisted suicide
by qwerty456127 on Friday March 19, 2021 @05:48PM
(#26518458)
I don't mean you can cure a depression easily this way. But you can switch it off temporarily and let the patient experience a totally different perspective for at least some moments. In many cases this may help a lot. Many people believe what they see is always what exists and what they feel is always what the situation is. Knowing (as a result of your own experience!) you can have drastically different feelings about the same reality depending on chemicals you ingest change a lot: you know your fear, anger or apathy don't represent the objective reality (nor your self) and you don't have to act the way they push you any more.
The idea that there is a biological 'switch' underlying depression is misleading. It is in a number of cases but it's only a small percentage.
The crux with depression (and mental health more generally) is that it's a vastly complex phenomenon [1] that we do not fully understand.
We are scoring wins in many battles (e.g. MDMA-assisted therapy) but we are still far away from winning the war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model