Looks like I'm following up on last week's post. All because I read this article.
It mostly deals with schizophrenia and how people have treated it in the past 30 years. At first, they thought that people developed schizophrenia from a "refrigerator mom". A cold, uncaring mother who was never there.
Then, they realized that it's not the mother's fault. It's probably a chemical imbalance. So doctors gave out medication to calm nerves when really it just caused weight gain in people who already have issues with themselves.
Now, the pendulum has gone back. It's still not the mother's fault, but it is someone's fault. It seems that schizophrenia occurs more in homeless areas, in areas of abuse and missing fathers, and people simply screaming and accusing each other. It turns out that some of them can negotiate with the voices in their head to get them to stop.
I remember when my brother got diagnosed with autism. They also originally thought it came from a "refrigerator mom", but I still can't explain why Andrew has autism. There might really be a chemical imbalance or a digestion problem, but all the medicines we tried through the years have not worked. He's still a 22-year-old toddler who will never be independent.
As for me, they addressed the people who take Prozac, too. Would I be on Prozac had I simply kept going to my counselor and not to a psychiatrist? If I had finally figured out my anxieties at this time last year, would I need to be on any medication. I know I cannot go off of it cold turkey. That's the problem, these medications make you dependent and you never know what could have been. Did our environments influence Andrew and me? He has autism. I have had ADD, Tourette's, and now it's all combined into ADHD with a smidge of depression.
As far as I know, both my parents were very active in our lives and in our spiritual upbringing. But I also think, Dad entered medical school the year I entered kindergarten. He was gone a lot with school and studying. He would come home as much as possible and do something fun with us, but a lot of the time, he was gone. Two years before I started kindergarten, a sister died, and I soon started watching the Ninja Turtles (still don't regret that show, but it was a dark show). Did that somehow create a depression that made me forget my homework in 2nd grade which made teachers mad at me which made me nervous which made me start twitching and ticking? Is that what it was all along?
Do I still feel paranoid that people are going to leave my life or that someone is mad at me? Maybe that's why I get so into my friends. Praise God that I have found some that did not care and were patient with me. Is that why I try to correct everything that's wrong? Is that why I'm angry at the world?
All I know is that when I went to seminary and grew in Reformed faith that my obsessions and worries disappeared for a time. They did not recur until last year. Did I become uncertain and lost again?
And how does any of this explain Andrew? I don't know. God does send the rain on both the wicked and the just, and all people are inherently wicked, and that wickedness shows up in different sins that people will not acknowledge and try to call them disorders and use drugs. People would be so much more free mentally and financially if they just admitted that they have a sin problem and if the church would listen to them and try to rehabilitate them through accountability, if people would stop trying to be independent and rely on God's grace given through Jesus. How dare we not take in hurting and angry people when God has been so gracious to us?
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