View topic - A Theory About Mental Health
I was having a discussion with my husband today and one thing he brought up was a topic in a geology class he had taken in college in which it was brought up the amount of Prozac in drinking water in Dallas because of the numbers of people on Prozac urinating the drug into our water after taking it.
When I was a teenager, I suffered from acute depression, anxiety, etc. due to being raped as a child. Prozac was one of the drugs they put me on. From experience I can tell you that one of the side effects of Prozac (And any of the other drugs they prescribed to me) is that if you miss one dose after you start taking it and get it in your system than your depression, anxiety, whatever will be FAR worse after that. Messing with hormones and the chemical balance of your brain can have very dire consequences.
So then I started thinking about the number of drugs out there and the numbers of people taking them. Compounding that is the number of anti-depressant aid drugs out there that you take WITH the anti-depressants. Inevitably, all those chemicals we take into our bodies are going to be eliminated right back out into the water supply.
It seems like the number of people that can control their mental states is decreasing. Clinical depression, anxiety, etc. is on the rise. What if ALL of them are a mis-diagnosis? What if the problem is the drugs in our water supply? People in America on average take 33% of their calories from drinks. Few of us drink water and even when we do, many prefer bottled water over tap water. Obviously our water intake from regular water supplies is intermittent and not regular.
With all the drugs in the water, is it possible that intermittent drinking of regular tap water will cause symptoms that can be mis-diagnosed? What do you think?
(As a side note, please bear in mind this is probably only part of the answer. The other part I'm sure has mostly to do with diet and the foods we do and don't eat. I think true mental illness is extremely rare, that we're having a variety of symptoms arise resembling it due to diet and water, as listed above.)
When I was a teenager, I suffered from acute depression, anxiety, etc. due to being raped as a child. Prozac was one of the drugs they put me on. From experience I can tell you that one of the side effects of Prozac (And any of the other drugs they prescribed to me) is that if you miss one dose after you start taking it and get it in your system than your depression, anxiety, whatever will be FAR worse after that. Messing with hormones and the chemical balance of your brain can have very dire consequences.
So then I started thinking about the number of drugs out there and the numbers of people taking them. Compounding that is the number of anti-depressant aid drugs out there that you take WITH the anti-depressants. Inevitably, all those chemicals we take into our bodies are going to be eliminated right back out into the water supply.
It seems like the number of people that can control their mental states is decreasing. Clinical depression, anxiety, etc. is on the rise. What if ALL of them are a mis-diagnosis? What if the problem is the drugs in our water supply? People in America on average take 33% of their calories from drinks. Few of us drink water and even when we do, many prefer bottled water over tap water. Obviously our water intake from regular water supplies is intermittent and not regular.
With all the drugs in the water, is it possible that intermittent drinking of regular tap water will cause symptoms that can be mis-diagnosed? What do you think?
(As a side note, please bear in mind this is probably only part of the answer. The other part I'm sure has mostly to do with diet and the foods we do and don't eat. I think true mental illness is extremely rare, that we're having a variety of symptoms arise resembling it due to diet and water, as listed above.)
Quote
The amount of any type of drug you could intake while drinking tap water, which goes through extreme amounts of filtration, is negligible and therefore has no effect on the human body.
I've never been afraid of the wildest fights, not afraid of dying
But now I want off this ride 'cause you're scaring me and I don't like where we're going
And therein lies the question. Problem is, who's actually doing the research to determine such?
A great example I can think of happened recently here in the DFW area, I'm not sure if it made national news or not but there was a chemical plant out in Waxahachie Texas that set fire. Well the EPA came out and kept assuring everyone that there were no dangerous chemicals left in the town despite the horrid stench popping up everywhere and the fact that all the citizens were getting horribly sick. Then all of a sudden they discover that every single fish in every single water source in Waxahachie were dead and now all of a sudden they need to re-examine all the water supplies. Saying that the amount of drugs in the water supply is negligible could be stemming from a 'professional' that decided it wasn't worth his time to actually measure the amount in water because it just seemed to absurd to test it.
There's also the question of how old that data is where that statement stems from. By 2008 it was found that anti-depressant use among Americans had risen over 400% (and that was before they really took off on starting people on a regimen of taking several anti-depressants at once). More than 11% of the population right now uses anti-depressants and the numbers are likely to continue to rise. You'd really have to look at samples from this period of time, I'd say within the last two or three years, to really be accurate on whether or not there's significant amounts of drugs in the water.
In other words I'd want to see hard data proving there's not significant portions of anti-depressants in our water that's not out of date, because I'm not just going to take it on someone's word. (We might also question exactly how much is 'negligible') Granted, I don't have the data in front of me either for the levels of Prozac in the Dallas area's drinking water so I'm blowing smoke a bit here as well, but it is interesting to theorize.
A great example I can think of happened recently here in the DFW area, I'm not sure if it made national news or not but there was a chemical plant out in Waxahachie Texas that set fire. Well the EPA came out and kept assuring everyone that there were no dangerous chemicals left in the town despite the horrid stench popping up everywhere and the fact that all the citizens were getting horribly sick. Then all of a sudden they discover that every single fish in every single water source in Waxahachie were dead and now all of a sudden they need to re-examine all the water supplies. Saying that the amount of drugs in the water supply is negligible could be stemming from a 'professional' that decided it wasn't worth his time to actually measure the amount in water because it just seemed to absurd to test it.
There's also the question of how old that data is where that statement stems from. By 2008 it was found that anti-depressant use among Americans had risen over 400% (and that was before they really took off on starting people on a regimen of taking several anti-depressants at once). More than 11% of the population right now uses anti-depressants and the numbers are likely to continue to rise. You'd really have to look at samples from this period of time, I'd say within the last two or three years, to really be accurate on whether or not there's significant amounts of drugs in the water.
In other words I'd want to see hard data proving there's not significant portions of anti-depressants in our water that's not out of date, because I'm not just going to take it on someone's word. (We might also question exactly how much is 'negligible') Granted, I don't have the data in front of me either for the levels of Prozac in the Dallas area's drinking water so I'm blowing smoke a bit here as well, but it is interesting to theorize.
Well from my experience with refugees and those who come from war torn nations, or those persecuted and had their families killed, or in human trafficking, which most of my family have been involved in, they show signs of depression and PTSD with the exception of suicide but they aren't depressed and are some of the happiest people and function well after adjustment. Psychologists and counsellors in the field have told me they don't really bother applying the 'Western criterias' since they'd be prescribing medicine left and right to those who don't really need it.
The numbers have seem to risen in all Western nations which clean drinking water though I don't really think it's a correlation. I lived in one of the most depressed towns in Australia with roughly 10-30 suicides a year in a community of 5000 people and they don't even bother filtering their water since it's all from the rain (and even still brown) and not many take drugs for their depression.
The numbers have seem to risen in all Western nations which clean drinking water though I don't really think it's a correlation. I lived in one of the most depressed towns in Australia with roughly 10-30 suicides a year in a community of 5000 people and they don't even bother filtering their water since it's all from the rain (and even still brown) and not many take drugs for their depression.
DeviantArt Gallery
lateralus es helica wrote:And therein lies the question. Problem is, who's actually doing the research to determine such?
A great example I can think of happened recently here in the DFW area, I'm not sure if it made national news or not but there was a chemical plant out in Waxahachie Texas that set fire. Well the EPA came out and kept assuring everyone that there were no dangerous chemicals left in the town despite the horrid stench popping up everywhere and the fact that all the citizens were getting horribly sick. Then all of a sudden they discover that every single fish in every single water source in Waxahachie were dead and now all of a sudden they need to re-examine all the water supplies. Saying that the amount of drugs in the water supply is negligible could be stemming from a 'professional' that decided it wasn't worth his time to actually measure the amount in water because it just seemed to absurd to test it.
There's also the question of how old that data is where that statement stems from. By 2008 it was found that anti-depressant use among Americans had risen over 400% (and that was before they really took off on starting people on a regimen of taking several anti-depressants at once). More than 11% of the population right now uses anti-depressants and the numbers are likely to continue to rise. You'd really have to look at samples from this period of time, I'd say within the last two or three years, to really be accurate on whether or not there's significant amounts of drugs in the water.
In other words I'd want to see hard data proving there's not significant portions of anti-depressants in our water that's not out of date, because I'm not just going to take it on someone's word. (We might also question exactly how much is 'negligible') Granted, I don't have the data in front of me either for the levels of Prozac in the Dallas area's drinking water so I'm blowing smoke a bit here as well, but it is interesting to theorize.
I have seen no proof of it, it is just common sense to me. You take this tiny pill, and have someone's body filter it -- already, most of the drug is being used. It then comes out in sterile urine into about 2 gallons of water. Then that person will go take a shower that uses about 30 gallons of water (and that's with an eco friendly showerhead). Now say there are two people living in that house and only one of them is on medication, the medication that may be left over is diluted even more, then it enters a system and mixes with all of the other water that is not medicated and dilutes further. There are significantly more people not on antidepressants than there are people that are, and even less of them are on high dosages. Take into consideration the amount the body ends up using and converts into other chemicals.
I can put a tablespoon of salt into a cup of water. Then I can mix it with 60000 gallons of fresh water. I guarantee nobody will be able to taste the salt. Point being, the medication gets diluted to safe levels just with the normal sewer process, sans filtration.
I've never been afraid of the wildest fights, not afraid of dying
But now I want off this ride 'cause you're scaring me and I don't like where we're going
More people with clinical depression are surviving because awareness is rising and people are getting help instead of killing themselves or becoming so antisocial they never have children. Also as far as genetic clinical depression/anxiety, the gene for a bum seratonin transporter is becoming more and more common. This is the primary cause of chronic depression.
As a sufferer of chronic depression, which I have dealt with for basically my entire life, as well as other mental disorders, I really, really doubt this form of depression has anything to do with water or anything other than genetics.
Acute depression caused by water again seems terribly unlikely, as the amounts of medication you need to "accidentally" ingest to get any symptoms would require you to drink so much water you would die from it. Even if there is 10mg/gallon of water (which is absolutely ridiculous, you wouldn't even get this much if you drank someone's piss directly), you'd have to drink at least two gallons to reach the lower end dosage of prozac, which is 20mg, A DAY (and many take it twice a day). If you drink two gallons of water a day, you will die from hyponatremia regardless of the medication. Even one gallon is excessive, the most water I've ever drank in a day was around 3 liters while I was working a 12 hour shift, and that's less than a gallon. Unless everyone with acute depression caused by no obvious source is a crazy health nut and drinks way too much water all the time and miss a few days, I see no reason to think that drinking a glass or two every once in a while is going to cause mental health problems.
As a sufferer of chronic depression, which I have dealt with for basically my entire life, as well as other mental disorders, I really, really doubt this form of depression has anything to do with water or anything other than genetics.
Acute depression caused by water again seems terribly unlikely, as the amounts of medication you need to "accidentally" ingest to get any symptoms would require you to drink so much water you would die from it. Even if there is 10mg/gallon of water (which is absolutely ridiculous, you wouldn't even get this much if you drank someone's piss directly), you'd have to drink at least two gallons to reach the lower end dosage of prozac, which is 20mg, A DAY (and many take it twice a day). If you drink two gallons of water a day, you will die from hyponatremia regardless of the medication. Even one gallon is excessive, the most water I've ever drank in a day was around 3 liters while I was working a 12 hour shift, and that's less than a gallon. Unless everyone with acute depression caused by no obvious source is a crazy health nut and drinks way too much water all the time and miss a few days, I see no reason to think that drinking a glass or two every once in a while is going to cause mental health problems.
I'm not a criminal, not a role model, not a born leader I'm a tough act to follow.
Drew and I have been together for over a year now~
I could see this being true. For example, a while back there was a "What medication do you take thread?", don't know if its still around, but I saw that almost every single person answered anti-depressants, and people who didn't take any were the minority by far.
Most people tend to blame the depression on the economy [and teenage hormonal imbalance], but it would be nice for somebody to test this theory. Perhaps you could write to your state senator about it.
Most people tend to blame the depression on the economy [and teenage hormonal imbalance], but it would be nice for somebody to test this theory. Perhaps you could write to your state senator about it.
@juicelizard
Juice Lizard is my gaia user.
This is all really intriguing, though I do know that our water is heavily filtered before it ever gets bottled. There would be a lot of red tape to pass through the FDA if it was not cleaned properly.
Xerxies wrote:Not everyone has situational depression who takes antidepressants. Many of us were born this way.
Agreed.
I also must disagree that "true mental illness is rare." You're entitled to your opinion, but while some actual mental health professionals would say that it's possible that there's "something in the water," not a single one would say that it's the main (or only) thing to blame for mental illness. I can practically guarantee that.
Oh, one more thing. If your theory is true, then why were there LOADS of people living with depression and other illnesses BEFORE drugs to treat these conditions were introduced? When you consider that, the water theory simply doesn't hold up. It is clearly not, as you suggest, a series of diet-and-environment-related symptoms that mimic "true mental illness."
I was more talking about tap water than bottled water but alas, just a theory.
But that always irks me, the whole ad absurdium principle to testing such things. In this case, the idea that we shouldn't test for drugs in water because it's absurd to do so. If it is absurd that any significant portion of drugs are in the water, then why not do simple tests and make them publicly available to silence such a theory? I didn't take the idea from anyone else but I doubt I'm the first to wonder such a thing. This was also not a theory about the core of all mental illness, just a theory about one possible cause of symptoms of mental illness if not mental illness itself. It's not the core cause by any means.
But once again I'm not convinced that diet while we're at it doesn't have anything to do with depression. Let's consider that the high income countries are often fueled by high fat, high sugar diets. Americans of course we need no explanation on that point. Lower income countries tend to eat less processed foods and hence less fats and sugars. So consider this:
Based on a study done by the World Health Organization. We can also go into how more and more cases of depression are showing up in younger generations than older generations and look at changes in food production over the years as well, such as the introduction of hormones to cows and the fact that majority of processed foods come from genetically modified plants.
I'm interested in asking the questions that ARE considered absurd because it seems to me absurd to dismiss any possibility when it comes to our health and well being. I also refuse to take the FDA on their word alone. For instance currently we have a ton of people refusing to eat anything with high fructose corn syrup. So instead of doing long-term studies on HFCS to ease people's fears, the FDA is instead trying to TRICK people by changing the name of it to 'corn sugar'.
I could go on and on about this subject. Why exactly does it seem so absurd that what we're putting into our bodies could potentially be a cause of depression or other mental illness? Do you even know what's actually going in there or do you just take the companies that produce your food or filter your water on their word? Do you know how your food is grown? How it gets processed?
But that always irks me, the whole ad absurdium principle to testing such things. In this case, the idea that we shouldn't test for drugs in water because it's absurd to do so. If it is absurd that any significant portion of drugs are in the water, then why not do simple tests and make them publicly available to silence such a theory? I didn't take the idea from anyone else but I doubt I'm the first to wonder such a thing. This was also not a theory about the core of all mental illness, just a theory about one possible cause of symptoms of mental illness if not mental illness itself. It's not the core cause by any means.
But once again I'm not convinced that diet while we're at it doesn't have anything to do with depression. Let's consider that the high income countries are often fueled by high fat, high sugar diets. Americans of course we need no explanation on that point. Lower income countries tend to eat less processed foods and hence less fats and sugars. So consider this:
The proportion of people who have ever had an episode of clinical depression in their lifetime is 15% in the high-income nations and 11% in lower-income countries, the study estimates.
France (21%) and the United States (19%) had the highest rates, while China (6.5%) and Mexico (8%) had the lowest.
Based on a study done by the World Health Organization. We can also go into how more and more cases of depression are showing up in younger generations than older generations and look at changes in food production over the years as well, such as the introduction of hormones to cows and the fact that majority of processed foods come from genetically modified plants.
I'm interested in asking the questions that ARE considered absurd because it seems to me absurd to dismiss any possibility when it comes to our health and well being. I also refuse to take the FDA on their word alone. For instance currently we have a ton of people refusing to eat anything with high fructose corn syrup. So instead of doing long-term studies on HFCS to ease people's fears, the FDA is instead trying to TRICK people by changing the name of it to 'corn sugar'.
I could go on and on about this subject. Why exactly does it seem so absurd that what we're putting into our bodies could potentially be a cause of depression or other mental illness? Do you even know what's actually going in there or do you just take the companies that produce your food or filter your water on their word? Do you know how your food is grown? How it gets processed?
What I find absurd is the theory that mainly (or only) food/water is to blame for mental illness. I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could be a contributing factor, however small. But to claim that it is the main cause and, as you said in your original post, that "true mental illness is rare" is completely absurd, imo. If you can provide statistics, data, articles, ANYTHING to prove that the statement is even the slightest bit true/grounded in fact, I'll happily read your sources. But that phrase is what's bothering me the most.
The obvious answer with the first-world countries having a higher rate of depression is that people in third-world countries have bigger problems than depression and doctors typically live hundreds of miles away. People aren't going to go unless something life-threatening has happened like a limb got lopped off.
Ignoring that, it makes more sense to consider cultural values as a source of depression (think what money means to us as Americans as opposed to what it means for people in third-world countries. We need a lot more to be "happy") rather than the water supply. People in third-world countries typically value family and tradition as their main sources of happiness, while in first-world countries material wealth, education, and popularity take the front seat.
Ignoring that, it makes more sense to consider cultural values as a source of depression (think what money means to us as Americans as opposed to what it means for people in third-world countries. We need a lot more to be "happy") rather than the water supply. People in third-world countries typically value family and tradition as their main sources of happiness, while in first-world countries material wealth, education, and popularity take the front seat.
I'm not a criminal, not a role model, not a born leader I'm a tough act to follow.
Drew and I have been together for over a year now~
I think that desperation and being ridiculously occupied to the point you can't even stop to think of your depression results in the occurrence of lower number in poorer countries as well and inefficient measurement methods as well as cross cultural criteria to ascertain these things.
From personal experience coming from a rural family 2nd world family barely surviving, you get up in the morning, work hard all day, come back home, sleep and repeat. My grandmother, the day after she gave birth she was in the fields doing heavy lifting, and she had 10 kids. My mother was also sold into prostitution as a child and didn't really feel depressed. For both of them it wasn't until their life became stable and they had some free time that their depression hit them. My mother was even admitted into a mental hospital for it.
I've also noted this in my experience with those from Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds with similar stories and theories, all stating that they have more time compared to not having any time to be depressed when they were going through hardships where their life depended on it.
From personal experience coming from a rural family 2nd world family barely surviving, you get up in the morning, work hard all day, come back home, sleep and repeat. My grandmother, the day after she gave birth she was in the fields doing heavy lifting, and she had 10 kids. My mother was also sold into prostitution as a child and didn't really feel depressed. For both of them it wasn't until their life became stable and they had some free time that their depression hit them. My mother was even admitted into a mental hospital for it.
I've also noted this in my experience with those from Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds with similar stories and theories, all stating that they have more time compared to not having any time to be depressed when they were going through hardships where their life depended on it.
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Statutory Grape wrote:What I find absurd is the theory that mainly (or only) food/water is to blame for mental illness. I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could be a contributing factor, however small. But to claim that it is the main cause and, as you said in your original post, that "true mental illness is rare" is completely absurd, imo. If you can provide statistics, data, articles, ANYTHING to prove that the statement is even the slightest bit true/grounded in fact, I'll happily read your sources. But that phrase is what's bothering me the most.
I never said it was a main cause, just one of the possible causes so I'll give you that fair enough. I think this was all a matter of miscommunication.
Perhaps though I should have explained what I had in mind with 'true mental illness' whereas the actual symptoms are not caused by circumstance. Someone mentioned here that most depressed people are just born that way and that doesn't seem right to me at all. Sometimes it's cultural values that can do it. Living in a war torn country can do it. I still stick to an extremely poor diet can do it as well. (Not to mention poor diet can often lead to obesity, which also makes people depressed.)
How many times can you get a depressed person and have them say that there are absolutely no triggers? That life's peachy keen and beautiful but they feel like crap for no reason whatsoever? There's always a "Well my job expects this of me" or "I don't have the life I want while everyone else has everything" or "My father raped me" or "I was thrown in jail by my government for standing up for what is right". That's what I meant by 'true mental illness' being rare.