Lysine and tryptophan are precursors to serotonin.

A diet lacking in beans, turkey and salmon may be the problem if your diagnosis of a serotonin imbalance was correct.

Whenever I fell depressed, I correct my diet and the depression is gone. You can't think straight if you don't eat right.

Flouride compounds are bad for your thyroid.

There may be a few, a handful, in either of those "professions" who are good at what they do, and who are sincerely interested in helping you.

But the vast majority of them are lazy, greedy, and callous parasites who prey on the tortured souls who come to them seeking help.

Psychologists favorite phrase: "I'm sorry, your time is up, pay the receptionist on the way out."

Psychiatrists favorite phrase: "Your brain chemistry is deficient in (you name it), I want you to get on this pill and stay on it for the rest of your life."

Be very wary of these legally-practicing QUACKS.

I read articles like this because they give me hope. My experience with my kids, their meds and my own mental health and medication issues have led me to the conclusion that the right meds make life better, but that like any consumer issue, one has to choose carefully. And what if you can't do that? How do you know?

Please don't criticize Salon for a headline that may be dramatic, but catch the eye of readers like myself, who have children with mental health issues. Those of us who fool around with these drugs always have to keep up with the same stuff the doctors keep up with, or we end up as unknowing victims. Most parents don't have the good humor about their chidren's inconsistencies that this article relates.

When my youngest daughter - a bright but defiant child - was small, all sorts of wrong prescriptions were suggested to us. She is now at a theraputic boarding school, being treated by a psychiatrist who seems to have found a drug that is beginning to make a shift, if not a dramatic change. It is confirming to know what perils you've been saved from by reading of the experiences of others.

What impressed me most about this article was not the issues with the drugs or the monetary kickbacks. It was not the amazing turn around made after the re-diagnosis.

What impressed me was that this young man has 4 committed and devoted parents all willing to look out for him and help him. This is a situation that many step-parents might shy away from or limit their contact with. It says so much that his divorced parents can still work together and coordinate efforts in order to do the best they can with what little information they have. That is what impressed me.

What a tough and scary situation to find yourself in, what an amazing effort you put forth to help someone in great need.

I have a nephew who's autistic and I hope this never happens to him. His mother's a GP so it might help. Never the less I'll keep this article in mind.

The story also shows how the pharmaceutical industry often has a negative influence on medical care.

While Freud was not always correct, it is wrong to speak of Freud as undermining the neurological science of psychology. He himself was a neurologist, and it was precisely this that drove him to his psychological studies. He knew the distinction between "mind" and "body" was false; he thought of mind as a physiological entity, but he was unable to study it physiologically because the tools we have now—tools that come from advances in physics and chemistry, not neuroscience—were simply not available.

Freud himself made many inroads into the physiological aspects of mind, bringing to light things such as conversion disorders (when an emotional problem leads to a different psychosomatic symptom), and the effect of childhood on mental development. Today, neuroscience is finding neurologial evidence of what Freud observed. For example, a traumatized child can grow up with an atrophied amygdala, and be prone to exactly the kind of conversion disorders Freud described.

While traditional, formal psychoanalysis is not the best version of therapy (just the first), "the talking cure" has been strongly validated through the exceptional success of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Our cogitations, you see, are physical activities in our brain. Just as an experienced mathematician or pianist uses a different area of the brain when doing math or playing piano than an inexperienced person, so we can develop other mental habits that are reflected neurologically.

That said, many have misunderstood his work and reified the "mental" system as somehow magically standing apart from the physical. The truth, that mental processes are every bit as physical as respiration or circulation, is taking a long time to trickle out into the field and the population at large. Freud is not the reason. Rather, this is a cultural misunderstanding, much of which stems from the Cartesian dualism most of the West still seems to believe. If you must lay blame, lay it at the feet of people like Descartes, who argued that the mind sat in the body like a visitor, rather than at the man who believed, like Brücke, his teacher, that the mind was a dynamic, physiological system, which we could understand and program to some extent with language.

I am shocked that the Dr's would be so stupid.

They tried to label my autism spectrum disorder(soon to be kicked out of special ed, yay!) kid ADD, because she wasn't able to pay attention at age 6. The environment was chaotic, I found. I had to keep saying, "That's not it..." She was using so much energy blocking out stimuli, she was blocking everything out.

People with autism often have atypical reactions to many kinds of drugs. Stimulants probably would have pushed her right over the edge. It is just so awful that the doctors didn't think of that. And the medication made him so much worse...and he's big. What a nightmare. (hugs)

Thank goodness that the field is filled with kind experts that are generous with their advice. Thank goodness Mayo is just down the road from her! I hope you sue those Dr.s if they were getting payola from the Drug companies. What a nightmare! Iatrogenic disease at it's worst.

I hope there is no permanent damage. Those anti psychotics can be nasty.