Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Suicide is an Autoimmune Disease

The title of this article is, "Suicide is an autoimmune disease". In truth I can't say for sure if 'Suicide' is a disease or the principal symptom of the underlying auto immune disease. What is imminently clear is that is an autoimmune phenomena.
It is seen in a wide variety of mental illness and mental illness associated with physical illness. Suicide has been reported with Thought Disorders like Schizophrenia, Addictive Disorders like Alcoholism, Mood Disorders, both unipolar and bipolar, personality disorders, especially borderline and sometimes in adjustment disorders.
What is clear is that it is not conceptualized as an autoimmune disease phenomena in general yet it is imminently clear that it is highly consistent with autoimmune phenomena seen in genetic and acquired immune disorder.
To this end I would propose that psychological, sociological and especially pharmacalogical therapies be developed along these lines. With respect to the latter there has been use of prednisone in the treatment of mental illness but not specifically looking at suicidal behaviour, thought and speech. Certainly the increasing variety of medications used in the treatment of autoimmune disease warrant a trial of therapy along the lines of Star D trials as adjunctive medications in relationship to suicidally as it arises in mental illness.


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