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krosania's picture

Individual differences

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of individual differences, and I'm wondering if the difference is not in the effects of treatment, but in the initial "disorders" themselves. A case of depression can look vastly different from one individual to the next, as can OCD and bipolar disorder. I doubt if any two people ever have the exact same disfunction going on in their brains. Therefore it makes sense that the same dose of the same drug is not going to have the same effect in two different people with supposedly the same disorder. The advantage of CBT is that it treats the detailed effects of whatever is going on neurologically, and addresses the person's experience rather then their neurochemistry. That being said, I am still not that surprised that CBT doesn't work for everyone because people have vastly different views and attitudes about what is means to have a mental disorder and to undergo psychotherapeutic treatment. Many people do not have the time, or desire, to really commit themselves to getting better. I think that both CBT and pharmacotherapy have individual differences in treatment effectiveness for very different reasons.

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