A brief History of Invisible Illnesses
By Dr. Don | May 21st, 2009A brief History of Invisible Illnesses
What is an “invisible illness?” The latest definition entails a description of an illness that does not have many outward signs-people (and doctors) can look at you and think you are well.
Included would be fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, other chronic pain conditions multiple chemical sensitivity, MS, other, lupus and other auto-immune diseases. Certainly anxiety disorders, dysthymia and depression would be included.
If we look at depression and its’ history as an invisible illness we may find some hope for future awareness of other conditions.
Depression used to be looked at as a neurosis-a Freudian catch-all for less visible psychiatric illnesses than, say, schizophrenia or psychosis. Over time various, more specific terms were develop-depression, anxiety disorders, manic-depressive then bi-polar, and so on. As distinct entities were classified specific treatments developed. Anti-depressants for depression, anxiolytics for anxiety, and “mood-stabilizers” for bi-polar.
What is interesting for those of us with more recently named “invisible” illnesses is that as illnesses become classified they receive more attention from experts and, alas, pharmaceutical companies.
Medications for depression (not just “why do you hate your father?” questions ) came into use and progressed from “MAOs” to “tricyclics” to SSRIs to SNRIs. In the last group is Cymbalta.
From drug companies comes big bucks, and big bucks translate into research. Cymbalta was developed as a anti-depressant and even though we have known for years that anti-depressants can work on pain it was only when Cymbalta received it’s indication for FIBROMYALGIA that FMS (and with it CFS) really came out obscurity. (As witnessed by huge advertising campaigns).
With this came more articles in medical journals-just like what happened with depression.
Now, and this is important, THERE IS NO BLOOD TEST FOR DEPRESSION. Sound familiar anyone? Yet no doctor would say (or has said in many years) that depression doesn’t exist!!!
The research on depression has been on-going for many years.
The research on FMS, CFS et. al. is in it’s early stages. We can indeed hope for more rapid progress now that they have “hit the charts.”
Dr. Don
Post Script: I am not one to berate the pharmaceutical companies. The profit motive can be a positive one if it funds further research and advances. No system is perfect but I would rather have Cymbalta and the attention it has brought us than not.