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Just about everywhere we read, the numbers for mental illness among Americans is on the rise. Experts may blame this epidemic on the use of social media at the expense of face-to-face interactions. Some cite an uptick to lessening stigma associated with those seeking help. And still, others blame the current malaise to readily available fast foods that contribute to diabetes, heart disease, and depression.
Just look at the numbers among college students—our future leaders: Compared with 2009, the odds of a student having been diagnosed or treated for anxiety disorder in 2015 were 68 percent higher. Odds of diagnosis or treatment were up by 61 percent for panic attacks, 40 percent for ADHD and 34 percent for depression.
More than half of American doctors are burned out (i.e. depressed) and more likely to make medical mistakes. A poll asked nearly 6,700 clinic and hospital physicians about medical errors, workplace safety, and symptoms of workplace burnout, fatigue, depression and suicidal thoughts. Medical errors were related to upwards of 100,000 to 200,000 patient deaths every year.
And suicide among adolescents and teens between ages 10 and 17 was up 70 percent between 2006 and 2016, an indicator that mental illness may be related to incidents in the home, or fostered by a genetic propensity, long before one’s college and professional career.
Part of the problem for us as adults is that if we are among the 17 percent of women or 28 percent of men without a primary care physician, we’re unlikely to be referred for a mental illness diagnosis. Moreover, if we are referred, we’ll be handed a survey sheet about how we are feeling, self-reported symptoms upon which a mental diagnosis is formed.
The current state of the art for treating mental illness is that diagnoses are based on interpretations of symptoms, depending on the psychiatrist. Unreliable diagnoses often result in overmedication or an endless search for the right drug.
Then there’s the psychotherapist, who, regardless of symptoms, embraces evidence-based behavioral therapy. If the magic doesn’t work, it’s attributed to client resistance.
In a word, the current state of the art for improving mental health is not more effective, and in some cases less effective, than rituals practiced among some tribes, where healers use witchcraft and sorcery.
Researchers at UC San Francisco may be on track to change the diagnosis of anxiety and of depression with a biomarker. They have just identified a single brain frequency between the amygdala and hippocampus that consistently predicts increased anxiety and mood change. This signal becomes particularly active in people subject to high levels of anxiety, but not those without anxiety or mood issues.
This finding might not only serve as the first scientifically based measure for effectiveness of a particular intervention, but could reduce the millions, if not billions, of dollars needlessly spent on false hopes and quackery.
The UCSF finding of increased activity between the amygdala and hippocampus immediately before an anxiety attack suggests that those subject to high levels of anxiety and depression might be heavily influenced by recalling emotionally laden memories from childhood.
Freud may have had it right that intrapersonal conflict was at the root of anxieties and mood changes, with recognition and reconciliation of the past as a necessary outcome to liberate ourselves from unresolved emotionally-laden memories.
This post was co-published with PsychResilience.com
