Neuroimaging and Psychiatry, a new evolution of medication.
Have you ever felt depressed or suicidal constantly without knowing the reason why till the part where you start to hate and blame your existence for it? Tempted to see a psychiatrist in order to find a way out and doubting whether it will be beneficial? You overthink the fact that whether seeing a psychiatrist will actually help you or only make you realize that it will only drown you back to your own problems, wasting money and time.
Well, Daniel Gregory Amen an American psychiatrist and a brain disorder specialist has the answer! Medical imaging and psychological treatment plays hand in hand. Single photon emission computed tomography scan(SPECT) that is capable of tracing blood flow within brain and the regions of brain activity, to study how your brain works, SPECT is a tool to acquire information to help psychiatrist understand and treat their patients better.
It seems like only Psychiatrist treats patients with only assumptions rather than looking at the organ they’re treating but with SPECT, tailored by the suitable ways of diagnosis judging from the information gathered by SPECT itself, a more accurate assumption on ways for treatment can be obtained.
Imagine two patients, X and Y with different brains battling depression, X has a low activity in the brain and Y has a high activity in the brain , both of them went to a psychiatrist for a cure. How does a psychiatrist treat both of them? Depression itself is not a single or simple disorders in the brain as it roots from multiple types. Do they use the same method for both of them or a different approach for a treatment? As mentioned by Daniel Amen,
“Treatment needs to be tailored to individual brains not clusters of symptoms” (Amen, 2013).
Undiagnosed brain injuries without the awareness of their owners are the main cause of temper problems, anxiety, insomnia, alcohol abuse, ADHD, suicide, homelessness and even panic attacks which will leave an aftermath for the future generation. If you would like to read more about Daniel Amen’s NFL players study on their brains:
1. http://www.danielplan.com/healthyhabits/nflstudy/
2. http://danielplan.com/blogs/dp/what-we-can-learn-from-dr-amens-study-of-nfl-players-brains/
If you can change people’s brains, you definitely can change people’s lives and also the future generation.
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