The End of Mental Illness: How Neuroscience Is Transforming Psychiatry and Helping Prevent or Reverse Mood and Anxiety Disorders, ADHD, Addictions, PTSD, Psychosis, Personality Disorders, and More.
Author(s): Daniel G. Amen.
Year: 2020.
Edition: First (1st), Illustrated Edition.
Publisher: Tyndale Momentum.
Type(s): Hardcover, Paperback, Audiobook, and Kindle.
Synopsis:
Though incidence of these conditions is skyrocketing, for the past four decades standard treatment hasn’t much changed, and success rates in treating them have barely improved, either. Meanwhile, the stigma of the “mental illness” label—damaging and devastating on its own—can often prevent sufferers from getting the help they need.
Brain specialist and bestselling author Dr. Daniel Amen is on the forefront of a new movement within medicine and related disciplines that aims to change all that. In The End of Mental Illness, Dr. Amen draws on the latest findings of neuroscience to challenge an outdated psychiatric paradigm and help readers take control and improve the health of their own brain, minimising or reversing conditions that may be preventing them from living a full and emotionally healthy life.
The End of Mental Illness will help you discover:
Why labeling someone as having a “mental illness” is not only inaccurate but harmful.
Why standard treatment may not have helped you or a loved one – and why diagnosing and treating you based on your symptoms alone so often misses the true cause of those symptoms and results in poor outcomes.
At least 100 simple things you can do yourself to heal your brain and prevent or reverse the problems that are making you feel sad, mad, or bad.
How to identify your “brain type” and what you can do to optimise your particular type.
Where to find the kind of health provider who understands and uses the new paradigm of brain health.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies.
Author(s): Rhena Branch and Rob Wilson, PhD.
Year: 2012.
Edition: Second (2nd).
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.
Synopsis:
Dozens of practical exercises and easy to perform techniques for banishing negative thoughts before they take hold.
Whether you are trying to overcome anxiety and depression, boost self-esteem, beat addiction, lose weight, or simply improve your outlook, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) offers a practical, sensible approach to mastering your thoughts and thinking constructively.
In this updated and expanded edition of the companion workbook to their bestselling Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies, professional therapists Rhena Branch and Rob Wilson show you, step-by-step, how to put the lessons provided in their book into practice. Inside you will find a huge number of hands-on exercises and techniques to help you remove roadblocks to change and regain control over your life.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies, Second Edition:
Develops the ideas and concepts that presented in the bestselling Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies, Second Edition and provides exercises to put those ideas into practice
Features a range of hands-on CBT exercises and techniques for beating anxiety or depression, boosting your self-esteem, losing weight, or simply improving your outlook on life
Retrain your thinking and your life with these simple, scientifically proven techniques! Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT for short, is often cited as the gold standard of psychotherapy. Its techniques allow you to identify the negative thought processes that hold you back and exchange them for new, productive ones that can change your life.
Increasingly popular among healthcare professionals, the CBT approach can be used by anyone to overcome common problems ranging from depression or anxiety to more complex disorders like OCD, PTSD and addiction. CBT can also be used to simply developing a healthier, more productive outlook on life.
This book shows you how you can easily incorporate the techniques of CBT into your day-to-day life and produce tangible results. You will learn how to take your negative thoughts to boot camp and retrain them, establishing new habits that tackle your toxic thoughts and retool your awareness, allowing you be free of the weight of past negative thinking biases.
Move on: take a fresh look at your past and maybe even overcome it.
Mellow out: relax yourself through techniques that reduce anger and stress Lighten up: read practical advice on healthy attitudes for living and ways to nourish optimism.
Look again: discover how to overcome low self-esteem and body image issues Whatever the issue, do not let your negative thoughts have the last say.
National PTSD Awareness Day is a day dedicated to creating awareness regarding PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). It is acknowledged annually on the 27th of June. The US Senate officially designated this day in 2010. In 2014 the Senate designated the whole month of June as PTSD Awareness Month.
In the US, 6.8% of adults will experience PTSD in their lifetimes with women twice as likely as men to experience it (10.4% to 5%) frequently as a result of sexual trauma. Veterans are another group highly likely to experience PTSD during their lives, with Vietnam War veterans at 30%, Gulf War veterans at 10%, and Iraq War veterans at 14%.
On this day, organisations that work with employees, consumers, and patients at risk for the condition work to get information about symptoms and treatments for it out to the public in the hopes that when more people know about the disease more people who suffer from it will get treatment. The US Department of Defence is one of the major organisations involved as June is full of days relating to the military.
You can find out more about raising PTSD awareness from the US Department of Veterans Affair’s National Centre for PTSD and PTSDUK.
Altered Modulation of Beta Band Oscillations During Memory Encoding Is Predictive of Lower Subsequent Recognition Performance in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Background
The researchers studied the relationship between electrophysiological markers of memory encoding, subsequent recognition performance, and severity of PTSD symptoms in service members with combat exposure (n = 40, age: 41.2 ± 7.2 years) and various levels of PTSD symptom severity assessed using the PTSD Check List for DSM V version (PCL-5).
Methods
Brain activity was recorded using magnetoencephalography during a serial presentation of 86 images of outdoor scenes that were studied by participants for an upcoming recognition test.
In a second session, the original images were shown intermixed with an equal number of novel images while participants performed the recognition task.
Results
Participants recognised 76.0% ± 12.1% of the original images and correctly categorised as novel 89.9% ± 7.0% of the novel images.
A negative correlation was present between PCL-5 scores and discrimination performance (Spearman rs = -0.38, p = 0.016). PCL-5 scores were also negatively correlated with the recognition accuracy for original images (rs = -0.37, p = 0.02).
Increases in theta and gamma power and decreases in alpha and beta power were observed over distributed brain networks during memory encoding.
Higher PCL-5 scores were associated with less suppression of beta band power in bilateral ventral and medial temporal regions and in the left orbitofrontal cortex.
These regions also showed positive correlations between the magnitude of suppression of beta power during encoding and subsequent recognition accuracy.
Conclusions
These findings indicate that the lower recognition performance in participants with greater PTSD symptom severity may be due in part to ineffective encoding reflected in altered modulation of beta band oscillatory activity.
Reference
Popescu, M., Popescu, E-A., DeGraba, T.J. & Hughes, J.D. (2020) Altered Modulation of Beta Band Oscillations During Memory Encoding Is Predictive of Lower Subsequent Recognition Performance in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. NeuroImage. Clinical. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.102154. Epub 2019 Dec 27.
A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Trauma-Related Nightmares in Active Duty Military Personnel.
Background
The aim of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the efficacy, credibility, and acceptability of Exposure, relaxation, and rescripting therapy for military service members and veterans (ERRT-M) in active duty military personnel with trauma-related nightmares.
Methods
Forty participants were randomised to either 5 sessions of ERRT-M or 5 weeks of minimal contact control (MCC) followed by ERRT-M. Assessments were completed at baseline, post-treatment/post-control, and 1-month follow-up.
Results
Differences between ERRT-M and control were generally medium in size for nightmare frequency (Cohen d = -0.53), nights with nightmares (d = -0.38), nightmare severity (d = -0.60), fear of sleep (d = -0.44), and symptoms of insomnia (d = -0.52), and depression (d = -0.51).
In the 38 participants who received ERRT-M, there were statistically significant, medium-sized decreases in nightmare frequency (d = -0.52), nights with nightmares (d = -0.50), nightmare severity (d = -0.55), fear of sleep (d = -0.48), and symptoms of insomnia (d = -0.59), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (d = -0.58) and depression (d = -0.59) from baseline to 1-month follow-up.
Participants generally endorsed medium to high ratings of treatment credibility and expectancy.
The treatment dropout rate (17.5%) was comparable to rates observed for similar treatments in civilians.
Conclusions
ERRT-M produced medium effect-size reductions in nightmares and several secondary outcomes including PTSD, depression, and insomnia.
Participants considered ERRT-M to be credible.
An adequately powered randomised clinical trial is needed to confirm findings and to compare ERRT-M to an active treatment control.
Reference
Pruiksma, K.E., Taylor, D.J., Mintz, J., Nicholson, K.L., Rodgers, M., Young-McCaughan, S., Hall-Clark, B.N., Fina, B.A., Dondanville, K.A., Cobos, B., Wardle-Pinkston, S., Litz, B.T., Roache, J.D., Perterson, A.L. & STRONG STAR Consortium. (2020) A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Trauma-Related Nightmares in Active Duty Military Personnel. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 16(1), pp.29-40. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.8116. Epub 2019 Nov 26.
Alterations in Sleep EEG Synchrony in Combat-Exposed Veterans With PTSD.
Background
The researchers assessed whether the synchrony between brain regions, analysed using electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded during sleep, is altered in subjects with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and whether the results are reproducible across consecutive nights and sub-populations of the study.
Methods
Seventy-eight combat-exposed veteran men with (n = 31) and without (n = 47) PTSD completed two consecutive laboratory nights of high-density EEG recordings. They computed a measure of synchrony for each EEG channel-pair across three sleep stages [rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM stages 2 and 3] and six frequency bands.
The researchers examined the median synchrony in nine region-of-interest (ROI) pairs consisting of six bilateral brain regions (left and right frontal, central, and parietal regions) for ten frequency-band and sleep-stage combinations.
To assess reproducibility, they used the first 47 consecutive subjects (18 with PTSD) for initial discovery and the remaining 31 subjects (13 with PTSD) for replication.
Results
In the discovery analysis, five alpha-band synchrony pairs during non-REM sleep were consistently larger in PTSD subjects compared to controls (effect sizes ranging from 0.52 to 1.44) across consecutive nights: two between the left-frontal and left-parietal ROIs, one between the left-central and left-parietal ROIs, and two across central and parietal bilateral ROIs.
These trends were preserved in the replication set.
Conclusions
PTSD subjects showed increased alpha-band synchrony during non-REM sleep in the left fronto-parietal, left centro-parietal, and inter-parietal brain regions.
Importantly, these trends were reproducible across consecutive nights and sub-populations. Thus, these alterations in alpha synchrony may be discriminatory of PTSD.
Reference
Laximinarayan, S., Wang, C., Ramakrishnan, S., Oyama, T., Cashmere, J.D., Germain, A. & Reifman, J. (2020) Alterations in Sleep EEG Synchrony in Combat-Exposed Veterans With PTSD. Sleep. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsaa006. Online ahead of print.
Identifying PTSD Symptom Typologies: A Latent Class Analysis.
Background
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterised by re-experiencing, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and arousal symptoms per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5).
While numerous symptom combinations are possible to meet diagnostic criteria, simplification of this heterogeneity of symptom presentations may have clinical utility.
Methods
In a nationally representative sample of American adults with lifetime DSM-5 PTSD diagnoses from the third wave of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (n = 2,365), the researchers used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify qualitatively distinct PTSD symptom typologies.
Subsequently, they used linear and logistic regressions to identify demographic, trauma-related, and psychiatric characteristics associated with membership in each class.
Results
In contrast to prior LCAs with DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria, fit indices for the present analyses of DSM-5 PTSD revealed a four-class solution to the data:
Dysphoric (23.8%);
Threat-Reactivity (26.1%);
High Symptom (33.7%); and
Low Symptom (16.3%).
Exploratory analyses revealed distinctions between classes in socioeconomic impairment, trauma exposure, comorbid diagnoses, and demographic characteristics.
Conclusions
Although the study is limited by its cross-sectional design (preventing analysis of temporal associations or causal pathways between covariates and latent classes), findings may support efforts to develop personalised medicine approaches to PTSD diagnosis and treatment.
Reference
Campbell, S.B., Trachik, B., Goldberg, S. & Simpson, T.L. (2020) Identifying PTSD Symptom Typologies: A Latent Class Analysis. Psychiatry Research. 285:112779. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112779. Epub 2020 Jan 23.
Let There Be Light (1946) – known to the US Army as PMF 5019 – is a documentary film directed by American filmmaker John Huston.
Intended to educate the public about posttraumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, the film’s unscripted presentation of mental disability led to Let There Be Light being suppressed by the US government; it was not released until the 1980’s.
As the US Army was demobilising near the end of World War II it had the task of reintegrating returning military veterans back into peacetime society.
An obstacle veterans faced was the stigma surrounding “shell shock” or “psychoneurosis”, the old terms for posttraumatic stress disorder.
To convince the public, and especially employers, that veterans being treated for battle-induced mental instability were completely normal after psychiatric treatment, on 25 June 1945, the Army Signal Corps tasked Major John Huston with producing the documentary The Returning Psychoneurotics.
Huston visited multiple Army hospitals on the East and West Coasts before deciding upon Mason General Hospital on Brentwood, Long Island. The reasons being that Mason General was the biggest mental health facility on the East Coast, the hospital was located near the Army motion picture production center at Astoria Studio in Queens, New York, and the doctors were very open and receptive to the filming and any psychiatric questions he had.
The new title that Huston gave the film, Let There Be Light, was a reference to Genesis 1:3 of the King James Version of the Bible. This was an allusion to the documentary revealing truths that were previously concealed as too frightening or shameful for acknowledgement.
Outline (Documentary)
The film begins with an introduction, stating that 20% of wartime casualties are of a psychiatric nature.
Veterans are transported from a medical ship to Mason General Hospital to be treated for mental conditions brought about by war.
A group of seventy-five US service members – recent combat veterans suffering from various “nervous conditions” including psychoneurosis, battle neurosis, conversion disorder, amnesia, severe stammering, and anxiety states – arrive at the facility. They are brought into a room and told by an admissions officer to not be alarmed by the cameras, which will make a photographic record of their progress.
Next are scenes of interviews between a doctor and some of the patients about their problems and circumstances leading to that point. Afterwards, various treatment methods are employed to cure them.
Treatments depicted include narcosynthesis, hypnosis, group psychotherapy, music therapy, and work therapy. One soldier who had amnesia was hypnotised to remember the trauma of the Japanese bombings on Okinawa and his life before then. Another is given an intravenous injection of sodium amytal to induce a hypnotic state, curing him of his mental inability to walk.
The treatments are followed by classes (designed to reintegrate patients into civilian life) and group therapy sessions. Therapists make a point of reassuring the patients that there is nothing to be ashamed of for receiving treatment for their mental conditions, and that civilians subjected to the same stresses would develop the same conditions.
At this point the documentary shifts the tone to a sense of normalcy, with the soldiers performing regular activities and complaining about everyday problems.
The film ends with a number of the featured patients participating in a ceremony in which they are discharged, not just from the hospital, but from military service, and returned to civilian life.
Production & Filming Details
Narrator(s): Walter Huston.
Director(s): John Huston.
Producer(s): John Huston and US Army Pictorial Service.
Writer(s): John Huston and Charles Kaufman.
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.
Cinematography: Stanley Cortez, John Doran, Lloyd Fromm, Joseph Jackman, and George Smith.
Editor(s): William H. Reynolds and Genre Fowler Jr.
Novel Pharmacological Targets for Combat PTSD-Metabolism, Inflammation, The Gut Microbiome, and Mitochondrial Dysfunction
Background
Current pharmacological treatments of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have limited efficacy.
Although the diagnosis is based on psychopathological criteria, it is frequently accompanied by somatic comorbidities and perhaps “accelerated biological ageing,” suggesting widespread physical concomitants.
Such physiological comorbidities may affect core PTSD symptoms but are rarely the focus of therapeutic trials.
Methods
To elucidate the potential involvement of metabolism, inflammation, and mitochondrial function in PTSD, the researchers integrate findings and mechanistic models from the DOD-sponsored “Systems Biology of PTSD Study” with previous data on these topics.
Results
Data implicate inter-linked dysregulations in metabolism, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and perhaps the gut microbiome in PTSD.
Several inadequately tested targets of pharmacological intervention are proposed, including insulin sensitisers, lipid regulators, anti-inflammatories, and mitochondrial biogenesis modulators.
Conclusions
Systemic pathologies that are intricately involved in brain functioning and behaviour may not only contribute to somatic comorbidities in PTSD, but may represent novel targets for treating core psychiatric symptoms.
Reference
Bersani, F.S., Mellon, S.H., Lindqvist, D., Kang, J.I., Rampersaud, R., Somvanshi, P.R., Doyle, F.J., Hammamieh, R., Jett, M., Yehuda, R., Marmar, C.R. & Wolkowitz, O.M. (2020) Novel Pharmacological Targets for Combat PTSD-Metabolism, Inflammation, The Gut Microbiome, and Mitochondrial Dysfunction
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