If you visit your cardiologist complaining of chest pain, your doctor may order a heart CT scan. If you go to your orthopedic surgeon after turning your ankle, you'll probably be in the x-ray room within minutes of arriving. Chronic headache? CAT scan. Knee trouble? MRI. Pregnancy complications? Ultrasound.
In almost every medical scenario, doctors claim to want to know what's going on. internal body.
So why, when we go to a psychiatrist complaining of negative thoughts, extreme anxiety, or unexplained sadness, are we immediately prescribed medication and sent home?
It's written by Dr. Daniel Amen, author, psychiatrist, and brain disease expert and founder of the Amen Clinic, a nationally recognized medical clinic that targets the roots of mental illness. It's a question that has puzzled one Dr. Daniel Amen for years.
Brother Robertson recently interviewed Dr. Amen about his unique, more holistic approach to mental health. What he reveals about mainstream mental health care is quite shocking.
Dr. Amen became an infantry medic in the Vietnam War when he was just 18 years old. However, he “didn't want to get shot”, so he went to work as an X-ray technician, during which time his “passion for medical imaging” was born.
“I fell in love with the only specialist who never saw the organs he treated,” he told Jace and Al.
Amen Clinic is trying to change that using something called “brain SPECT imaging.” This is a scan that examines “blood flow and activity'' and “brain function.''
What Dr. Amen has learned over the years in the field is that too many mental health problems are misdiagnosed, to the detriment of patients. For example, he remembers his first patient who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease after leaving the stove on and nearly burning down his house. However, a scan of her brain revealed that “she did not have Alzheimer's disease.” He offers her a different treatment plan to resolve the real problem and she “regains her memory.”
“In the United States (and indeed around the world), nearly all mental illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, are diagnosed based on symptom cluster diagnoses,” Dr. Amen says.
“You go to your GP…you tell the psychiatrist, the psychiatric nurse, what you're going through, what your family is doing, and they tell you that you don't have a biological disease “Oh, you have this, you have this,” he said, calling it “insane.”
“Depression may be caused by decreased thyroid function.”[living] A moldy environment,” or even in the aftermath of COVID-19, which Dr. Amen calls “an inflammatory bomb exploding in your emotional brain.”
Additionally, he added, “Mild traumatic brain injuries can ruin people's lives, but no one knows because no one is looking.”
Dr. Amen is not against medication when treating various mental health conditions, but it is not the first or only thing he considers.
“If I really think you have bipolar disorder, I would give you lithium or [lamotrigine]but I'm going to work hard to make your brain healthy,” he says.
To learn more about Dr. Amen's groundbreaking discoveries about the brain and how it works, watch the episode above.
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