Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Hey guys.  I want to start by apologizing for not being in class Monday to present, I had several wisdom teeth that suddenly abscessed and had to be removed.  I want to touch on a few more ideas for my presentation today and maybe help remind us what I'll be discussing.

I want to touch on issues with mental illness in our society. This can be a difficult subject and i certainly I do not have definite answers; I hope that after presenting we could have more of a discussion rather than a Q and A.

I want to start by citing the CDC. Depression affects 1/10 adults in America.  CDC also states that those that are most likely to be depressed are:
  • persons 45-64 years of age
  • women
  • blacks, Hispanics, non-Hispanic persons of other races or multiple races
  • persons with less than a high school education
  • those previously married
  • individuals unable to work or unemployed
  • persons without health insurance coverage
What I don't really care for from this portion of CDC's research is that in some of these groups, tue diagnosis seems almost pigeonholed. It also does not discuss a major contributing factor that I believe is a important when making the desicion of using medications, the physiology of th disease. 

We all understand that there are chemical messengers that regulate action in our bodies. Illnesses like depression occur when we see a lack of certain messengers in the brain. This website has a good image of a PET scan from a patient suffering from depression and one who is not.  When discussing mental illness from the physiological point of view rather than a circumstance of one's environment than we must consider genetic passing, generations of mental illness. Another issue I will discuss is the issue surrounding diagnosing and the medicinal treatment of children with mental illness (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/antidepressants/MH00059)

These are just some thoughts I wanted to present upfront.

-Tim 

2 comments:

  1. Good, that'll be a timely follow-on to Austin's "over-medicalizing" report.

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  2. Really enjoyed your presentation. Clearly there are cases (such as your own) that "talk therapy" alone cannot ameliorate. I'm still wary of signaling a greater willingness to prescribe psychoactive medication to the general populace, though, given how many WOULD benefit from effective counseling but don't want to invest the time.

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