Change Your Brain Every Day - How Mental Illness Treatment has Changed Throughout History

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

This episode of the podcast continues our special edition series from the Brain Health Revolution Challenge. Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen discuss the hidden “evil ruler” in our society that pushes unhealthy habits on us, the historical evolution of psychiatric treatment, where it’s going in the future, and why eliminating the stigma of mental illness is so vital to our society right now.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you

and we hope that you will join us in the challenge. So this book, The End of Mental Illness, please pre-order it. It's available March 3rd, butness, please pre-order it. It's available March 3rd. But the more you pre-order it, the more excitement it'll get on it. And we have all sorts of gifts for you if you do. But I dedicated this book. And you actually dedicated your new book that you're working on.

I just finished The Rough Draft today. Yeah, to these kids. Amelie, who's 10, and Alizé, who's 15. Why? They have a family history that's horrific for mental health issues. Multiple suicides, schizophrenia, drug abuse, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, addictions, criminal behavior. But as we often talk about, genes only load the gun. It's what happens to you that pulls the trigger. And unfortunately for them, they were raised in chaos with parents who struggled with addiction,

domestic violence, and depression. In addition, they had multiple moves, multiple schools. Life was unpredictable, to say the least. And then about four years ago, they were taken from their mother by Child Protective Services and placed into foster care where yet more traumas occurred. And so knowing this, it's very clear that these kids are at extremely high risk for mental health issues. It's amazing how good these kids are. The end of mental illness is our blueprint

to end mental illness in Alizé and Amelie and in their children and grandchildren. And with the program, we're pretty excited. The girls are happy. We spent the weekend with them. They're A students. They they're a students they're social they're no longer addicted to hot cheetos um that was an issue do you remember alizé would like oh no she used to go so she's a little hustler that one she used to go to school and she'd buy

as many bags as she could with her allowance out of the vending machine and then she'd sell them for double. She's a drug dealer. What are you doing? We love her. No, she's amazing. We hope she stopped that. She's amazing. I mean, she's an honor student.

It's like crazy. And what we're doing with this program is putting their bodies in a healing environment. Because when little girls are born, they're actually born with all of the eggs they will ever have, which start to develop inside a growing fetus at about five months old. So about five months old is the eggs, the genetic material for the grandbabies, if you just think about this. And so our goal is to end the cycle of mental health challenges. And that's what this course, that's what this book, The End of Mental Illness, is all about. And this week, we're going to talk a bit about assessing your brain. But I want to give you some context for it. And in The End of mental illness, I have this great writing device that I like called, if I was an evil ruler, how would I increase the incidence of mental illness? And there's the angel of death. If I was an evil ruler, how would I increase the incidence

of mental illness? And after this course, you're going to see it happen all around you. And then I thought, well, if I was a good ruler, how would I decrease the incidence of mental illness? And here, our symbol is Tana, because mothers are the health leaders in the family. And even though people come to Amen Clinic, 60% of them are male, but 70% of the people who call are mothers. They're people concerned about themselves, their children, and their spouse. Yes, I know. I've seen your brain. A lot.

Yes. Yes, I know. I've seen your brain. A lot. And so we're going to talk about strategy. So for example, if I was an evil ruler, I'd create addictive social media apps that make everyone else's life look amazing. And by contrast, yours sucks. And you actually on the podcast, you gave a great example. Yeah. So I, I mean, I know this information and I think I'm pretty immune to it just because I know it. And I rarely scroll through social media because I just, I think it's ridiculous and it's a waste of my time. But because I was Christmas shopping, I hate the mall more than life itself. Like I just hate, hate going to the mall, especially. I know we have like the opposite thing going on. I like going shopping and I like browsing. I like walking in the mall. No online shopping was the best thing that ever came along so I can avoid the mall completely during the holidays. And so I was

online shopping and all of a sudden I clicked on something on Instagram and I found myself going down this rabbit hole and being drawn to, you know, looking at scrolling, doing the thing I never do. And I came across someone who I know she's my age. She's another health leader. And I'm like, within five minutes, I felt terrible about myself. I'm like, why does she look so good? Why does she look like that? She's my age. How come she looks like that and I look like that? And then I started spinning. And I caught myself. Thank God I caught myself.

And I'm like, imagine. I mean, I'm my age and I have the skill. And we do this for a living. So kids who don't have that opportunity, these teenagers don't have a shot. You know, they're just struggling so much with this information. I mean, this ability to be able to control their emotions and how they feel about themselves and their self-esteem when they're on social media all day. Yeah. No, I'm actually working on a new project, uh, called your brain is always listening about the bright dragons from the past that breathe fire on your emotional centers and the inferior

or flawed dragon. And we see, women see flaws. You look in the mirror and you see how cute you are. I look in the mirror and you're like, how do you keep your hands off of me? I look in the mirror and I'm like, oh, I have a new wrinkle today. You know what I mean? How do you keep your hands off of me? It's really challenging, actually.

Yeah. If I was a good ruler, moving on, I'd create a nationwide brain health campaign. And I would have it in schools, in churches, in businesses, everywhere people gather. We're actually doing a new program with the Newport Beach Police Department. Over six months, we're planting brain health among our police officers. Why? Because they're basically our heroes. And they have so much trauma. The big NFL study, we've scanned and treated 300 NFL players.

High levels of damage. 80% of them get better when they follow what we ask you to do. We've scanned and treated 300 NFL players, high levels of damage. 80% of them get better when they follow what we ask you to do. If you follow what I ask you to do, you're going to feel better. But I realize football players are entertainers where firefighters and first responders and police officers, they're heroes. And the number of trauma that they experience. And you need them to work. And they have double the risk of suicide than the general population. So create a nationwide brain health campaign.

You're part of that. That's why we're doing this six-week challenge and giving away all these prizes, because we want you to stay with us. All right, step number one. In the end of mental illness, we need to get rid of the term mental illness and call these things what they really are, which is brain health issues that steal your mind. The term mental illness insidiously stains everyone diagnosed, making them less likely to seek help. And you know this is true. No one is shamed for cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Likewise, no one should be shamed

for bipolar disorder, depression, panic disorders, PTSD, and schizophrenia. Yet, if we do not lower stigma for these brain health issues, many more people will suffer and die. One of the things that frustrates me is because this is absolutely true, but what's worse than that? The one thing that's worse than the stigma around it is when people do go get help and the treatment fails and they get blamed for it not working. Do you have an example? Yeah, me. So my grandmother. Like every person watching, I guarantee you know someone-

Now let's be clear. Tana was not one of my patients. Oh no, this is in my 20s. But so many people I know have experienced this where they go to the doctor because they're not, something's not right. They get treatment. And when it doesn't work, there's something wrong with them. It's not because the treatment failed.

And that makes people even less likely to seek help and more angry at the psychiatric, just the industry in general. It's demoralizing. You go and you trust someone and they basically make diagnoses without any biological data. Every 14 minutes in this country, someone commits suicide. It is the second leading cause of death among young people. And it's getting worse. There was a nine-year-old a few miles from us that committed suicide a few weeks ago. It was just terrible.

A nine-year-old. Suicide has increased 33% since 1999. This is a Center for Disease Control statistic, but cancer has declined 27%. Why? We're working on the wrong paradigm. Mental illness places emphasis on your psyche or your mind, which is vague and hard to define, when our brain imaging work has clearly shown these are brain health issues that steal your mind. Meet Jared. And some of you came on earlier. We actually rolled Jared's story, and his mom, Christine, talked about it. He was diagnosed with ADHD in preschool.

He was hyperactive, restless, impulsive. He had no friends. He had learning problems. He had a terrible temper. Five doctors, five stimulant medications. They all made him worse. So I'm thinking to myself, who has the learning problem? Is it Jared or is it the doctors? The medications triggered rages and terrible mood swings. Oh, he punched holes in the walls. And they wanted to put him on antipsychotic medications. Now, you actually knew Jared when he was little.

Because his mother was a good friend of mine. And he was such a cute kid. But I was a little nervous to have my baby around him because he was just a little unpredictable. And it was really sad. It's horrible as a mother to say something like that. And the sad thing is that that's what ended up happening to him in school. A lot of parents didn't want to have kids around him. Jarrett didn't get invited to birthday parties.

He became more socially isolated because he was tagged as that kid who people didn't want their kids around him. So in spite of being this really good-looking kid who could be really sweet, just these mood swings were out of control. Yeah. And so because you were friends and she ended up bringing him to the clinic to get scanned. So here at Amen Clinics, we do a study called SPECT. SPECT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And the imaging study basically shows us three things, good activity, too little or too much. And then our job is to balance it. If your brain is sleepy, we're going to find a way to stimulate it. If your brain is too busy, we're going to find a way to calm it down. And so these are healthy scans, full, even, symmetrical activity on the left. The active scan, red equals the area that's the most active, which in a

healthy brain is in the cerebellum, in the back bottom part of the brain. Well, here's Jared's scan. So healthy on the left, he's got a pattern I described about 25 years ago now called the ring of fire. His brain works way too hard. Please don't stimulate this brain. Giving him a stimulant is like pouring gasoline on a fire. And what did we do? Natural supplements to calm his brain down. I use something called Neuralink that has GABA, 5-HTP taurine to calm things down, and L-tyrosine to help balance his brain. And we also did parent training and did brain healthy habits. You can't do psychiatry if you're not also talking about brain health, right? It doesn't have a Prozac deficiency or Ritalin deficiency.

His brain is an organ, needs to be healthy, just like your heart needs to be healthy. And within a couple of months, his behavior is better. The rage has stopped. He was able to make friends. He's been on the honor roll or Dean's list for eight years. I just saw a letter he got from his college. He's on the president's list. He wants to be a firefighter. And this is Jared and I recently. And I asked him why he wanted to be a firefighter. And this is what he told me.

On someone's worst day, I want to make it better. And Jarrett's story is actually the beginning of chapter one. And so there's a really cool introduction to the book. But chapter one is where I get into the meat of it. And then I wondered in chapter one, how would Jared have been treated throughout the ages? And so, for example, in ancient civilization, they may have drilled a hole in his skull to let out the evil spirits. Ouch. In the times of Hippocrates, 400 BC, they would have changed his diet. Hippocrates would have changed his diet, had him exercise, put him in a job that fit his restless nature.

So all those things I like, and then he would have bled him to release the excessive fluids that he had. So it was all good except for that. All good except for that. In the Middle Ages, he may have been put in an asylum and chained and beaten, trying to modify his behavior. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they may have sterilized him and his family, be placed under suspicion in the eugenics program that was first actually pioneered here in America. It's the precursor to Nazi atrocities. In the 20th century, Freud may have had Jared on his couch to talk about his internal conflicts,

especially his relationship with his mother. Why are mothers always blamed for everything? What was that? But it wouldn't have worked. And then he would have said, well, he has a personality disorder. In the 1950s, he may have been given a prefrontal lobotomy. I mean, he was like the candidate for it with his aggressive, impulsive, restless nature. And it may have calmed down his aggression, but also ruined his personality. In the 1960s,

he may have been given electroshock therapy. His grandmother had that. Sort of not the kind of buzz he would like. And currently he was, you know, seeing many doctors with multiple different medications without anyone ever looking at his brain. Yeah, I'm feeling like it's a good thing they didn't put a hole in his brain in current times, but it's not like they did a really great job treating him. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast,

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