Change Your Brain Every Day - What Are the Psychological Causes of Suicide?

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling, but what are the causes of those feelings of hopelessness? In the second episode of “Suicide Awareness Week,” Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the psychological causes that can lead to suicide or suicidal thoughts, as well as what can be done to treat these causes.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the 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 nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are talking about Suicide Awareness Week. This is our second episode, and I think this is a really serious topic. I know this has been something, I know a lot of teenagers struggle with this. This happened this year with Chloe. At school, they had a very dramatic event happen with one of the kids at school committing suicide, leaving a bunch of letters. And so this affects all of us. And I think this is really important to talk about. Why does this happen? I think in

this episode, we're talking about the psychology behind it right one other thing on the biology is i've actually published two studies on suicide so out of the 145 000 scans we've done here at amen clinics we track a lot of our patients and we know of about 40 people later who ultimately killed themselves. And so we actually went back and looked at their scans. And what we found, people who had the lowest function in the front part of the brain, what does that do? Focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, empathy, learning from the mistakes you make, they were significantly more likely to kill themselves than if they had healthy function in their prefrontal cortex. So then that in my mind means if you get this information and you know that that is your

brain, it's probably really important to do whatever it takes therapeutically to get that function up in that part of the brain. You bet. Right. So really important. But suicide is more than just your biology. There's a psychology to it. And those of you that follow us know that we talk about ants, automatic negative thoughts,

the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And what we see is that people who have suicidal ideas and suicide attempts have way more negative thoughts running around in their head. In fact, you know, we often say they have an ant infestation. Yeah, no, it's true. So let's, I want to talk about one thing and that is what happens, like you're talking about psychology. So what happens with the psychology when you see these epidemics, like you'll see a suicide epidemic occur. So I know one teacher who ended up leaving the town and quitting his job after he saw a rash of suicides. There were like two or three in his school, but through his small town, there ended up being 12 within a short period of

time. After the first one, it was like a domino effect or, you know, the show 13 reasons why, and then you have a couple of suicides, but this happens, like in real life, where one happens, then all of a sudden you hear about two or three more happening. Well, we're going to talk about that in the next episode when we talk about the social aspects. So that would be more under social, not psychology. It's a contagion that when you see someone else do a behavior, you're more likely to replicate the behavior, which is why

you have to turn the news off in front of small children. Because if they see something like a school shooting and they've been angry and depressed, they're more likely to do something like that. Yeah, that's why it bothers me that they give it so much air time. If they've seen it over and over again. I don't like it. But suicide is often driven by distorted thinking. Let me tell you a story. When I first opened up the Amen Clinics in 1989, one of my favorite patients, I actually saw her a couple of times a week. Her name was Betty, and she was chronically suicidal.

And she used to freak me out because I mean you know I care about my patients I worry I don't want anybody killing themselves that upsets me because you know my job is to prevent that to help them and every time she would start with the most vile violent wicked way of killing herself. And she'd describe it to me in great detail. And every session with her, my heart rate was elevated because I was so upset about it. And then when I started scanning brain, she had low activity in the front part of her brain. And I hadn't figured it out until I scanned her.

She has adult ADD. And she was using the negative thoughts and my reaction as a stimulant. So she was thinking about the most violent ways she was going to kill herself. And one day I looked at her, I said, you're no more going to kill yourself than I am. And she goes, what? And I said, you have five children. You love them. I know you love them. And you know, if you kill yourself, see, I'm not above guilt, right? I grew up Roman Catholic.

I had to pass guilt 101, guilt 201, advanced guilt. So I'm not above it. And I go, you know, if you kill yourself, you've just increased the chance of your children killing themselves 500%. Wow. So I think you talk about suicide as a way to stimulate your brain. And it's the first time I put together that people have untreated ADD are conflict seeking, negative seeking, excitement seeking. But in her case, she had learned that if she focuses on these suicidal fantasies, and so literally she stopped it and she didn't

kill herself. So, but my question on that, which completely makes sense, you fix their frontal lobes. Now, don't tell people that they're not suicidal, right? I'm an expert and I knew her really well, so I could do it. This is not a strategy. This is not a treatment strategy. That's my question, though, for even if you are an expert. So, fixing her frontal lobes makes perfect sense. Why?

Then, of course, she's going to have better forethought, better judgment, better impulse control. Okay. But does that actually help with what we were talking about the psychology of her then not being actually suicidal? Like actually not feeling these negative urges? Well, for the psychology part, what we want you to do is when you feel mad or sad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. So important. And learning how to correct the automatic negative thoughts that go through your mind. And they've actually found this treatment technique it's based on CBT or cognitive behavior therapy is very powerful as a treatment primary treatment for depression now you have to get the brain

balanced right right so you have to strengthen her frontal lobes and there's all sorts of ways to do it, from medication to supplements, treatments called transcranial magnetic stimulation, ketamine, which is one of the most effective treatments for suicidal patients. I've been very impressed by how quickly it can turn someone around whose brain has really gone to the dark place. But at the same time, you're working on the biology.

You have to work on the psychology or disciplining your mind to feel better. Right. Okay. So here's my question as somebody who's been really depressed, not suicidal, but really depressed. It's one thing if someone is actually voicing it and you know they're depressed, like you know what's going on. I mean, it's not hard to spot someone who's depressed.

But if, for a lot of people who are depressed, I know, like in my case, I didn't want to talk, I didn't want people to know. Like you try to hide, so you're not talking about it. You don't want to share it, because you don't even know what's wrong with you. You think it's your fault. You think you're lazy. All these weird thoughts go through your head.

So you're really not talking about it to people. You're kind of hiding. It's almost like a shame thing. Well, and a lot of people do. I don't think many people knew that Anthony Bourdain was so depressed that he would kill himself. Now, it's very important to understand that people kill themselves often when they're drinking. Because, you know, say they've had the negative thoughts. Drops judgment. And like I said, suicidal thoughts are actually pretty common, right?

But if you have the thought, I want to die, and then you drink a six-pack of Bud Light, it drops your frontal lobe. So you act not thinking about, if I do this, it's going to devastate my parents. So we're back to biology, psychology. Biology, psychology. Biology, psychology, all these four circles work together all the time. Right. Or in my case, like even having low thyroid just made it impossible for me to focus. Right. And so when your thyroid's low the answer hi right right so just having a healthy biology helps to keep the ants under control it's talking to one of my patients this week about relapse that if she doesn't eat for six hours or eight hours she has low

blood sugar more likely to relapse more likely to kill yourself if you're not eating properly. I know, isn't that crazy? The brand new study from us. I'm just not nice if I don't eat. That's so true. Oh my God, thank you for saying that. I'm so grumpy when I don't eat. So part of the psychological interventions

I do with my patients, we kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts, and then I purposely get them outside of their head. Because what depression does is it causes you to go into a cocoon. That's what I'm talking about. And you're only thinking about yourself. That's what I'm talking about. You sort of hide. You internalize.

You like go away. Right. That's what I'm talking about. You sort of hide. You internalize. You like go away. And so I, you know, we just talk about if you do this, then let's talk about who's going to be affected by it. And a lot of times, so, you know, we'll talk about their kids. We'll talk about their parents. We'll talk about the other people in their life and the reality of who's going to suffer. And let's just be clear that suicide is often a very angry act where you're going to punish someone else. Not always, obviously. So that brings, that actually brings up a good point. So I had, those of you who have listened to our podcast, my upbringing, my childhood was not,

was anything but Rosie. Okay. But, but one thing that my mom did really well, my mom was, you know, for those of you who have, who are well bonded with your kids or you're well bonded with people in your family, my mom was really clear about how much she loved me. She was really bonded to me. She was, you know, I had no doubt in my mind. My mom would take a bullet, she would die or kill for me. So that connection, that bond, is what ultimately was probably the thing that ever kept me from actually thinking the thought that I would kill myself. So, I mean, that's just to put it out there. Those of you who have good bonds.

Well, that social connection, which we're going to talk about, is so important. And she was so good. And it's so protective. And my mom was good about laying the guilt trip on, too. She was like, if I didn't have you, I don't know what I would do. If something happened to you, I would have no purpose for living. So from a psychological standpoint, get in touch with your connections, with your relationships. So I just try to give the reality of the situation to my patients. And I often, I've said this, I don't know, thousands of times throughout my career,

that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling. Because almost everyone that's suicidal at one point or another they're not Chronically suicidal that look comes and it goes and as somebody who's been in that seriously dark place I mean like a really dark place. You don't think you can get out of it. You don't think it's going to end It's the hopelessness and And that's actually the word that they're actually hopelessness scales that when people score high on hopelessness, they're vulnerable. It was like hard for me to get out of bed because I could not see a solution.

I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I remember how awful it was just this weight on you. But I look back now, now I will say, I look back now at that time and still to this day, it scares me enough that I would like anything, I'll do anything to never go back there. Like that's why I take such good care of myself. Well, and plus, you know how much it would hurt me and you also know how much it would hurt and devastate someone. No, no, no, I never think about suicide. I'm just talking about even being depressed. Right. I don't, I just can't. about suicide. I'm just talking about even being depressed. Right.

I just can't. It's because we'll get to this. I take really good care of myself. But my point that I was making is that it can end, and it can turn around and be the best thing you've ever experienced in your life. But if you commit suicide, you'll never know. Right.

And we're not talking about someone who's terminally ill. No, no, no, no, no. That's different. But that's common. It's very common. That's a whole different thing though. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about the social aspects of suicide. And I'm going to give you one of the first papers I ever wrote. It's called The Target Theory of Suicide and How to Evaluate People. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

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