The War Over our Minds and We the Victims

This morning I came across a piece from The Guardian titled Psychiatrists Under Fire in Mental Health Battle (more on the wording of this title to come). Tomorrow - Monday, February the 8th - the British Psychological Society's division of clinical psychology will release a statement declaring that "given the lack of evidence, it is time for a "paradigm shift" in how the issues of mental health are understood."

The piece goes on to add, "The statement effectively casts doubt on psychiatry's predominantly biomedical model of mental distress – the idea that people are suffering from illnesses that are treatable by doctors using drugs. The DCP said its decision to speak out "reflects fundamental concerns about the development, personal impact and core assumptions of the (diagnosis) systems", used by psychiatry". 

And furthermore that "There is no scientific evidence that psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are valid or useful."

This is actually nothing new and is all very consistent with the general positions of psychology that I came across three years ago in my big quest to understand why thirty months under psychiatric care failed me so badly and failed tens of thousands of others so badly.

We'll return to this later.

When I'm not studying or writing about disorders such as bipolar or depression or schizophrenia, I greatly enjoy just studying neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and human behaviour in general. 

I am especially fond of studying the human brain through its evolutionary past and its great similarities to animal brains. It has been established beyond a doubt that the human brain evolved from earlier primate brains (the division began to take place, I believe, some 200,000 years ago) and there remains many essentially identical anatomical structures to that of most higher mammals. 

There are of course some very key differences, mostly in the ability to learn, languages, higher executive functions, more sophisticated theory of mind and so on (to get into the details would be much more than we have time for today), but at our core, we are the same. And research shows that far more signalling traffic travels from the core up to the higher executive functions than the other way around. In other words, the core has more say in our behaviour than our higher executive functions. In times of frustration with and despair for humanity and what we do to each other, I have declared that humans are nothing more than more sophisticated baboons (and for the most part, I still hold fast to that position). 

And if you overlap the various fields of behavioural sciences, you will find remarkable similarities between human behaviour and animal behaviour. And deep in our animal past and throughout human evolutionary history to this day (both in the physical and cultural senses) you will find tribal behaviours, IE: tribalism. 

Tribalism can briefly be defined for our purposes here today as "the state or fact of being organized in a tribe or tribes" or "the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group". 

And indeed if we were to take a look at how humans mostly default to organizing themselves, we would see for the most part deeply divided groups or tribes. I was going to list some examples, but the mind reels at the sheer number of them. You see it in politics, sports, nationalism, gender wars, between and within all scientific fields, in virtually every job place, in regions (and even a general list could go on and on). 

So when I started my investigation into anything and everything to do with mental health three years ago, looking at every side and aspect I could, the war between the tribes of psychology and psychiatry became blazingly clear to me. These are two sides - and we're talking at the top levels here, not necessarily at the "front lines" level - have virtually no common ground whatsoever. At the time I was very angry with psychiatry (for reasons we needn't get into here but which I very briefly outline in the essays Psychiatry - The Emperor with No Clothes and The Myths of the Benefits of Psychiatric Drugs) so I found myself siding with positions that were against psychiatry (and those remain very well founded reasons).

In his ground breaking book Anatomy of an Epidemic, noted and Pulitzer Prize nominated science writer Robert Whitaker recounts the histories of psychology and psychiatry and showed how while they at one time were more similarly trained. However, as "medical treatments" began to be discovered in the 50's that appeared to be effective in treating hardcore cases of schizophrenia and depression (those who'd become disabled enough by their disorders to end up in institutions), the great divide began. As psychiatrists were trained to be closer to medical doctors and were thus able to legally prescribe drugs, their alliance with the pharmaceutical industry began to grow, the list of disorders that would qualify for "medical treatment" began to grow (as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) and the rest, as they say, is history (and Whitaker's book is a very good read to get a better understanding of this history). 

Through the 60's and 70's as more drugs promising cures began to hit the market, people began to flood to psychiatrists and doctors to get medications which they were promised would cure their minds. No longer did one need to spend hours on the couch (and thousands of dollars to lie there) to get one's mind in order, a simple and fast prescription would do. Medical explanations for psychiatric or mood disorders that sounded extremely well founded began to hit popular media with impressive descriptions about synapses and neurochemicals and how mental health difficulties were caused by imbalances in these neurochemicals and how drugs corrected the balance of these. Balance your neurochemicals, balance your mind and get on with life. It all sounded so convincing and psychology was pushed more and more aside and were increasingly left out of the "mind biz" and even marginalized and dismissed as quacks depending on "pseudoscience" (which, to be frank, is not something I would argue against).

This outright dismissal of psychology would be a wake up call - and it was a necessary one - which spurred general psychology into action and new fields within psychology delved more and more into neuroscience and its related fields to better understand the neurological basis for human behaviours, a process that roughly took place from the 90's on (though of course there were beginning roots preceding that time). Psychology began to fire back and question the scientific validity of the psychiatric and pharmacological approach to healing the human mind. 

It was the summaries of psychology's findings that I began to come across three years ago as I worked to understand why psychiatry and pharmacology was failing so badly. 

As I looked more and more into factors that would lead to mental health breakdowns, I found all kinds of psychological, societal, socio-economic factors involved (and have begun a series of essays outlining those which can be found in the Table of Contents and Reading Guide). 

Further in the press release reported in the Guardian piece above, it goes on to say that "there is now overwhelming evidence that people break down as a result of a complex mix of social and psychological circumstances – bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse". 

That is a rather simple and short list but a look into any mental  breakdown involving or stemming from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia to bipolar will indeed find those or other psychological factors running through every case. This has been the position this blog has taken since I began coming to similar conclusions in the summer of 2013. And this is what I found when I looked into why psychiatry and pharmacology were failing so many people - psychiatry inexcusably overlooks so many factors involved in human lives and reduced all their treatment protocol to merely prescribing often dangerous and addictive psycho-active drugs. 

So this newly stated position of the British Psychological Society (and the American Psycholigical Association's position is very similar) would appear to be very affirming of the Taming the Polar Bears position, right?

Well, wait, not so fast, for it is not so simple (nothing ever is, I'm afraid).

I spent a good deal of 2013 pounding away at psychiatry and the pharmacological approach (as evidenced from some of my posts of that period). As well, I spent the first half of that year vehemently denying mental illness, at one point even declaring the concept of mental illness a "myth". What I desperately wanted to believe, however, was that I wasn't "mentally ill". 

However, as I studied science, I had to adhere to the principles of science and make sure I did not succumb too much to confirmation bias and therefor I always tried to keep an open mind to opposing views and evidence and indeed I kept in my circles of sources members of what I'll refer to as "the other side". I read countless stories recounting the anguish of depression or bipolar and how drugs had helped them. This, I found, could not be ignored. Some of my best sources of science held to the position of pharmacological treatments and studies they cited could not be ignored, either. 

At the same time, the thing that I could least ignore was my own continuing breakdowns. Something was clearly going on to cause my own disordered mind (I think I have some very credible ideas which I am furiously trying to get outlined and written down). 

And what I especially could not ignore was that while various psychology societies and associations could convincingly launch well founded attacks on the validity of pharmacological psychiatry's approach to defining and treating mental health disorders, I couldn't help notice they didn't seem to be coming up with any kind of effective definitions, explanations and treatment protocols either. 

Looking long and carefully at all sides and angles involved in psychiatric and mood disorders led me to a conclusion and position that I have wished to write about for about two years now but until now couldn't quite find the right foundation and with tomorrow's pending announcement from the British Psychological Society, I think the time has come. 

For this, my dear Polar Bears readers, is the truth of what's going on in mental health - psychology and psychiatry are two polemically opposed tribes in a titanic battle over the same territory. 

And that territory, people, is our minds. And we, people, are the battlefield. And we, people, are the victims. 

In truth, neither of these two tribes really gives a shit about us. They're too locked onto their battles with the opposite side to even see those of us suffering and the depth and pain of that suffering, let alone really care about us. They are generals in ivory towers pushing pieces around on a board. They are two armies at war. And as in any war, there are victims on the ground that the generals cannot see and in this war those victims are us. 

While I spend an enormous amount of time studying and researching and searching for clues and answers, I also have spent and continue to spend a good deal of time in "the trenches". I talk to people on the streets, I talk to others fighting disorders, I have talked to dozens of people in psychiatric hospitals and I have talked to dozens of people I have met through this blog.

And quite frankly, I don't see either psychology or psychiatry helping any of us as they war away in their baboon like territorial battle over our minds. The overwhelming evidence I found was that neither of them really seemed to understand what was going on and why or, worse yet, know what to do. 

And we the victims continue to suffer in ever increasing numbers. 

While to attack psychiatry and come out and boldly declare that "current psychiatric diagnoses such as bipolar and schizophrenia are useless" seems reasonable from psychology's point of view, to do so without offering any kind of scientifically valid alternative is, well, not only utterly and absolutely useless itself, it's outright irresponsible and dangerous. 

For while these high and mighty generals ensconced safely away in their ivory towers can easily launch their verbal missiles at one another, without supplying effective alternatives to the "troops" on the ground (psychologists and psychiatrists) who are dealing with the mounting numbers of victims (us), they serve only themselves. 

And meanwhile the bodies literally continue to stack up (suicide numbers and tens of thousands of others who suffer mentally and end up dying of overdoses or slow deaths from substance abuse) and almost literal refugees who have nowhere to go (those of us who do not die, but who are also not able to effectively get back into society or those who must hide their conditions and suffer silently because they are too ashamed and confused to seek treatment). 

When I first began to break down in the summer of 2008 and began to think about seeking treatment, what I encountered most was complete and utter confusion and no clear path to finding understanding and treatment. Some people swore up and down about this, others swore up and down about that. So I did nothing until I completely broke down and was hospitalized in the summer of 2010.

And this confusion is what I see over and over and over again in countless cases while both psychology and psychiatry, in their blinkered war with each other, are blind to the confusion we must endure with many ultimately ending up dying as a consequence or at the least must continue with near unbearable suffering. Any objective and broad look at the current mental health situation would tell you this. 

So what do I think is the answer?

In truth, it is not conclusively known at this point what causes any disorder. While psychological factors are unquestionably important in triggering behavioural changes and symptoms, it would be entirely incorrect to say that they are the root cause either. Evidence is mounting for key yet complex anatomical differences in brain structures as being the underlying basis for most disorders. Neurobiological changes and physiological changes absolutely occur in the brain and the body in both long term and short term mental health cases from depression to bipolar to schizophrenia to anxiety to various compulsive disorders. 

So to take an entirely psychological approach is not correct either.

Furthermore, at this time, tens of millions of people depend on the current psychiatric definitions of disorders and pharmacological treatments, yours truly to an extent as well (while I do not rely on medications, understanding that I am bipolar absolutely helps me deal with how my mind works, enabling me to cope with it. As well, a medical designation is the basis for the pension I rely on, without which I would have absolutely no means of supporting myself. This is also the case for thousands of others like me). And while I remain opposed to the general position of psychiatry and its pharmalogical approach to treatment, to just suddenly declare the psychological position the "winner" and pull this rug out from underneath these millions of people without a vast new infrastructure to take its place would be utterly disastrous and unspeakably cruel.

So as of now, psychology can offer nothing concrete in ways of understanding and diagnosing disorders, let alone any kind of treatment and care infrastructure. 

Yet to only continue on the same path of the pure psychiatric course is clearly not working either. 

So what to do?

This is the approach I believe may be best. 

If you study drug treatment, it is undeniable that drugs will show short term improvement and stabilization for great numbers of people (though not all). While it is far from perfect, for many it is absolutely necessary. 

Where drug treatment demonstrably falls short or fails is in long term results.

So what if we were to look at psychiatry and psychology this way?

What if we were to think of psychiatry as the mental health equivalent of emergency rooms and short term hospitalization? Just as with a medical emergency, an acute mental health crisis case would go to the emergency room (the infrastructure for this is already in place) and drugs would be administered to stabilize the patient. Some short term hospitalization and further short term drug treatment may also be necessary. 

Then what if we were to think of psychology as the rehab part of the equation? Once the patients were stabilized, it would be up to psychology to understand and treat the root causes and put in place long term  mental "rehab" strategies along with helping to facilitate perhaps the long term lifestyle change or adaption strategies. 

And I have seen enough evidence to suggest that this is indeed the best long term course that produces the best long term results. 

What I strongly and passionately believe is that it's time for these two sides to put aside their baboon like territorial battle and begin to function more like the highly advanced humans we can potentially be and work in better harmony for us. 

For while there are a great number of reasons for our suffering, the absolute #1 reason I found in all my research is the confusion resulting from this inexcusable and, frankly, immature battle between the fields of psychology and psychiatry over our minds and mental health. 

In future pieces, I hope to outline clearer strategies for negotiating this mess and I will try to provide links to other sources that help with similar strategies. 

While I obviously strongly believe the understandings of the mind and that strategies for change I teach in Taming the Polar Bears can work for or greatly benefit anyone, it would be dishonest of me to believe or declare they were the only way. People are enormously varied and what works for one may not necessarily work for the other. What our core beliefs are will greatly affect what may work and how (something I briefly outlined in the essay In Praise of Quick Fixes).

At this point in time I don't think we can trust the institutions of psychiatry and psychology; they are just too far removed from us as people, as humans, as individuals. This is not to say all members of these societies (in the organizational sense of the word) are bad or that perhaps one could find someone from either profession who may provide some useful help, but the odds, I must frankly say, are against it.  

If you are reading here it is quite possible that you too are in some way a victim of this battle over our minds and the resultant confusion and lack of clarity over what to do. However, dear reader, it is possible for you to make it through, there are ways. 

It takes a lot of bravery and personal responsibility but I created this blog and contents to give you some guidance and something to work with. I'd wished to do more, but in the end it was all I could do. 

Table of Contents and Reading Guide for Taming the Polar Bears

This is a somewhat organized contents and reading guide of most (though far from all) of the material that make up the blog for those who have shown interest in various posts and would like a (somewhat) easy way to locate them. 

A Dedication

The sole (soul) reason I exist and write this blog

Part I 

The Neuroscience of "You"

 

When at the dawn of 2013 I started looking into better ways to understand mental health problems and disorders and why people have such problems overcoming their disorders and improving their lives and inner mental states, it became very clear to me that we needed a better understanding of how our brains work and why. 

It is my position that a better understanding of brain systems and how they create our behaviours, mental states and moods and reactions of all kinds can greatly help us understand our selves and our difficulties. More importantly, it can help us understand how to truly change how our brains work - and thus us. Even more than that, however, I learned that understanding how and why brains work the way they do and how they got to be to any one state can help us work past self-blame and towards self-compassion and understanding and acceptance of who we are - or of who others in our lives are. 

 

Chapter One - Neuroanatomy 101 

A brief and fun look into some of the basic brain anatomy and neurobiology that makes up an individual, all of which "sets the table" for later chapters to come. Since originally writing this in the fall of 2013, I've received a great deal of enthusiastic and sincere endorsements of from laypeople to those from the fields of psychology to neuroscience itself. 

Chapter Two - A Brief Look 

at the Evolutionary History of the Human Brain

For reasons I can't quite fathom, most professionals in the study of human behaviour somehow either overlook how the human brain evolved or inexplicably don't think it's important. This is a gross oversight in my view (and I am not alone in this view). At any rate, this chapter is a very brief look at the history of human brain evolution. Understanding our evolutionary past can also greatly aid in understanding modern human behaviours and what we'll call for now "brain difficulties". 

Chapter Three - An Introduction to Genetic and Environmental Factors in Individual Brain Development

 

We are to a large degree our brains. This chapter begins to look at some of the factors that are at play in developing a given brain or "you". While both genetics and environmental factors are important, of course, starting in this post I argue that it is environmental factors that either trigger genetic pronation towards a given disorder or psychiatric condition or alter the brain's development in such a way as to give rise to various mental health disorders. 

Furthermore, in a future post (or series of posts) I will argue that there may be absolutely nothing wrong with a particular person's brain but that the mental anguish and suffering may be on account of being stuck in an environment that is unsuitable to that person's core personality, character and emotional needs. 

Chapter Four - Brains as Reality Creators: An Introduction

Something that is very hard for people to wrap their heads around is the fact that our brains "create" what we experience as "reality". Which is not to say that the world around us is not real, only that our individual perceptions of it are not exactly or necessarily "real" and that much of what is in our heads is not "real". While this would appear to have nothing to do with mental health problems, in fact it lays at the very crux of most of them. Understanding the concept introduced here is very important for when we start looking at cognitive distortions, delusional thinking, hallucinations and other factors involved in any one case of a mental health disorder. 

It is also vital in working to understand that many people who society see as "mentally ill" merely perceive the world differently and it is the difficulties of being different that gives rise to the mental perturbations that become viewed as an "illness". 

Chapter Five - Zombie Programs: An introduction

"Zombie programs" is a term coined by the neuroscientist David Eagleman in his book Incognito which he uses to refer to the vast and enormous numbers of neuronal circuit programming that hums away below our conscious awareness controlling all of our physical movements, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, actions, decisions and so on. When I talk about our "subconscious" running our lives (as I do repeatedly throughout this blog), this is for the most part what I am referring to, not in the Freudian subconscious sense (which is what will generally spring to most people's minds when they hear the term subconscious). What we are experiencing consciously is but a very small fraction of what's going on beneath the surface of our minds. In this chapter I begin my argument that much of what goes wrong with those of us with various psychiatric disorders is our deep autonomous programming running faultily. 

Chapter Six: An Introduction to Neuroplasticity

Far and away the most important discovery of neuroscience in my view is the concept of "neuroplasticity", the brain's ability to reform connections and networks and even its neurobiology in response to internal physical injury, to both internal and external events and mental and physical demands.

I said above that "we are our brains", and this is absolutely true. But it is also absolutely true that we don't have to be what our brains currently are (assuming we are suffering from some sort of neuropsychiatric disorder, mood disorder or emotional pain). It is all changeable, it can be trained to work differently. Change how your brain works, change how you work and experience life.  

Chapter Seven: An Introduction to Stress 

and the Stress Response System

A good deal of our behaviour and responses to life around us is originated in deep stimuli processing hardware located in the limbic region. Despite our higher evolutionary advancement, this area and its largely subconscious effects on our behaviour are gravely, in my view, overlooked. In this series we begin to look at what's involved, how it affects behaviours and drives many of our responses and emotions and most importantly, what we can do to change and improve it.

It is in this series that I will begin to establish how environmental stressors will shape and affect our brains and thus our minds, realities and our very lives. 

Chapter Eight: Neurochemical in Focus - Dopamine

As part of one of the enormous complexities of the brain and all its myriad of functions, we have hundreds of trillions of synapses and at least a hundred neurochemicals that form the basis for tremendous amounts of critical brain functions. Here we begin to take a look at that through the dopamine reward system and the role this system plays in our behaviours and mental states.

Chapter Nine: Neurochemical in Focus - Serotonin 

 Serotonin is probably the darling neurochemical (or neurotransmitter) of the psychiatric world and pharmacological treatments and we are told a great narrative about its roles in depression among other DSM disorders. In this chapter we take a bit of a look at serotonin pathways and question this narrative. Along the way we learn more about brain functions at the synaptic level and the basic premise for how the very popular SSRI antidepressants work.

The Neuroscience of Sleep

It is hard to understate the importance of sleep to both proper brain function and to stable emotional and mental health. Sleep disturbances can set off an enormous chain reaction of mood and cognitive difficulties and distress and greatly affect quality of life. This piece is borrowed from my other blog until I can rewrite a specific piece for Taming the Polar Bears.

 

Part II

 Taming the Polar Bears

Positive Difference Making Fundamentals

Everything I do and teach pertaining to better mental health is based on neuroplasticity and retraining our brains. These are the basic fundamentals that can help you or anyone do that. 

My Positive Difference Making Fundamentals -

 the Original Post

The original post needs some rewriting and brushing up again but it still stands up well as an introduction to the basic fundamentals to better mental health, resilience and improved mental outlooks and in the end, an improved life. 

Spirituality - Gratitude and Compassion 

Gratitude and compassion are two age old concepts and practices for taming our minds (or polar bears). I introduce and talk about them in this post. 

More Positive Difference Making Fundamentals in Focus - Self Compassion

A shorter, snappier "to the point" post on self-compassion. 

Brad's Brain Training Games

One of the principles of neuroplasticity is to have regular ways to stimulate specific brain regions (and de-stimulate others). I devised my own approaches to working on better mental states, problem solving strategies, correcting negative self-talk and attitudes and so on. I introduce the principles of the approaches I developed in this post. 

An Introduction to Music Therapy

There is now an enormous amount of neuroscience and real world evidence for the benefits of music therapy on the brain. In this post we look at a bit of the neuroscience, what music therapy did for me and how you can begin to develop your own music therapy program.

The Neuroscience of Music Therapy

A bit of a fun look at some of the aforementioned neuroscience of music and the brain

Positive Difference Making Fundamentals in Focus - Habit Change 

An all important difference making fundamental - creating better and healthier habits for both our physical and mental health. A primer into the neuroscience and difficulties of habit change, along with some very useful and well grounded tips for getting started. 

An Introduction to Meditation

People get turned off by the concept of meditation because of popular notions about it. Here I explain more the importance of it and introduce some very simple and doable starter steps that serve as a perfectly good foundation for most of us mental health peeps. 

An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation CBT

Mindfulness Cognitive Behaviour Therapy can be enormously beneficial but again, people get turned off because it's not properly explained or it seems overly complicated. Here I give a brief introductory look into how we can learn to practice it on our own. 

An Introduction to Belief

Belief is a tremendously powerful part of the human mind and it plays a huge role in what makes up our "reality" and conscious experience. It also determines our levels of optimism and pessimism and the roles those play in our life outlooks. 

Here we take a brief look at the evolutionary basis for belief and why we have the power of belief.

Staying in the Now

It is impossible to overstate the importance of living within each day on its own while leaving all the yesterdays behind and avoiding getting caught up in future days that have not yet happened. It is, of course, very hard for many of us. Here I outline why it's difficult, why it's vital for mental health and improved cognitive functioning and give some powerful tips on how to stay within the present day.

Taming the Polar Bears in Focus

Taming Empathy

As I try to point out and teach, there is no single human behavioural aspet or trait that is completely necessarily "good" or "bad" and so it is with empathy or empathetic feeling. As we first saw in the post On Empathy and Bipolar, there are a good number of people who struggle with the pains in the world through greatly taking on those pains - in other words, they are weighed down with over-active empathetic pain networks. In this post we look at both the negative aspects of empathy and ways to "tame" them. 

Understanding and Taming Imagination

As we are learning, and as you likely have experienced yourself, there are many things that can "go astray" in the human mind. The power of imagination is a powerful force in our mind and in this essay we learn more about the positive and negative aspects of imagination. 

 

Part III

Building a Different 

Understanding of Bipolar Disorder

(other disorders to come)

It quickly became clear when I started my quest at the dawn of 2013 to attain a better understanding of my disorder that the psychiatric and pharmacological model of mental illnesses was vastly incomplete, overly simplistic, one sided if not flat out wrong. This position was reached not only from reading through enormous amounts of research conducted by researchers from the fields of psychology, neuro-pyschology and even from a great number of psychiatrists who'd become disillusioned with psychiatric treatments, but also from advanced studies of neuroscience and learning how brains create behaviours and responses to environmental conditions and are in fact greatly changed and shaped in response to environmental conditions. 

I then from my own experience with my disorder and reviewing hundreds of case studies began to build my own models for understanding mental health disorders. 

In this section, I begin to build a different understanding of what is referred to as bipolar disorder, what creates the symptoms and how to live with it. 

Mental Health Disorders in Focus - Bipolar Disorder


Bipolar Disorder, the Brain and Energy - Part I

Bipolar Disorder, the Brain and Energy - Part II

Bipolar Disorder, the Brain and Energy Part III

Bipolar in Focus - Empathy and Empathetic Pain

Part IV

Psychological Factors

in Psychiatric Disorders

The psychiatric and medical establishments miss vast areas of the psychological impacts of our disorders and how our minds are impacted by those. I attempt to address that in these (and more to come) posts and essays that don't fit the other categories. 

The Psychology of Bipolar - Frustration

Memory Functioning in Depressive and Bipolar Disorders


Broken Ego Defenses


The Psychology of Mental Health Disorders - Isolation


Blue Footed Boobies, the S word and Isolation


The Why of You - the Emotional You

Understanding the Mind

On Consciousness, Thoughts and Meditation


Understanding the Mind - Cognitive Distortions and Other Brain Bugs


Understanding the Mind - an Introduction to the Phenomenon of Placebo and Nocebo

The Illusion of Free Will

Essays on Mental Health Issues

Why I Hate the Disease Model for Depression

 (and Why You Should Too)


The Nine Hundred Foot Jesus and the Man on the Street

Deconstructing Quick Fixes for Psychiatric and Mood Disorders

In Praise of Quick Fixes for Depression and Other Disorders


Mania and the Story of Icarus and Daedalus


Planes, Why, Black Swans and Mental Illness Stigma


The War Over Our Minds and We the Victims


On Mental Illness and Communication


Let's Talk - to Whom?


It's Okay



Poems

Flower in Darkness


On Storms and Suns and Moons and Stars



On Psychiatry and
Pharmaceutical Drugs

Through a relatively brief period of personal experience (only thirty months along with two briefer periods in the summer of 2013 and the winter of that year) and through enormous amounts of extremely in depth research, I discovered that the psychiatric industry is wildly and tragically inept at understanding, diagnosing and treating any psychiatric disorder. Furthermore, that in alliance with the pharmaceutical industry much of what they do is designed - in a very literal, and very well documented sense - to create life long consumers for psycho-active or neurotropic drugs. 

I wrote at great length about this in a now abandoned manuscript back in 2013. I'd hoped to get to outlining more about the false claims put forward by these two groups (the American Psychiatric Association (and their counterparts throughout the Western world) and pharmaceutical industries) but it's an enormous task and I decided instead to focus on what I found instead to be going on in psychiatric disorders and positive ways and approaches to understanding them and working through and even past them. 

I did write briefly about both, however, and I'll include some useful links for further reading. 

Psychiatry - the Emperor with No Clothes

The Myths of the Benefits of Psychiatric Drugs


Endorsements and Testimonials

A few samples of feedback I get from followers, readers, some of my neuroscience mentors, those who just come across certain posts, people I associate with, people who I am helping, etc. 

Reader Feedback on Taming the Polar Bears 

Endorsements from Professional Associates 

 

Neuroscience in Focus - An Introduction to the Stress Response System

As of this writing, mid January of 2016, it's been three years since I started my (now sort of famous) drive for “why?” - my drive to understand psychiatric and mood disorders in ways that the current mental health and psychiatric professions don't.

During that beginning (early 2013) I was using various social media (and still do) to both seek the best information I could find regarding the brain and mental health and those with whom to discuss it. In the course of that endeavor early that year I met a man who'd change my life forever, one Mani Saint-Victor. (Two, actually, Robert Whitaker being the other). Mani is a Harvard trained medical doctor and neuroscientist. At the time he was detaching himself from medical practice and doing his own research into – tada! - psychiatric and mood disorders and somehow we crossed paths. I think it was because I happened to be a bit of a dab hand at English grammar and composition and that he was doing some writing projects with which he needed editing and proofreading help that we initially “meshed” (social media can be wonderful that way) and subsequently when he saw what I was doing and I saw what he was doing (investigating the above mentioned disorders) we formed a bit of a working partnership (I brought some key things to the table that he'd been looking for). He was taking his study of neuroscience in a new direction at the time, saw that I had a great interest in it as well and then took me under his wing (thus changing my life – and mind – forever). Mani was – and remains – a great gregarious open minded, open spirited person and so made as wonderful a mentor as one could wish for.

At the time I was voraciously seeking information regarding the neurological basis for psychiatric and mood disorders and their symptoms and he provided all I could handle (which at that time was a lot). And the vast majority of what he provided was studies and research linking the neurobiology of stress with psychiatric disorders and the symptoms thereof. Now, you have to understand that not long prior to that I was coming off a three year stretch of psychiatric inner horror shows the likes of which few people experience – hallucinations, hearing voices, psychotic episodes and much etcetera not to mention crippling anxiety and other assorted “goodies” – so when I started reading through the papers he was sending me and ran them through my own experiences along with my burgeoning knowledge of how brains work, I instantly got the connections. I mean it was like bingo, bingo, bingo, bingo and BINGO. So many things began to fall into place for me in my understanding of psychiatric and mood disorders and it was a great honour and pleasure to be able to discuss it all with Mani along with some of his other neuroscience colleagues (again, the blessings of social media).

The other thing I loved about Mani and what connected us so well at the time, was that he too (though from the opposite side of the doctor-patient equation) had become disillusioned with the standard medical/mental health approach to psychiatric care (IE: the pharmacological approach) and was searching out alternatives (though not in the so called "alternative medicine" field, which is almost as bad as the pharmaceutical industry for false claims and poor long term efficacy). For a few magical months he (and those online neuroscience colleagues of his) and I had a rollicking good time exploring all that stuff.

Aside from everything my dear old friend Mani taught me back in the beginning, I also discovered the renowned Robert Sapolsky. He is ranked among the top fifteen neuroscientists in the word (this out of tens of thousands in that exploding field) and is widely regarded as perhaps the leading expert on the planet in the study and understanding of stress and what it does to us and why.

All of which sort of sets the table for what I'm finally getting around to presenting – the neuroscience of stress, psychiatric and mood disorders and you.

One of the things I've found in my study of stress is how poorly understood it is (tragically misunderstood if truth be told) and the degree to which it's overlooked as a major factor in mood and psychiatric disorders even within the mental health professions. Certainly most competent professionals will understand the elementary basics and that it's important to manage but no one that I have dealt with as a patient or in great numbers of discussion or came across in my very broad reading seems to really know and understand the entire big picture about stress, what causes it and what it means to your mental and physical health nor really just how much it may affect behaviour, is creating much of the crazy making things you experience in your mind and especially not how much it is killing you. 

It is my goal with this series on stress to change that.

In the past I have mentioned a bit about how I do my some of my own research. Mine is a sort of old fashioned gumshoe approach which I do by simply talking to and listening to people. Since I first started publishing the current form of Polar Bear pieces in the summer of 2013 I have met a considerable number of people through the blog. Many come to me with questions and I spent a good deal of time listening, asking questions and poking into what I refer to as their "neuro-history"; past events, circumstances and so on that literally shaped their brains and how their brains subsequently worked and thus produced who and what they are today. What invariably would emerge was a number of key stressors and/or medical events. What I fervently tried to do was to simply gather information without attaching judgement or values but visualize how that would be processed by some of the brain regions we're going to look at below and how that would shape behaviours and moods and create what we experience as anxiety and/or depression

With that kind of field study (if you will) and brain study, I feel I now have a broader than most understanding of stress and what it does to our brains, minds and bodies and - most importantly - where it comes from in terms of environmental and psychological stressors. And even more importantly than that, a much better understanding of the individual differences that cause some people to experience stress differently and more importantly yet, how these differences lead to moderate to severe psychiatric disturbances. 

And even better than that, some of the key understandings for mind and lifestyle management and strategies for either reducing stress or changing our responses to it. 

So for now I'm going to ask that before delving in here to please put aside everything you think you know about stress and your experience and understanding of it. Most people's understanding of it is based on so much outdated or outmoded or pop science gibberish so as to be more harmful than good. As well, if you really want to understand and learn something, it is necessary to set aside previously held notions of the subject so that the new stuff has a place to go.

What most people understand about stress is the classic stuff we commonly associate with it; pressure at work and school, time deadlines, the boss freaking out on us and stuff like that. While this is all stress, of course, that is actually a very limited understanding of stress and is probably the least of what is truly damaging stress (and I'll get to why it's not as damaging as we think as we go along). Not that we're going to ignore that, but what we're going to learn and understand goes much, much deeper than that.

Now even as great and as knowledgeable as Robert Sapolsky is, even he doesn't completely connect all the dots between all the various symptoms of psychiatric disorders and stress and we mental health suffering peeps' unique sources of stress and of processing and reacting to it they way we do. That's where little ol' moi comes in. So this series on stress is truly going to be a mind blowing eye opener for all of you, whether you suffer from psychiatric and/or mood disorders, a loved one does or you're in the mental or medical health professions (and I do know I have several of you reading along).

So after yet another horrendously long (though necessary and hopefully at least somewhat entertaining and engaging) Bradonian introductory ramble, let's get to work.

The Neuroscience of Stress Part I

A couple of options here now and it's my hope you can use them in concert in ways that work best for you. There's the text version below, as you can see and I'm working on getting these posts into audio-visual presentations. These are not professionally polished just yet and I'm just getting the hang of doing them with limited resources, so I ask for your patience there, but you just may well enjoy this more than reading. 

There are three brain concepts that I have written about in the past that we are now going to begin to bring forward and tie together in our introductory look at stress and the stress response system and they are: the evolutionary development of the homo sapien brain, consciousness and the subconscious mind and what I termed "zombie programs", the latter two of those being quite closely related.

The evolutionary development of our so called modern homo sapien brains is important mostly – as I pointed out in the original piece – to understand that our brains evolved by “bootstrapping” off of (or building off of) earlier “brain models” and all the basic equipment of our current day stress response system is very, very old “hardware” and “wiring” indeed.

Let's again look at what pioneering neuroscientist Dr Paul MacLean termed the "triune brain" (this model has been disparaged in some circles but it absolutely is still valid for understanding the basic outline of three very distinct major brain regions). We've looked at this in a number of posts in the past and now we'll start to look in more detail.

Our deepest homo sapien brain "hardware" - the brainstem, the part in red - is virtually identical to that of the humble reptile class of animals and performs in much the same way, controlling very elementary survival behaviours and regulating core systems like breathing and heart rate.  

Next evolved is the limbic region, an area that is for the most part exactly the same in we humans as we'd find in all mammal species and even bird species (scaled differently, of course). This is the area we'll be most closely examining here today and in following posts in this series. 

Above that is the neocortex. In many regards the human version again is quite the same in us as in all higher mammal species. Not distinguished in that image, however, is the vaunted frontal lobes in which functions unique to humans are housed, but that is something we'll examine later when we learn more about emotional regulation and executive functions. The other key anatomical difference between human and higher mammal neocortexes is the "sulki" and "gyri". Those are the deep folds we'll see when looking at the outer part of a brain; sulki being the "valleys" while gyri are the "peaks". While all mammal brains have these, in the human brain they are deeper and more pronounced. These folds are key to humans' higher (one would hope) cognitive abilities.

There are a few points important for us to understand here now and to bear in mind in the future.

One, as I again mentioned in the post on brain evolution (and in Neuroanatomy 101), our stress response system, located in the limbic and brain stem regions, evolved and adapted over millions of years for very, very different situations and circumstances than what we now must currently deal with in the modern world as it has developed in the last several hundred years starting from the dawn of the industrial age and particularly the last half century. This is Very Important to understand, as we'll see.

Two, there's a "hierarchy of command" in the brain and because the brain stem and limbic regions are where the neurological modules most critical to survival are housed, under many key circumstances the lower regions will be first in line when it comes to things like energy allocation throughout your brain (and thus directing it through your body) and in generating responses to incoming stimuli (IE: inward and outward behaviours). Also Very Important to understand as we go along and try to understand our own reactions and behaviours. 

Thirdly, what our short and long term stress responses and related systems put - or don't put - on our "conscious awareness plate" is also very important to understand. And this is where we're going to learn the crucial importance of what we first looked at way back when in the post on Broken Ego Defenses and we see that what "ego defenses" do is help keep sources of pain and stress off our "conscious awareness plates". As well, better managing what we consciously, or even subconsciously, experience is what we will start to work on in our study of meditation  and mindfulness meditation CBT.

To further understand our subconscious, understanding our stress response system is going to be critically important as well. To remind, I do not by “subconscious” mean the Freudian sense of that term (though I do use his ideas elsewhere) but in the very real neuroanatomical and neurobiogical sense that the vast majority of what goes on in our brains operates well below our conscious awareness and control. Which is where “zombie programs” come in for they are the stuff of our subconscious; hundreds of completely autonomously operating brain “programs” that run probably in the neighbourhood of 99.5% of your life and daily workings and thoughts, all of which hum away more or less 24/7 for the most part well below your conscious awareness.

This will now become more important to understand and you'll see why because in learning and understanding the stress response system, we are being introduced to Zombie Program Numero Uno, the Head Honcho of all zombie programs and subconscious goings on in our brains and mind.

So, let's now have a look at some of the basic brain anatomy and neurobiology, shall we? Fear not, dear readers, I promise to not make it too onerous nor tedious. And besides, I've talked in the past about how learning new things is good for our brains and this is not a bad subject with which to do that. 

For starters, let's revisit the limbic region. I first introduced this area in both Neuroanatomy 101 and touched on it again in The Why of You - The Emotional You and probably here and there elsewhere, but now it's time to get down to a little more of the nitty-gritty of this very elementary and important part of your brain and thus "you".

Here's a rough outline of some of the major components involved in the stress response system and where they are located in the brain.

 

There are other bits involved but for today these four regions are adequate for our introductory understanding. So let's look at each in a little more detail and understand what they do. 

Amygdala

The amygdala is a sort of "grand central station" for all incoming sensory traffic from your visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and taste senses, the first three of those generally getting the highest priority. The amygdala is further broken down into all kinds of little specialized "sub-divisions" where the tasks for monitoring and analyzing the tremendous amount of "data" that is constantly streaming through it are further divided up for processing and analysis (we're talking "data streams" and processing speeds that would cripple even the most powerful computer).  

We'll think of the amygdala as "Monitor Lady". Now, I must remind you of how little of this "incoming data" you are consciously aware of at any one time. Whatever you are consciously aware of will represent perhaps 1% of everything going on around you, if that much. But fear not, while you may not be consciously aware of the vast majority of it all, Monitor Lady is all over it. 

Hippocampus

An enormous amount of everything to do with your memory starts here. I call the hippocampus our "Filing Lady". Imagine a little filing lady in your brain with access to enormously vast files of "data" at her fingertips who both retrieves and files away packets of said data. When you are having both long and short term memory problems, this where we want to start to look. But don't blame your "filing lady" if your memory isn't what we'd like it to be. If you had any idea of her daily, hourly and minute by minute workload, you'd understand she is one overworked, overtaxed little lady. Again, the data traffic she handles would crash most computers. (1) We'll come back to this area in much more detail in later segments of this series. 

And it is again necessary to remind you how little of the approximately one peta-byte of memory data you have stored in your tens of billions of neurons and trillions upon trillions of synaptic connections you can consciously recall at any one time, which would certainly be less than one tenth of one percent. But again, not to worry; if you can't consciously recall most of what is stored in your memory banks, Filing Lady likely has lightening quick access to it. 

The amygdala and hippocampus are located very closely together because they must cooperate very closely together (as we'll see below) in taking in, analyzing and sorting data and - most vital for us today - how to respond to it in dizzyingly brief spaces of time.  

Hypothalumus 

The hypothalamus's job involves certain metabolic processes (which we will leave aside for another day though this will be very interesting to us when we begin to understand the long term effects of stress on our bodies) and more importantly for our purpose today, super critical duties in the autonomic nervous system which includes our stress response system. It has much to do with the creation and secretion of "neurohormones" (AKA: "releasing hormones" - more later) along with other interesting areas of control such as body temperature, hunger, thirst, and fatigue along with important aspects of parenting and attachment behaviours,  - veeerrry interesting when we come to look at human behaviour and deeper hidden stressors. 

In the order of things, the hypothalumus is generally "downstream" from our "Monitor Lady" and "Filing Lady" and thus mostly takes orders from them. We can think of this region as "Dispatch Lady" when the alarm has been sounded. But, when we look at deep "instinctual stressors", we'll see that Dispatch Lady has some important pull of her own.

Pituitary Gland

 

The pituitary gland is the "blindest robot" of our quartet here. It doesn't "think" too much (if at all), it just follows orders from the above chain of command and disperses "stuff" - hormones of various kinds. Of course what we're interested in here today is the stress related hormones it releases or causes to be released. We'll look at the names of these hormones and learn them in more detail in the next segment.

We'll think of the pituitary gland as "Dispensary Lady". 

Okay, now a really brief look at what happens in this system when your amygdala detects a threat. It is, of course, vastly more complex than this but this illustration serves well enough to give us a basic idea of the "flow" of incoming sensory information. 

 I'm going to ask that we ignore the part where it says "stressor" for now. I'd prefer we think of that as "incoming sensory data"; it is then up to the amydala to decide if that's a threat or not (or a stressor or not) though we'll also later look at how the hypothalumus monitors and reacts to certain stressors. 

Where it says "bed nucleous of stria terminalis" is a enormously complex "switchboard" of all kinds of major "trunk lines" of local and long distance brain communication wiring between many different brain regions and nodules that play roles in stress response and regulation. How this "wiring harness" has developed within any one individual will greatly affect how that person perceives and reacts to a stressor. 

For now we won't get too much into the part that says "RAS, other brain areas involved in stress response".  While the above mentioned "bed nucleous of stria terminalis" is tightly located within the limbic region itself, what we're looking at here is a very complex network of major and smaller regions involved in "analyzing" sensory information located all over the brain. A closer look at what all these may be in any one individual is rather more than we can get into for now.

In future posts in this series, we'll look much more at that "negative feedback" loop (which is actually much more complex than that) and how all that plays a role. I touch on that in the post Memory Functioning in Major and Bipolar Depression and we'll look at that in much more detail when we begin to understand the roles traumatic experiences and memories play in mood and psychiatric disorders and PTSD.  

So what happens in what we'll call a typical and very basic threat response of a physical nature will go something like this:

Via incoming sensory information - auditory, visual, olfactory are most likely though possibly tactile - your amygdala (Monitor Lady) will detect a possible threat, send messages to both the hippocampus (Filing Lady, who will roar around her "filing cabinets" looking for relevant information and data) and hypothalumus (Dispatch Lady) who then alerts the pituitary gland (Dispensary Lady) who hits all kinds of buttons sending various stress response hormones shooting all over your brain and body giving you all kinds of instant energy, focus and super fast response time. This will all happen in less than a few hundredths of a second, all well, well below your conscious awareness or control. When you hear of someone who "bravely acts without thinking" in reaction to some sort of dangerous situation (rescuing someone from a burning car, let's say), it's because they literally didn't think - all that process was taken care of without any input from higher "decision making" software in the brain but instead the process above (along with some of those "other brain areas involved in stress response"). 

Of course what happens the great majority of time is massively more complicated than that, the implications and consequences of which are sort of literally mind blowing.

So this is a crazily brief introduction to what - we're going to see - is at the root of all your mental health or psychiatric woes from overwhelm meltdowns, hallucinations, inappropriate behaviours, self harming thoughts and behaviours to all the rest of that wild and wacky stuff going on in your poor noggin. 

Now, back to its evolutionary basis and past. Remember, all of this evolved for not only much simpler threats - such as some predatory animal eyeing you for dinner - but many other conditions that bear almost no resemblance at all to the world in which it must operate today. 

And - most important for our understanding of our demon plagued brain (or raging inner "polar bears") - is the massive creature that is "psychological stressors". 

For while we have evolved all kinds of fancy advanced brain processors that ostensibly put us modern humans above all the past evolutionary incarnations of ourselves and our primate cousins, we'll see that a lot of these higher functions are the very culprits in what make us produce and experience stress in ways that no other creature on earth does.  

Another big important take-away for today is that while we all share this basic brain anatomy and circuitry along with all kinds of other brain wide regions and circuitry, we are not all created nor developed equally. Due to all kinds of reasons that I briefly outlined and touched on in Genetic and Environmental Factors in Individual Brain Development, those of us who most suffer from psychiatric and mood disorders have some very critical differences in how all of this is arranged and works, something my man crush Sapolsky sort of sums up in his concept of "individual differences". Super Important. 

(1) Computer nerds may argue otherwise, but trust me - our brains handle such vast and varied amounts of data that a computer which would process it all as our brains do remains a very distant dream. 

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