hey there everybody and welcome back to the doc snipes channel mental health month 2022 series in
this video we're going to be exploring how mental health is health i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
let's start out by talking about mental health and mental illness well unfortunately
hollywood as well as long-held beliefs by certain people have contributed to stigma over the years
about mental health when people think of mental illness they think of somebody who is quote crazy
and that is so not it if you watch the video on what is mental health that i did you'll recognize
that mental health problems or mental ill health often have to do with a person's body factory
not functioning the way it should be mental ill health is no different than physical ill health
the body factor is having problems either making balancing or transporting neurotransmitters
our emotions our feelings our ability to think clearly is all orchestrated as a result of a
cocktail if you will of neurotransmitters and the body's ability to transmit information from that
cocktail of neurotransmitters throughout the body to you know make things happen to create physical
sensations if the body is unable to make enough neurotransmitters because it's not getting enough
uh nutrients that it needs okay that's a problem if it's not able to process the nutrients that it
gets you know the person's eating fine but their gut microbiome is out of whack or they're under
so much stress that the food's going like right through them and it doesn't have time to be broken
down and absorbed that's another problem or maybe they're making enough neurotransmitters but it's
not getting into what we call that synaptic space that space between the neurons in the
telephone line if you will of the nervous system so think
of your neurons and your synaptic spaces like the telephone poles that connect the
telephone lines or the power power poles that connect the power lines
and the neurotransmitters go into that synaptic space and transmit their message well if they
are pulled out of that synaptic space before they can transmit their message then the message either
only gets partially out or gets garbled or doesn't get out at all or there can be a problem once it
goes into that next line so again think about the power poles or the telephone poles it's going fine
and then all of a sudden there's a power pole down and there's a break in the line okay well it can't
go any further so that can cause problems so it's not necessarily about not having enough
of a particular neurotransmitter it could mean that the system is broken down somewhere it's
also important to recognize that when you alter one neurotransmitter it affects all of the other
neurotransmitters so if you increase dopamine it's going to increase certain neurotransmitters and
decrease others if you increase norepinephrine it will cause certain neurotransmitters to rise and
others to decline like norepinephrine is going to go up when gaba goes down and vice versa
so it's important to recognize that it's not just about thoughts um thoughts are
actually created by interactions within that electrical network if you will of our brain
thyroid or gonadal hormone imbalances can cause imbalances in neurotransmitters and dysfunction
of the system a disruption of the gut microbiome when you eat foods you know they go in as
cake or bread or meat or whatever they go into your gut and they get broken down by the bacteria
in your microbiome well if you don't have the adequate balance of bacteria in your microbiome
then guess what that food doesn't get broken down effectively and then it just kind of leaves your
body to put it nicely without providing the building blocks that your body needs to make
the nutrients if your circadian rhythms get out of whack it will impact the functioning of that
system your circadian rhythms are not just about sleep your circadian rhythms affect the balance
of your gonadal hormones your sex hormones it affects the balance of a lot of other hormones
it affects your immune system it affects when you want to sleep and when you want to be awake
so it affects a lot of things and if that circadian rhythm gets out of whack and a lot
of us have experienced this to a certain extent if if you've traveled and experienced jet lag
and and that's your circadian rhythm being out of whack going uh you know i don't know if i'm
supposed to be awake or if i'm supposed to be asleep or if i'm supposed to be hungry or what
i'm supposed to be doing right now and that is a sign that your circadian rhythms are out of whack
and immune system problems can also make the body factory not function as well
when there's inflammation in your body it contributes to triggering that hpa axis
your threat response system so it triggers your stress hormones and it suppresses your relaxation
hormones which impacts your sleep they've also found a strong association between systemic
inflammation and depression and anxiety and anger depression anxiety and anger can increase
inflammation and inflammation can increase depression anxiety and anger it's like this
bad reciprocal interaction so it's important to recognize that a lot of mental health
problems issues may come from a dysfunction in the body therefore adequate treatment and i can't
say this enough and if you've been watching my channel for any number of years you hear
me preaching this all the time adequate treatment of mental health issues must involve strengthening
or optimizing the functioning of the body factory when your circadian rhythms are out of
whack when your nutrition is crap when you've got systemic inflammation no amount of talk therapy
is going to make you feel completely better so we need to help um recalibrate all of the systems
in the body factory so it can do its job and then you can do your job as far as altering
your thoughts and your cognitions and you know all the stuff that we talk about in counseling
additionally people can experience mental health problems when their brain is wired differently
chronic stress contributes to alterations in the brain structure in the brain wiring if you will
and that's grossly oversimplified but this is a short video additionally physical trauma like
a traumatic brain injury a concussion can cause the brain to have to rewire a stroke
can cause the brain to have to rewire and all of those things can contribute to
alterations in people's ability to adequately uh feel manage express their thoughts and emotions
so it's important to recognize that mental health issues are often a sign or a symptom
that something has gone haywire in the underlying body factory
it doesn't mean someone is quote crazy and i really uh hope we can get that message out
this year better than we did last year and next year better than we did this year
so a little um soapbox i don't know what else to call it about the dsm
a lot of people uh that subscribe to my channel and a lot of colleagues that i have
and friends that i have are really focused on diagnoses the diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders and now we're on version five uh text revised so it's dsm 5tr
it's there for it's a purpose okay it is designed to provide a standardized list of
symptoms for making a diagnosis it's a starting point and i have that in all caps uh and yes i'm
screaming it from the rooftops it's a starting point for identifying treatment interventions
just like when we talk about multicultural counseling and we educate people in
multicultural counseling class about different cultures it doesn't mean
that every person you meet from that culture is going to embrace every principle of that culture
it's a starting point for st to for understanding or for trying to get a better understanding of
that person's perspective but every person is a unique individual every person with a
mental health problem is likely going to present a little bit differently temple grandin said it
best when she said when you meet a per a person with autism uh every person with i can't remember
what she said exactly now i should have written that down but basically the ju the crux of her
quote was every person with autism is different and you can't assume that every autistic person
is going to fit into this mold you can't assume that every person with depression is going to
fit into a mold and i could go on with and replace that with each different uh diagnostic label
additionally the dsm provides a standardized list of symptoms for making a diagnosis
so we can bill insurance companies insurance companies don't want to pay
for everybody to get treatment let's face it they are there to make money so they want to set
a cut off that says okay we'll see people we'll pay for people to get treatment once it's gotten
this bad if you don't meet the diagnostic threshold does that mean that you don't
have a problem does that mean there's nothing you can do absolutely positively not
it means that you may not meet the insurance company's threshold but if you're experiencing
impairment in your quality of life then by all means let's do something about it if you started
getting a cold you wouldn't wait until you had pneumonia before you would do something about it
you'd probably start doing something about it i know for me i start taking zicam and increase my
intake of you know garlic and things like that i love garlic so i look for any excuse to eat garlic
but i start drinking more fluids making sure i'm getting more rest because i don't want
to get to the point where i'm diagnosable with a pneumonia so it's important to recognize the dsm
the term disorder this is another thing that i really really really dislike that's
in the dsm because i feel that is unduly pathologizing we don't say somebody has um
a diabetic disorder we don't say that they have flu disorder we don't say that they've got
you know fill in the blank there are a few things that they put the term disorder after but they we
don't say they have cancer disorder we say they have cancer they have diabetes you know we don't
feel the need to put disorder after it because that is that's just such an ugly word it's so
uh pathologized and stigmatized in our society disorder communicates that something's wrong
with you and it may just be that you are different it may just be that you are
responding based from a place of your experiences so i don't like the term disorder when i talk
about major depression that's it i don't say major depressive disorder when i talk about anxiety
that's it it's not anxiety disorder i try to get away from that having
or not having a dsm diagnosis should not legitimize or delegitimize how you feel
too often people are so eager and that i've talked to that they're so eager they're like
please give me this diagnosis you know i want to have this diagnosis to legitimize how i feel
well you feel how you feel it doesn't matter what i call it it matters that you feel like crap and
let's help you figure out what to do to feel better likewise if you don't meet the criteria
for a diagnosis or like in the case of cptsd it's not even in the dsm does that mean you don't
have a problem does that mean that you are living your optimal quality of life well heck no however
uh it's not in the dsm so what do we do you treat it you address it you take steps to figure out
how am i not feeling my best how am i not experiencing my highest quality of life
and what can i do to improve it having a diagnosis in my experience over 20 some odd years being in
the profession often creates a self-fulfilling and self-limiting prophecy now what do i mean by that
sometimes people get a diagnosis and
like borderline personality disorder i will use that one because it has gotten a very bad rap over
the decades and when people get that diagnosis they feel they sometimes feel hopeless
they're like i have this and it's untreatable and incurable and you know there's nothing i can do so
they may not even attempt to do much or they may give up on treatment if they try one thing and
it doesn't work they may just be like well see the research is right there's nothing that can be done
when in actuality and thank you marsha linehan she was one of the first to really
do some groundbreaking work to show that it is very very treatable the self-limiting prophecy
comes is kind of related in that some people feel like well i have this
diagnosis i have this and i'll use the word disorder which means i can never feel
good i can never feel like everybody else does i'm always going to have depression
i'm always going to have ptsd and that's not necessarily the case depression for example
can have episodes and remissions personality disorders can experience great improvements
if not even full remissions through adequate appropriate treatment so assuming
that you can't have the highest quality of life that you want is self-limiting and i encourage
people to really think what does my rich and meaningful life look like and how can i best work
towards it now you may not be able to get all the way there you know there are some things that are
self-limiting but i want encourage you to look at people with physical health issues
and ways that they have overcome or exceeded what people expected them to be able to do
well if they can do that with physical health issues why can't we do that with mental health
issues okay so box over i hope that gives you a little bit of an idea about how important it is to
recognize the involvement of the mind and the body in mental health and physical health