Ketamine, once used frequently as a battlefield anesthetic during wartime and more recently as a club drug, has found new acclaim in its use to treat depression. Scientists and medical professionals have documented Ketamine’s ability to alleviate depressive symptoms in just hours, but didn’t really understand how it worked. Now new research hints at revealing the secret mechanism of action. In the most recent study, mice were injected with a stress hormone and then recorded exhibiting depressive symptoms such as refusing to eat in addition to recording the loss of synaptic connections in their brain. The mice were then given a dose of ketamine as investigators recorded surprising brain changes. The synaptic connections previously recorded, started to repair themselves after only twelve hours. In addition to repaired neuronal connections, the depressive symptoms that the mice had shown disappeared almost instantly. Ketamine therapy holds great promise in being able to quickly treat suicidal thoughts and depression, and this research helps uncover its secrets.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/11/712295937/ketamine-may-relieve-depression-by-repairing-damaged-brain-circuits

https://www.wired.com/story/lasers-highlight-ketamines-depression-fighting-secrets/amp

Thank God for Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I found this article on Medscape the other day and the contents of it are weighing heavily on my mind. Throughout my life, I have read articles and interviews that proposed highly intelligent and/or creative people were more likely deemed crazy than the general population. Having a rather high IQ myself, this generalization and it’s implications always bothered me. Being labeled “mad” or “crazy” has typically been associated with negative connotations and consequences. Why is that, I wonder?

I propose that society stops looking at mental illness as behavioral problems and mental disorders and starts looking at them as alterations in brain circuitry. Addressing these issues from a neurological wiring standpoint will go a long way in reducing the stigma attached to the diagnosis and researching treatments that address neuro function as opposed to abnormal behavior. Some of the very factors that contribute to a diagnosis of mental disease are the same ones that contribute to what society considers giftedness.

If a patient presents with a fever, a doctor does not automatically assume ear infection and begin the recommended treatment. Why then would a patient present with say…..depression…..be automatically treated with antidepressants and assume a behavioral problem instead of a brain disorder? It’s all in how you look at the glass. There is creativity and genius in what society calls madness. We need to accentuate the positive before we pounce on the so-called abnormal behavior. Let’s remove judgement and explore the neurobiology of this class of illness.

The article I am referring to is below.

Creativity and Mental Illness Link Confirmed

Caroline Cassels

Oct 24, 2012

New research confirms that mental illness is significantly more common in individuals who are in creative professions.

A 40-year, nested, case-control study of almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives showed that bipolar disorder (BD) is more prevalent among individuals in artistic or scientific professions such as dancing, research, photography, and writing compared with individuals in the general population who are not in these professions.

Further, the study revealed that schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are more common among authors, and that this group was 50% more likely to die by suicide than the general population.

“If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient’s illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment,” lead author Simon Kyaga, MD, who is a consultant in psychiatry and a research fellow in the department of medical epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, said in a release.

“In that case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost. In psychiatry and medicine generally, there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavor to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid,” he added.

The study was published online October 11 in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Comprehensive Study

According to investigators, previous research into the potential link between creativity and psychopathology has been “hampered by sample size and lack of standardized tools to assess creativity.”

In addition, they note that to be conclusive, any study examining this association should also address patients’ relatives.

The researchers extended their previous 2011 population-based study on the link between creative occupations and schizophrenia, BD, and unipolar depression.

In this new study, the researchers also included schizoaffective disorder, anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anorexia, and completed suicide.

Because previous research suggested a high prevalence of psychopathology in authors, the researchers examined this group separately. They also attempted to validate previous findings, showing there is a familial association for creative professions with schizophrenia and BD by using a larger dataset that included patients’ first-, second-, and third-degree relatives.

Finally, they looked at whether the proposed association was influenced by IQ.

More Morbidity in Authors

The investigators analyzed data from Swedish total population registries, in which the occurrence of creative occupations in 1,173,763 patients with mental health disorders and their nondiagnosed relatives were compared with that of matched population control participants.

With the exception of BD, the investigators found no positive link between psychopathology and overall creative professions.

However, the researchers found that authors suffered from schizophrenia more than twice as often as control participants. The investigators report that authors were also more likely to be diagnosed with unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse and to die by suicide.

Even after the investigators omitted all authors with any psychiatric diagnosis, they found there was still a trend for authors without diagnosed psychopathology to commit suicide more frequently than control participants (odds ratio [OR], 1.45; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97 – 2.16; P = .07).

“Thus, regardless of psychopathology, being an author seemed to increase suicide risk,” they write.

The investigators also noted that this study confirmed results from their earlier study, which showed that family members of patients with BD or schizophrenia were “significantly overrepresented” in creative professions.

They also found a link between creative professions and being a sibling of individuals with autism and being a parent or sibling of an individual diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

Further, the researchers report that IQ was generally higher in people with creative occupations but lower in individuals with psychiatric disorders and their relatives compared with people without a mental health diagnosis.

The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

J Psych Res. Published online October 11, 2012. Abstract