Mental Health IS Health! | Mental Health Awareness Month 2022

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, 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 factory 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 make things happen, to create physical sensations. If the body is unable to make enough neurotransmitters because it's not getting enough 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, 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. 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. 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 food, 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 you've traveled and experienced jet lag, and that's your circadian rhythm being out of whack, going, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 soapbox, I don't know what else to call it about the dsm. A lot of people 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. 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 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 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 person with autism, every person with. I can't remember what she said exactly. Now, I should have written that down. But basically 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 affect fit into a mold. And I could go on with, and replace that with each different 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 cutoff 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 or. 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 Zycam 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 or 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, 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 process. 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 un, 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, 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, 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 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. There are some things that are self limiting. But I 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, soapbox 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.