A New Way To Think About Mental Health

In honor of World Mental Health Day, it's time to start rethinking our approach to mental illness.

The chemical imbalance theory isn’t getting us anywhere on mental illness. Americans remain more anxious and depressed than ever with at least 1 in 5 diagnosed with a mental or substance disorder despite rising use of antidepressants. About half of Americans are expected to meet the criteria for mental illness at least once in their lifetime while the rates get higher as the population gets younger.

But it’s not just anxiety and depression that are on the rise. Other disorders previously thought of as “rare” have become increasingly common. Rates of autism have more than tripled since 2000. The number of people with bipolar disorder jumped from between 0.4 to 1.6 percent in the mid-1970s to between 4 and 7 percent in the early 2000s.

Recent research also suggests current treatments aren’t working, as if the number of cases rising with prescriptions weren’t proof enough. A study last year from a team of researchers in Saudi Arabia found antidepressants don’t raise the quality of life over time. Another paper published in the journal of Molecular Psychiatry last summer exposed antidepressants as having little more effect than placebos, leading some psychologists to reject the assertion that depression is altogether caused by a chemical imbalance.

Clearly, we need a new way of thinking about mental health. Harvard Clinical Psychiatrist Christopher Palmer offers us one in his book, “Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health — and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More.”

“The research to date suggests that different disorders might not actually be all that different from each other,” Palmer writes, “even though symptoms can vary widely.”

A study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), for example, examined 2,400 people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar disorder, their first-degree relatives, and people without any such ailments.

They found that people with the disorders were different from the normal controls, but they couldn’t tell any of the diagnostic groups apart from each other. In other words, there were abnormalities in the brains and bodies of people with these disorders, but no significant difference at all between those with bipolar disorder, those with schizoaffective disorder, or those with schizophrenia. If they are truly different disorders, how can that be?

Palmer presents his theory of “Brain Energy” to suggest that our mental crisis is a metabolic crisis. The brain, after all, is just another organ that’s function relies on proper diet and lifestyle choices.

“Metabolism is, in fact, the only way to connect the dots of mental illness,” Palmer explains, emphasizing the principle of Occam’s Razor. “If there is a simpler explanation for something in medicine, that explanation is more likely to be true.”

The Harvard researcher pulls together the latest literature linking mental illness to dysfunction of the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell that regulates metabolism. Mitochondria are now understood to be responsible for far more than mere production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). These primary organelles produce and regulate neurotransmitters, immune function, stress responses, and hormones. They are constantly multiplying in a process called mitochondrial biogenesis wherein they replicate to expand their capacity for cell growth and maintenance. When mitochondria aren’t working properly, neither is the cell. When our cells don’t function properly, neither does the body. Mitochrondrial dysfunction is what lays the groundwork for chronic disease.

“Mental disorders — all of them — are metabolic disorders of the brain,” Palmer argues. “Essentially all the risk factors for mental and metabolic disorders are the same.”

Palmer points out, for example, that it’s been long understood individuals with mental disorders typically die far sooner than otherwise healthy people.

“All mental disorders — even mild or common ones, like anxiety disorders or ADHD — are associated with shortened lifespans,” Palmer writes.

What are these people dying from so early? Most think suicide is responsible, but it’s not. Although suicide rates are definitely higher in the mentally ill, the early deaths in this group are primarily due to heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes – metabolic disorders.

Mitochondria are thrown off course when we don’t eat right, sleep right, or move right. Sedentary lifestyles paired with drugs and alcohol can disrupt their proper function and feed both chronic disease and mental illness in a vicious feedback loop making us sicker and sicker.

It’s important not to simplify mental illness as merely a product of our lifestyle choices. Mental health is a complex field wherein disorders can manifest in patients for an entire constellation of reasons. At the same time, it would be a mistake to pretend our personal choices have nothing to do with our spiritual health.

Links:

New York Times: Teen Depression Rose Sharply During the Pandemic, but Treatment Didn’t Follow

Wall Street Journal: The Company That Defined Dieting Is Sorry It Told Us to Have More Willpower

Washington Examiner: New guidance ties together heart disease, obesity, and kidney problems

Daily Caller: Heart Disease Risk Skyrockets In Trans People Taking Hormones, Study Finds

Daily Caller: ‘Tidal Wave’: More And More Detransitioners Are Taking The Fight To The Doctors Who Ruined Their Lives

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