Chap. 2 – Impression

For this week’s post, I chose to watch Thomas Insel’s TED Talk titled “Toward a new understanding of mental illness”. I was intrigued by this video because I have always had an interest in trying to understand the causes, effects, characteristics, and treatments of mental illnesses, especially because they are so prevalent. Insel began his talk by demonstrating the large decreases in deaths caused by physical diseases like stroke, cancer, and heart disease. Disturbingly, a statistic that has remained unchanged is suicide rates. The difference in success between physical diseases and suicide is early detection. Cases of heart disease or cancer that are detected early decreased patients’ chances of death. If we treated brain diseases as we treat physical diseases, Insel argued, it would produce less morbidity and mortality in mental illness cases. This is a different perception of mental illness than we have had in the past. Usually, diagnoses are delayed until behavioral symptoms are present. However, new technology has allowed us to detect abnormalities in the brain years before altered behavior patterns manifest.

What I found most interesting about the talk was also the most obvious. We do not diagnose mental illnesses until indicative behavior is present. This poses the question: Why are we not taking more measures to detect brain disorders early in life? Insel explains that although there is prevalent evidence to support his claims, the technology for studying such occurrences is still very new and not yet suitable for mass testing. I find Insel trustworthy and logical in his claims. It makes sense that he has access to this kind of accurate information because he works for the government. His anecdotes and statistics are notable, yet believable. I would be interested in what progress he and his department has made in treating mental illness in the future.

 My research question for the effects of detecting early brain disorders would be: Does detection of bipolar disorder before behavioral symptoms result in a better quality of life? To conduct this study, I would compare longitudinal case studies of patients who were diagnosed after behavioral signs and patients that were diagnosed before behavioral signs, based on brain scans. I would look for trends in manner and life quality of the patients from a behavioral point of view and an introspective point of view.