What is the Difference Between Mental Health and Brain Health?
Our Whole health is difficult to be brought into balance if we don’t break it down into individual aspects. Each of these aspects are intra-dependent, and interdependent with one another, and they can help us gain a better awareness and understanding so that we may find ultimate health, healing and balance in our lives. There is brain health, mental health, emotional health, relationship health, spiritual health, and physical health. When we have a physical injury or illness we work on understanding the root of it and then rehabbing it. When we have a brain injury we move to understand what part of the brain is injured and then rehab that part of the brain. What if we could actually do something about our brain health that affects our mental health? What if we could rehab our brain? Would it be worth it you?
The NIH defines mental illness “as a health condition that changes a person’s thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning.” This can be labeled as anything from depression, anxiety, bi-polar, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder, to name a few conditions. All of these conditions have one thing in common, their imbalance is rooted in the brain. As Dr. Daniel Amen, double board certified psychiatrist, professor, and brain health expert, says, “why is psychiatry the only specialty in western medicine that does not look at the organ that they treat?” Why indeed with so many technological advances in being able to map the brain such as EEG’s, qEEG’s, and SPECT scans.
It is time to shed light on the biological and neurological basis mental health patients are experiencing in order to decrease stigma and discrimination. With all that has been discovered in the past 30 years about the brain, why are we still talking about mental illness and not brain health? What is the difference? Mental health is the manifestation of symptoms due to brain health imbalances. Both are rooted in the brain, one is a pattern of symptoms and one is the root of the pattern. Why not treat the root of the pattern?
Let’s take an example, my daughter, now age 18, has had PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) that started at the age of five years old due to the death of her father, and four years later the death of her grandmother. At age 16, we got a SPECT scan that showed how her brain interpreted the events (not everyone who experiences their father and grandmother dying experience PTSD) and presented a different pattern of how the blood flowed in her brain versus other people’s brains.
Because her brain interpreted severe survival threats, her experience in life was much different than other kids her age. Her short-term memory was not working and she was unable to retain information. For example, she was unable to have a story read to her or read a story herself or watch a movie because she could not remember what had just been read or seen. Because of her brain’s hyper alterness, her brain was very overactive in some aspects, like being unable to handle sunlight or have depth perception to catch a ball. In other ways it was very underactive, she didn’t have any anxiety about tests or quizzes, though she would feel terrible about herself, comparing herself to her peers, after failing each test and quiz. She was a loving spirit, always in a good mood and willing to help anyone out and did not want to see anyone or any animal in pain.
Psychiatry diagnosed her with ADD and social anxiety and wanted to put her on a stimulant medication. There was something in my mother’s instinct that shouted NO and I chose not to try that on her. I spent 13 years witnessing her struggling and looking for an answer in eastern, western, any type of medicine I could research. After countless therapies, tutors, therapists, MD’s, teachers, and one psychiatrist, not one person suggested we look at her brain. Not one. And even being an acupuncturist, I did not think about it either. Until I heard of Dr. Daniel Amen’s work and I took my daughter at age 16 to get her brain scanned.
That moment changed her life and my life. They could see the effects of PTSD in her brain. They showed us specifically she had four areas in her brain were hyperactive and one hypo active area. They spent 2 days with us and afterward, were able to explain their findings and gave us a one year treatment plan. After we left the clinic, as my daughter and I both were crying with relief, she turned to me and asked “Mama, do you think I will be able to do the things I want to do now in life?”. As a mother, my heart broke once again, and answered with a trembling “I hope so. I think so.”
After 24 hours of being on a nutraceutical that was specifically targeting all five areas of her brain that were off balance, I started to see a change. I told myself it couldn’t happen that fast and I held my breath. I didn’t have to wait much longer. The year prior she had gotten a 17% percentile on her PSAT’s. Two weeks after the scans, she took the SAT’s as a Junior in High School and scored a 76% percentile. That is a 59% increase in brain function after two weeks being on the appropriate nutraceutical. She is now in college and a successful nursing student and working as a CNA, helping others. She can now live and experience and express the true light that she is in this world.
If I had put her on a stimulant medication, as MD’s, psychiatry, and psychologists had suggested over thirteen years, I would have sent her overactive brain into potentially creating her to harm herself or others. When the Amen Clinic Psychiatrist explained this to me I was horrified. He also validated my mothering instincts that had red alarm bells going off when that treatment was suggested to me. I did not know why, I just knew it was wrong for my child. Those professionals meant well and were doing what they were trained to do, but what they neglected to understand was how my child’s entire brain was working. They were looking at the symptoms but not at the root cause. That can be extremely dangerous.
Because I understand mental health is brain health, I took a month off of my work as an acupuncturist and became a Brain Health Certified Coach from the Amen University. I wanted to understand what they have learned about the brain after 30 years of research and SPECT scans and observing over 125,00 brains. Since then, as they taught me, I have applied their knowledge and have been successfully working with people the past three years both individually and teaching classes to help improve people’s brains.
Learning disabilities, PTSD, OCD, anxiety, depression is considered a mental health issue but it is not being treated at the root cause. As a Chinese Medicine Practitioner, we are always searching for and then treating the root cause. This makes sense to me. If we look at these imbalances as brain health issues, and we treat the brain accordingly, specifically, at the root, to how that person’s brain is functioning or not functioning, we can make great strides in bringing their brain back into balance.
It is time to optimize our brains’ and build brain resiliency to prevent mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. Let’s move mental health into the 21st century and optimize each person’s brain health. For a better you. For a better world.
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In Brain Health,
Whitney