Why are we so lacking in this area?

[cjemc]

Lets face it anxiety and depression have been around since time began and 2000 years on we are still dishing out pills in a bid to cure people.

Personally I would like to see routine NHS brain scans of people with these disorders and then see which parts of the brain are negatively effected. Couldn't this approach lead to a much clearer idea of which brain parts are lacking in individuals such as you and me and lead to a clearer more direct approach to treatment?

[inCOGnito]

There is still plenty of research ongoing into anxiety and depression. There is a journal dedicated to it (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6394).

While there is investigation into the neural correlates on anxiety too (eh http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=MRI+generalized+anxiety+disorder), there are no routine NHS scans.

Trouble is it would be too expensive and time consuming to have regular routine scans. For instance, when do you scan? How often? what is the precise scanning procedure you are looking for? A standard MRI scan looks for gross abnormalities, like lesions. You won't find that in the typical brain, anxious or otherwise. What you might have are very small micro-structural changes, such as increased myleniation or white matter volume projecting from the limbic system, or hippocampal size differences, or something else. Even these would be group differences (i.e. a big group of anxiety sufferers vs healthy controls). So they won't provide a lot of useful information at the individual level, certainly very little that would be clinically relevant.

Unless the scans have clinical relevance they won't be done. It would only be useful for research purposes and then who would pay for that?

so while there is research it would probably not make much difference to get scanned routinely on the NHS (MRI waiting lists are usually pretty full too and wouldn't take the additional numbers).

There's also a side issue here in that brain scans never tell the full story. It's already known the anxiety affects the limbic system (amygdala and hippocampus), but this system will then have a direct and indirect influence on other systems (e.g. attentional networks or decision making networks). Knowing that a part of the brain is affected doesn't mean that that part of the brain is the 'cause', just that it is affected. It's likely that these parts of the brain get affected by the anxiety rather than the other way around.

What I would like to see is more work on clinically relevant research, that doesn't involve the letters CBT or work that is not just pharmacologically oriented. I'd like to see anxiety research at the forefront. How many adverts do you see for cancer charities? Or for other disabilities? anxiety needs to come out of the shadows.

[ankietyjoe]

I'd like to see more social research done on this rather than medical.

It's fairly obvious that the way we lead our lives these days has a massive impact on the rise of anxiety and depression.

The constant need for 'more' and the worship of busy, whilst neglecting social and family relationships.

Not to mention the copious amount of shit we eat and chemicals we pump into our suffering bodies.

[Rennie1989]

Scientists are still trying to figure out why some people get anxiety and depression whilst others don't. I agree with anxietyjoe in that research needs to be done on a sociological point of view.

If anything I think the Far Eastern approach to treating mental illnesses is quite good. 'Healthy' to them means being physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually healthy or in other words 'holistically healthy', whilst in the West our definition of 'healthy' seems to only be physical. They believe that a healthy diet, relaxation, exercise, being a part of a social circle and happy in ones faith keeps illnesses at bay. It makes sense because if you're stressed at work, not sleeping well, not eating properly and not taking time out for oneself it is no wonder why we get infections or stress-induced illnesses (IBS, chest pains, acid reflux etc) and sometimes looking at our lifestyle and making healthy changes is far better than taking pills.

I started a thread in the Misc forum about having a healthy lifestyle, because living healthy will help towards achieving a healthy mind. Not to mention that all of the above will make us physically healthier too, giving us better protection against infections and other health complaints.