Posted by OldSchool on January 19, 2002, at 18:33:42
In reply to Re: Psychosurgery in the new millennium, posted by Blue Cheer 1 on January 19, 2002, at 16:45:22
> I agree with most of what you're saying. However, as much as I believe, too, that psychiatric disorders have neurological underpinnings, the precise mechanisms by which they're expressed (in addition to psychosocial determinants) are still too complex to be explained by neuroimaging.
But thats one of the main reasons FOR functional neuroimaging in psychiatry in the first place. To find out more about the neurological, brain based underpinnings of severe mental illness. Until functional neuroimaging began being used in psychiatry research ten or fifteen years ago, psychiatry had absolutely NOTHING to do real research with. No imaging or diagnostic tools to work with. Nothing. Zippo.
Until functional neuroimaging, all psychiatry had was psychology BS to go by. Psychiatry has rediscovered the brain in the last ten or fifteen years and much of that is due to functional neuroimaging.
Functional neuroimaging is the closest thing psychiatry has to the EEG. The EEG is Neurology's "core" diagnostic test. I think functional neuroimaging will lead to improvements in both diagnostic abilities and to new treatments.
Mark George told me himself personally, face to face in his office that functional neuroimaging will one day lead to new treatments in psychiatry. Thats part of the whole point of it...to research and find new things out about the brain as it relates to mental illness.
People who badmouth functional neuroimaging are just close minded (and sometimes intimidated by) the idea that mental illness really is in their brain. This is a huge obstacle that is so well entrenched in the mental health field...its a mindblock we all must overcome someday if severe mental illness is ever to be overcome. This mentality that mental illness is not brain based. Not until people ditch these psychological notions of severe mental illness, not until that day occurs will we ever have true equality and good quality medical research in psychiatry.
> Still, there are many journals (e.g., _Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging_; published by the International Society for Neuroimaging, _Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry_, etc.) devoted to psychiatry and neuroimaging. I suggest you do a Google search using the terms "neuroimaging psychiatry usefulness" and go to www.fmri-network.com for more information. I've emailed Dr. Pearlson about neuroimaging for BD and OCD, and he was talking about how there were only some research studies being done at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Renshaw is at Harvard.
I never heard of these people before. Keep in mind that with any new developing technology there are always going to be lots of people who badmouth new ideas. And science oriented people are particularly skeptical about new technologies. Its the "math" mentality. These people want to have everything proven to them.
Hell lots of people refuse to even admit mental illness is real and brain based. How then are you going to overcome this in the science field if so many have this mental block towards studying this area?
>One of my treating psychiatrists is both a neurologist and psychiatrist (MGH-trained). Former psychiatrists involved in my care (one active in rTMS; formerly PET imaging in OCD, and the other, a TRD specialist who took a 6-month sabbatical to study neuroimaging have told me the same.
Hmmmmm I was in the rTMS clinical trials at MUSC, the same program run by Mark George who is a bigshot neuropsychiatrist. The attitude there is rather, um, different than the attitudes expressed by the people you mentioned. They do more than a six month "sabbatical" to study functional neuroimaging there. Its more of a long haul kind of thing there.
You dont just study functional neuroimaging for six months and claim to be an expert on it.
>
> Neuroimaging will be a valuable diagnostic tool in the future, for sure, but now its use is mostly in neurodevelopmental disorders (as you mentioned). I agree with the inordinate funding dollars allocated to AIDS research, but AIDS is an infectious disease and *the* leading cause of death in some countries. (I was surprised to hear that the University of Pittsburgh recently did a liver transplant on an elderly AIDS patient -- until I heard he was a leading AIDS activist. :)Again, its the attitudes surrounding the whole entire atmosphere of the mental health field that blocks more aggressive research. Lots of bad attitudes in the mental health field. The psychology mentality is too well entrenched in the mental health field. It should be more of a hardcore Neurology mentality instead.
>
> I really don't think psychiatry research is getting short shrift; maybe 10 years ago.I disagree totally. I think there is very little really good research in psychiatry and what there is of it is not being expedited aggressively. Its slow as dirt and too little in quantity.
Old School
poster:OldSchool
thread:88953
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020116/msgs/90798.html