Young Families INSIGHTS
December 2004
Linda Swann, NAMI NC Young Families Program Coordinator, Editor

 Mental disorders are as disabling as cancer and heart disease. They are second only to cardiovascular disease in their cost to society, including costs in lost productivity.  

So it's no wonder why Dr. David Satcher says, "There is no health without mental health." Yet, America is not catching on -- and the lack of awareness hurts children, especially.  

Long after people stopped being ashamed about having cancer or diabetes, mental illness retains a powerful stigma despite its prevalence, says Satcher, who was surgeon general of the United States from 1998 to 2001. 

One in five Americans has a diagnosable mental disorder each year, adding up to 44 million people, including 13.7 million children.  

Even so, fewer than half of affected adults get help. Only one in five children does. Often, parents don't seek help because they fear they will be blamed. "Was it something I did?" or "Was it something I didn't do?" They worry about saddling their kids with a lifetime of labels. The cruelty of classmates has been called "stigma squared."  

They worry about a futile search for a cure, even though 80 percent to 90 percent of mental disorders are treatable through medications and other therapies.  

Meanwhile, the children -- and the families -- suffer.  

Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States, and the third leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds.  

According to a 1999 report on suicide that Satcher authored as surgeon general, the suicide rate increased two-thirds among young black men in 15 years. It tripled among young white males, and doubled among young white females. Children ages 10 to 14 were at special risk.  

Even if troubled children don't take their own lives, their behavior can be destructive. Too often, they end up in jail.  

When it comes to kids, however, the gaps are still wide. For everyteacher or coach who recognizes a mental disorder in child and knows how to get help, there are so many others who don't.  

In a nation that spends more per capita than any other on health care, mental health still is given short shrift. Satcher says it is time to get passionate. He quotes the psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison, who was diagnosed with manic depression: "The breach between what we know and what we do is lethal."  

If we can't do it for ourselves, let's at least do it for the children.  

To read former Surgeon General David Satcher's 1999 report on mental health, go to www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html 

A follow-up report in 2001, the "Surgeon General's Conference on Children's Mental Health: Developing a National Action Agenda," is posted at www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/cmh/ childreport.htm 

The surgeon general's office also released a report on suicide in 1999. Click on www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/calltoaction/default.htm 

Satcher is now director of the National Center for Primary Care at theMorehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.  

(Source:  Rockford Register-Star, September 26, 2004) 

Significant Facts About Your Brain 

• Your brain is involved in everything you do. (No kidding!)
• Your brain is your body’s biggest user of energy, burning 20% of your caloric intake every day.
• New learning leads to new connections in your brain. That’s a good thing!
• The more you do something, the less energy the brain uses to do it.
• Experiences do matter. A healthy brain relates directly to how effective you are and visa versa.
• Brain cells are killed by chronic stress. Early damage can lead to learning disabilities.
• There are a lot of biological influences on brain. For example – men are more “left-sided;” women, more right-sided and better at bonding but at greater risk for depression.
• The left side of your brain is associated more with success. It is more analytical, has more gray matter, dense. It is also the “happy side of brain.”  The right side is associated more with pessimism.
• What is bad for your brain? Caffeine, tranquilizers, heroin, alcohol, heading a soccer ball, smoking – to name a few.
• The limbic system, deep in your brain, is involved with behavior. It controls mood and attitude and:
  • Acts as filter in interpreting experiences.
  • Bonding and limbic problems go together. For example, having a mother with post-partum depression can lead to problems later.
  • The deep limbic system and deep temporal lobes reportedly store highly charged emotional memories.
  • Your outlook is more positive when your limbic system is less active.
  • Your emotional state colors events in your life. (No kidding!)
• When we experience positive stable experiences, we are more emotionally stabile.
• The prefrontal cortex is the most highly developed part of brain. It is responsible for: attention, planning, self-monitoring, critical thinking, problem solving, organization, impulse control, learning from experience, empathy, and judgment. Children with brain disorders have great difficulty with these activities.
• If you study something for 15 minutes a day, you will become an expert.
• What you focus on matters. It matters a lot!

 (Source: Dr Daniel Amen’s workshop, “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life,” Durham, NC, March 2003. See also www.brainplace.com)

What the Brain Does When Responding to a Demand or Need

1. Anticipates problem – looks ahead
2. Shifts attention to the demand
3. Generates different possible strategies and holds them in mind
4. Chooses a strategy - evaluates
5. Incorporates prior experience into the evaluation
6. Incorporates special features of this situation into the evaluation
7. Monitors the strategy – is it working or not?
8. Adjusts the strategy if it doesn’t work
9. Performs steps 1-8 quickly.
10. Maintains calm during steps 1-8 (controls frustration & emotions).

 We call the above steps a “coherent response” to a demand. What happens when someone is not able to process such a response? Many children and adolescents with neurobiological brain disorders have deficits in the prefrontal cortex and/or limbic regions of their brains. Responding coherently to a demand or need can be a big challenge for them.

Ways in which an incoherent response happens 

Executive Functions (prefrontal cortex) – impaired in many disorders

·        Anticipating problems
·        Generating possible responses
·        Incorporating past experience
·        Prioritizing
§         Evaluating
·        Monitoring
·        Adjusting
·        Surpressing emotions

Limbic system – receives sensory information, generates emotions & associates them with memory.

• Worry – Will s/he get angry with me?  Will I have a meltdown?

• Fear – Oh no!  I’m overwhelmed!  What do I do?

• Anger – I wanted to keep playing Nintendo!  I was really enjoying it, and now I have to stop.

• Sadness – I blew it again.
  
  Anterior cingulate & basal ganglia –

   Involved in “shifting gears.”  Get stuck in anxiety-spectrum disorders.  Person can’t progress to a new task or a new thought or have to do it the same way every time.

(Source: Diane Weaver’s “The Explosive Child Workshop,” 2003.)

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