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“No one knows what causes mental illness.”
ketogenic diet is a longstanding, evidence-based treatment for epilepsy. It can stop seizures even when medications fail to.
cause of all mental illnesses. I call it the theory of brain energy.
all experience anxiety, depression, and fear at different times in our lives. These experiences aren’t disorders—they are a normal part of being human.
when these things happen at the wrong time or in an exaggerated way, they may cross the line from mental state to mental disorder.
“stress” is a mental state that affects metabolism—it takes a metabolic toll. If it occurs for prolonged periods of time or is extreme, it can lead to mental illness.
contributing factors to mental illness, including things like genetics, inflammation, neurotransmitters, hormones, sleep, alcohol and drugs, love, heartbreak, meaning and purpose in life,
If you or someone you love is affected by a mental illness, it might just change your life, too.
World Health Organization estimated that in 2017, almost 800 million people on our planet suffered from mental health disorders.
a bit over 10 percent of the world’s population, or one in every ten people.
people with psychotic disorders are usually believed to have “real” illnesses, they face a different kind of stigma.
Many people are afraid of them or dismiss them as “crazy.”
In one study looking at physician burnout, they found that those with mild burnout were three times more likely to meet criteria for major depression.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders,
“How often did you feel nervous during the past 30 days?”
five response options ranging from “all of the time” to “none of the time.”
People only post the parts of their lives that “look good,” so social media fosters unrealistic expectations and shame, not real connection.
Mental disorders are costly to society. The financial toll worldwide was $2.5 trillion in 2010 and is expected to reach $6 trillion by 2030.
He was managing to focus less on tortured ruminations and more on things that he could control.
we are back where we began, with the choice to come clean and say that for most disorders, treatments don’t work long-term for the majority of people.
In 2019, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $3.2 billion on mental health research.
in order to make real progress, we have to be able to answer the question: “What causes mental illness?” And up until now, we have failed.
Sigmund Freud famously theorized that mental disorders were due to unconscious desires or conflicts,
biopsychosocial model.1 It asserts that there are (1) biological factors, including genes and hormones; (2) psychological factors, such as upbringing and rigid beliefs; and (3) social factors, like poverty or a lack of friends,
Everyone gets depressed, but not everyone gets major depression.
This disorder can rob people of all ability to experience pleasure and enjoyment from life, and it may leave them with overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and even thoughts of suicide.
One of the most widely known of these single-cause theories is the chemical imbalance theory of depression—and in fact, of mental illness.
This theory suggests an imbalance in brain chemicals called neurotransmitters is the cause of all mental illness.
For depression, the most popular belief is that levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are too low; thus, medications that increase s...
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antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake in...
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why do people have good days and bad days, even when taking medications consistently?
Why do the medications stop working in so many people?
Unfortunately, the chemical imbalance theory doesn’t provide answers.
Another widely known theory for the cause of major depression is the learned helplessness theory.
when people are unable to change adverse circumstances in their lives, they “learn...
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Eventually they stop trying to do much at all. Why bother?
cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of talk therapy that focuses on identifying and changing thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
goal is to empower patients to challenge these thoughts and replace them with ones not so dire and hopeless.
serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.
Psychotherapy to treat depression also comes in many varieties. Some focus on relationships, others on thoughts and feelings, and others on behaviors; some focus solely on changes in the present, and others on revisiting your past or childhood.
What causes some people’s symptoms to go away without any treatment?
Inflammation is a big one.
people with chronic depression, on average, have higher levels of inflammation, as measured by different biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukins.
the gut microbiome. The human digestive system contains trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi. They produce hormones, neurotransmitters, and inflammatory molecules that get released into our gut and then absorbed into our bloodstreams.
these microbes play a role in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, autism, and even schizophrenia.
Occam’s razor—it’s a general rule or guideline, also known as the law of parsimony.
the simplest, most unifying explanation is most likely to be correct.
Why the Cause Matters—Treating Symptoms Versus Disorders
the difference between signs and symptoms
Signs are objective indicators of an illness that can be observed or measured by someone else.
