Seeing Anxiety and Depression: Brain SPECT Imaging

Sean was one of the cutest, brightest ten-year-old boys with blond hair and big blue eyes we had ever seen. He came into our clinic clutching Dr. Amen's book ChangeYour Brain, ChangeYcur Life, which his mother had given to him and which he had actually read from cover to cover. Based on what he had read in the book he predicted that he would have problems in his deep limbic system and left temporal lobe. When we asked him how he knew this, he said that he had periods of really bad depression, a very bad temper, and that he had tried to kill himself the year before when he was feeling really sad. He also said that sometimes he saw shadows and bugs crawling on walls when there were none. As part of Sean's evaluation we did a brain SPECT series. When we reviewed the scans with Sean it became clear that he had perfectly predicted his own SPECT results. He had exces­sive activity in the brain's emotional center (the deep limbic system) and de­creased activity in the left temporal lobe. As he and his parents looked at the images on the computer screen, tears rolled down Sean's and his mother's cheeks. "I never wanted to feel bad or be so mad," he said. "I always wanted to be good. I guess I know why I had those problems" On the right treat­ment, guided by the scans, his history, and our clinical observations, Sean's mood and temper stabilized and he thrived in school and at home.
A picture can be invaluable. Once we started our imaging work we could clearly see that these diseases were in fact brain problems. From the first month performing scans^ more than twelve years ago, imaging has changed the way we look at patients. Before we were able to perform brain scans, our approach to diagnosis and treatment was based on patient inter­views and symptom checklists, such as those found in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) published by the American Psychiatric Association.
The DSM, now in its fifth version, is considered by many to be the bible for diagnosing psychiatric illness. Unfortunately, psychiatric diagnoses in the DSM are still based on symptom clusters and have little or nothing to do with underlying brain dysfunction.

Shortly after starting the imaging work, we learned to use the scan im­ages like radar to help us target treatment toward the specific brain regions that were abnormal. The greatest aspect or our work was observing that ef­fective treatment causes a patient's brain to actually start healing. We could change brain patterns, see it on a follow-up scan, optimize brain function, and subsequently help people heal from the inside out.

Using brain imaging to help diagnose psychiatric illness was not part of our training, even though we trained at some of the most respected institu­tions in the country. Dr. Amen trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Routh at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Timberlawn Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Brain imaging is usu­ally not a significant part of the curriculum in most psychiatric training programs. Although most psychiatric illnesses are strongly brain-based, psy­chiatrists don't look at brain function because:
• imaging is usually not a part of psychiatric training programs;
• imaging is not a part of psychiatric tradition;
• most psychiatrists do not know how to read brain scans or what the results mean;
• most psychiatrists are not sure how to use information from brain scans to help with diagnosis and guide treatment;
• many psychiatrists believe it is hard to get brain imaging studies approved by insurance companies in the age of managed care;
• most psychiatrists still perceive brain imaging tools as experimental;
• many psychiatrists are uncomfortable with technology.
We have argued for more than twelve years that it is crucial for psychi­atrists to look at the brain on a day-to-day clinical basis. The field is chang­ing, although much more slowly than we would like. We are actively involved in teaching the imaging techniques in this book to psychiatric residents and other physicians around the country.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!