Typing Anxiety and Depression

At the Amen Clinics we have discovered that anxiety and depression are diverse group of brain problems that require individualized prescriptions. The Amen Clinics have pioneered the use of brain imaging techniques in clinical practice, and we currently have the world's largest brain imaging database for psychiatric indications, totaling more than 17,000 scans. We see patients from all around the world. Physicians send us patients from Eastern Asia (China, Indonesia, Japan), Europe, South America, Russia, India, Africa, and the Middle East. Based on our research with thousands of patients using brain SPECT imaging (one of medicine's most sophisticated functional brain imaging studies), we have been able to see the major anxiety and de­pression centers in the brain. Our research shows that anxiety and depression are real, brain-based, and fall into seven different categories:

1. Pure Anxiety
2. Pure Depression
3. Mixed Anxiety and Depression
4. Overfocused Anxiety/Depression
5. Cyclic Anxiety/Depression
6. Tbmpornl Lobe Anxiety/Depression
7. Unfocused Anxiety/Depression

Seeing the initial SPECT studies on our own patients dramatically changed our perceptions of mental illness. Looking at the brains of people who suffered from "emotional illnesses" helped us begin to understand the unique patterns underlying their illness and the tendency of these patterns to improve with treatment. We were, and continue to be, dumbfounded at the strong re­sistance by many physicians toward using brain imaging tools in clinical neuro­logical and psychiatric practice to evaluate serious behavioral or emotional problems. Many physicians who resist progress and the use of technology say tendencies toward specific psychiatric illnesses in brain scans cannot be seen, the scans are over-interpreted, it is too soon to use brain imaging tools on pa­tients (even though they have been available for more than a decade), and more research is needed before brain imaging can become a clinical tool.

Psychiatrists must look at the brain if we are to understand the problems we face. One of the criticisms of using brain imaging in clinical practice is that not enough published literature exists to verify its helpfulness. Yet there is a large volume of literature on brain imaging for behavioral problems. Psychiatric journals frequently feature imaging articles. Unfortunately, too few psychiatrists take the time to integrate the information. On our website, umw.brainplace.com, you can see more than 500 abstracts on brain imaging for neuropsychiatric reasons. We should image the brain in people who strug­gle with thoughts, feelings, or behaviors because the brain is complex and needs to be better understood. We need more accurate diagnostic tools and more precise treatments specific to the areas of the brain involved in partic­ular illnesses.



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