Mental illness in children is on the rise for many reasons: bullying at school, being in a hurricane, violence in the family and/or community, seeing a school shooting, worries about terrorism, and a change in brain chemistry at maturation. An increasing number of children are experiencing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Depression in children, including elementary age kids, is on the rise. If you search the internet you will find many facts about mental illness in children. These facts tell a story.

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A recent interesting report from the Alliance for Aging Research encourages all of us to keep our brains healthy. It s important as you age, but also important at any age.

At this time of the year, when people make all kind of resolutions, one of the most frequent is to improve our state of health in one way or another.

This can also include keeping our brain s healthy. Here is a list of actions you can take, and make part of your life to assure your brain stays in the best of shape.

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According to a report by Annette Foglino of Discover Magazine, leading researchers are making landmark discoveries on genetics, the link to depression and startling revelations about antidepressants like Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft.

Per Eli Lilly and Company, Prozac proportedly works by boosting serotonin levels in the brain. Paxil CR’s claims are that it can help regulate the balance of the serotinin chemical, making serotinin more readily available. Pfizer’s Zoloft is supposed to help correct the chemical imbalance of serotonin in the brain as well.

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We see the man on the street corner conversing with himself and dishelved. Most often turn away in fear. Why are we afraid? Because this man speaks of the human condition- of how a disordered society can break any of us.

What has been termed in the DSM IV as ‘mental disorder’ is entirely subjective and the product of the voting of psychiatric committees. The disorders are often a product of their imagination and designed for their ultimate profit. The diagnoses are categorized under the guise of help, but who benefits? Solely those making the diagnosis. In the 1970’s Rosenhan and his colleagues conducted an interesting study in which pseudo-patients were sent to mental hospitals across the country. They

has no history of psychiatric concerns and were told to tell only one lie to the psychiatrist- that they heard the word ‘thud’ in their heads. Otherwise, they were to behave ‘normally’. All of these individuals were admitted to the hospital. The only means for their release was to submit to the idea they were insane but were getting better by the ‘treatments’ of the psychiatric staff. The psychiatric establishment was appalled and said this was merely a fluke and suggested Rosenhan send pseudo-patients again and they would be able to identify them. Rosenhan stated he would send 40 pseudo-patients. The psychiatrists stated they had found the ‘fakes’ but the fact was Rosenhan actually sent no one else.

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Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach preferred by followers of the Freudian school of thought (circa 1900 s) that sees clients as psychologically ill through unconscious conflict within the mind. Freud based his approach on individual clinical case studies, which fail to be empirically tested due to the impossibility of replication. This means that the treatment of clients is an act of faith based on experience of individual therapists own experience.

The conflict that Freud wrote of was the mind s ability to protect itself from harm by creating strategies that Freud named defence mechanisms. These mechanisms prevent conscious awareness of traumatic experience from the past in childhood that could cause distress to the client. These defence mechanisms often displayed

themselves as maladaptive behaviour and presented themselves in therapy as symptomlogy of biological defects, such as twitching, nervousness and at its worst hysteria (panic attacks).

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