I started this blog a week or so ago, didn't finish it, and put it in my draft pile. I found it fascinating that when I looked at Yahoo mail today there was an article on the same topic.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/depressed-anxious-it-could-be-an-early-symptom-111272880413.html
This article on Yahoo is based more on psychiatric symptoms being indicative of a serious illness like cancer, it still links mental health to physical health.
"In the January 2015 edition of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a group of Italian researchers explored whether depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric mood disorders might be early symptoms of medical disorders, as opposed to being 'just' psychological symptoms."--Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy
Another article in The Guardian by Caroline Williams says, "George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent years studying depression, and has come to the conclusion that it has as much to do with the body as the mind. 'I don’t even talk about it as a psychiatric condition anymore,' he says. 'It does involve psychology, but it also involves equal parts of biology and physical health.'
The basis of this new view is blindingly obvious once it is pointed out: everyone feels miserable when they are ill. That feeling of being too tired, bored and fed up to move off the sofa and get on with life is known among psychologists as sickness behaviour. It happens for a good reason, helping us avoid doing more damage or spreading an infection any further.
It also looks a lot like depression. So if people with depression show classic sickness behaviour and sick people feel a lot like people with depression – might there be a common cause that accounts for both?
The answer to that seems to be yes, and the best candidate so far is inflammation – a part of the immune system that acts as a burglar alarm to close wounds and call other parts of the immune system into action. A family of proteins called cytokines sets off inflammation in the body, and switches the brain into sickness mode.
In between five to 10 years, says Carmine Pariante, a psychiatrist at Kings College London, there may be a blood test that can measure inflammation in people with depression so that they can be treated accordingly."
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/04/depression-allergic-reaction-inflammation-immune-system
Is this something new that has just been discovered? The answer to that is NO. An article in the Psychiatric Times stated that, "Numerous studies document that infections, such as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections, syphilis, hepatitis C, and zoonotic (animal) diseases, can cause mental illness. The same syndrome may be caused by different infections in different individuals, and the same infection can cause different syndromes in different individuals."
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/lyme-disease-comorbid-tick-borne-diseases-and-neuropsychiatric-disorders
This article wasn't written last week or even last year. It was posted in December 2007. This is not something doctors and researchers have just discovered. Could there really be an eventual end to mental illness? A cure? Maybe, only time will tell.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/depressed-anxious-it-could-be-an-early-symptom-111272880413.html
This article on Yahoo is based more on psychiatric symptoms being indicative of a serious illness like cancer, it still links mental health to physical health.
"In the January 2015 edition of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a group of Italian researchers explored whether depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric mood disorders might be early symptoms of medical disorders, as opposed to being 'just' psychological symptoms."--Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy
Another article in The Guardian by Caroline Williams says, "George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent years studying depression, and has come to the conclusion that it has as much to do with the body as the mind. 'I don’t even talk about it as a psychiatric condition anymore,' he says. 'It does involve psychology, but it also involves equal parts of biology and physical health.'
The basis of this new view is blindingly obvious once it is pointed out: everyone feels miserable when they are ill. That feeling of being too tired, bored and fed up to move off the sofa and get on with life is known among psychologists as sickness behaviour. It happens for a good reason, helping us avoid doing more damage or spreading an infection any further.
It also looks a lot like depression. So if people with depression show classic sickness behaviour and sick people feel a lot like people with depression – might there be a common cause that accounts for both?
The answer to that seems to be yes, and the best candidate so far is inflammation – a part of the immune system that acts as a burglar alarm to close wounds and call other parts of the immune system into action. A family of proteins called cytokines sets off inflammation in the body, and switches the brain into sickness mode.
In between five to 10 years, says Carmine Pariante, a psychiatrist at Kings College London, there may be a blood test that can measure inflammation in people with depression so that they can be treated accordingly."
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/04/depression-allergic-reaction-inflammation-immune-system
Is this something new that has just been discovered? The answer to that is NO. An article in the Psychiatric Times stated that, "Numerous studies document that infections, such as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections, syphilis, hepatitis C, and zoonotic (animal) diseases, can cause mental illness. The same syndrome may be caused by different infections in different individuals, and the same infection can cause different syndromes in different individuals."
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/lyme-disease-comorbid-tick-borne-diseases-and-neuropsychiatric-disorders
This article wasn't written last week or even last year. It was posted in December 2007. This is not something doctors and researchers have just discovered. Could there really be an eventual end to mental illness? A cure? Maybe, only time will tell.
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