Keeping Up with the Research --- the REALITY SHOW We Shouldn't Miss

Keeping Up With the Kardasians 

​Keeping Up with the Research is no easy task & our current systems aren't doing it.

​The Future of Psychiatry and Neurodevelopmental Disorders:

A Paradigm Shift (2019)

​The current understanding of these disorders, intellectual disability, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, tics, etc., is a neurodevelopmental disorder with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder also being neurodevelopmental, and all have significant neurobiological inputs.

Some personality disorders should also be considered as being on the neurodevelopmental spectrum.

​The neurodevelopmental trajectory will include the addition of more neurodevelopmental disorders, e.g., bipolar, schizophrenia and depression as the person gets older

​Part of more ACCOUNTABILITY for the Public Mental Health System is going to be the somewhat UNCOMFORTABLE recognition of the high CO-MORBIDITY between NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS & PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS.

• What does that mean for SERVICE DESIGN?

 

• Does it help explain why the Mental Health Centers have been such a DISASTER?  

Further, while genes are important --- Maternal Immune Activation may be more illuminating.

• ​Additionally, SOCIAL BEHAVIOR as a delicate balance between INNATE and ADAPTIVE IMMUNITY --
• Might help explain the "OVERCITABILITIES" in giftedness  and the mental and physical health problems associated with the Hyper Brain, Hyper Body. 

Additionally, the UNCONSCIOUS BIAS that seems to be rampant in our descriptions and surface understandings of Gifted Overexcitabilities, Sensitivity and Reactivity...
​

• WHO is exhibiting the behavior and where they are in the SOCIAL HIERARCHY is a part of how the society is REACTING to the behavior.

And that is DE-STABILIZING things even further.
​

• People at the BOTTOM of the SOCIAL HEAP are suffering more 
• ​Low social status 'can damage immune system'  --- BBC News

• Big Think --- Jordan Peterson --- Inequality & Hierarchy Give Life Its Purpose

Further, those "shared genes" across psychiatric disorders are often going to the immune system and epigenetics.

Perhaps most challenging, these NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS and PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS are represented throughout the population.

• ​The DIAGNOSTICS and TREATMENTS are in need of improvement for everyone ---
• The truth is NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES are not all bad, but if you and everyone around you DON'T HAVE A CLUE -- it can get a lot more than BAD.

​The lost girls: ‘Chaotic and curious, women with ADHD all have missed red flags that haunt us’

After multiple burnouts, in my early 30s I finally knew why life sometimes felt harder for me. It made perfect sense, so why had no one noticed before?  (2020)

I'm not sure ADHD and other NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS are so obvious especially given assumptions regarding developmental disabilities and intelligence ---- and the fact that many people are quite BLURRED versions of the DSM 5 diagnostic categories. 

• That is one of the BIG INSIGHTS of the 21st Century

REFORM of MENTAL HEALTH has to include SUPPORT to TRANSLATE these new understandings and paradigms into IMPROVEMENTS in:

• Diagnostics
• Treatments, and
• Systems

A BIG PART of this is CONSCIOUSLY addressing SENSITIVITY & REACTIVITY and the IMMUNE MEDIATED SENSORY PROCESSING OVERLOAD that is often behind it.

A link between sensory neurons activation and the immune system (2020)

Migraine as a Sensory Processing Disorder and an Inherited tendency to lose control of inputs.  

Medical News Today:
What to know about ADHD and sensory overload  (Sept. 2021)

What I and the author of the Guardian article know ---
​Mental Health is FAR OFF TRACK -- and some of us have paid a big price for that.