The Ethical challenges of: HansEn's disease and Neuro-Developmental & Psychiatric Disorders

Val's Take/Conjecture

• Hansen's Disease is the modern name for "Leprosy."
• Leprosy was a disease known from ancient times and it is mentioned in the Bible -- Jesus healing many people with leprosy.
  • ​Faith healers were common in the time of Jesus.
  • See Wikipedia:  History of Leprosy
  • And there have been modern faith healers such as Oral Roberts.

It is at least arguable that the Social Stigma of Leprosy was greater than Mental Illness.  Leprosy also was often quite visible and seen as a punishment of the Gods.
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Today, leprosy is curable with an MDT -- multi-drug therapy.  

There appear to still be issues, but things are a lot better than they were.

​Neuro-Developmental & Psychiatric Disorders​

• Researchers more and more recognize INFLAMMATION as a kind of UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

​Inflammation–Nature's Way to Efficiently Respond to All Types of Challenges: Implications for Understanding and Managing “the Epidemic” of Chronic Diseases (2018)

Shared Genes & Psychiatric Disorders

Environmental Toxins & Mental Health

There's also Trauma and Intergenerational Trauma that effects us biologically.
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On top of this, Neuro-Developmental and Psychiatric Disorders are now conceptualized as Multi-System, Neuro-Immune Disorders.

Further, most chronic diseases do have psychiatric symptoms.

• Genetic correlation and causal associations between psychiatric disorders and lung cancer risk (2024)
  • ​"These causal associations are unlikely to be mediated solely via smoking."
• Relation Between Diabetes and Psychiatric Disorders (2022)
• Psychiatric symptoms in multiple sclerosis: a biological perspective on synaptic and network dysfunction (2023)
• Psychiatric hospitalizations in a cohort of Danish polio patients (2007)
• ​Chronic pain and comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder: Potential mechanisms, conceptualizations, and interventions (2025)
• Patterns and prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (2024)
  • ​"Psychiatric morbidity is associated with RA [Rheumatoid Arthritis] and there is a need for psychiatric services to be made available to these patients."
• The impact of autoimmune thyroid disease on cognitive and psychiatric disorders: focus on clinical, pre-clinical and molecular studies (2025)
• Psychiatric and cognitive symptoms of Parkinson's disease: A life's tale  (2025)
• Demyelination in psychiatric and neurological disorders: Mechanisms, clinical impact, and novel therapeutic strategies (2025)​

​Underwood & Underwood Publishers
"Unclean! Unclean!  Wretched Lepers Outside of Jerusalem"  (1891)

also written in French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Russian

​I've viewed this picture along with others of Jerusalem many, many times through a Stereoscope that gave a 3-D effect.

It was originally my paternal great, grandfather's who I never knew.

He was a linguist and also likely had "bipolar disorder."

He gave up his academic post to become one with the land--a farmer --- of which he knew nothing about.

My great grandmother gave music lessons to keep the family from starving -- she died of cancer and was treated at the Mayo Clinic before her death.​

​Auto-Immune Disease, Polio and Parkinson's

• Further, I don't just have a family history of mental illness  and cancer, but also auto-immune disease, polio and neuro-degenerative disease.

Transgenerational consequences of maternal immune activation (2020)

​Val's Take/Conjecture

Psychiatric Disorders are not uncommon in a wide-range of health issues and across the lifespan.

The Biopsychosocial Model of the 1970s advocated for a more HOLISTIC view.

​Ironically, the BIOLOGY was actually given short shrift because they didn't have access to it -- or they thought what they had access to was more than it was.

We are undergoing a BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH REVOLUTION that is INTEGRATING Developmental, Physical & Mental Health.