6-1-3 Listening Depression and T
Jack is a psychiatrist, which means he treats people who have mental problems.
He has been treating patients for manyyears and he has used a variety of treatments.
Sometimes he just listens andtalks to patients and sometimes he uses meditations.
These meditations affect the brain in many different ways.
As a psychiatrist, he treats people who have mental problems.
He has been a psychiatrist for many years.
Over the years, Jack found that somepatients improved with the treatment while others didn’t improve at all.
Insome cases, a patient’s response to a treatment was the opposite of what wasexpected.
Several years ago, he had a young patient who showed him why thistreatment didn’t work.
The patient’s name was Bob. He was 21 years when hefirst came to see Jack for help.
The reason he came was because he had attempted to suicide.
If he hadn’t attempted to suicide, he wouldn’t have come to see Jack.
Bob was extremely smart and was astudent at one of best universities in the world.
However, he was oftenextremely depressed. Because of his depression, he took drugs and drank a lotof alcohol.
It was an overdose of drugs and alcohols that nearly killed him.His roommate called 911 when he discovered Bob unconscious in dormitory room.
Once Bob recovered and was dischargedfrom the hospital, he took time off from school to get help.
That was when hecame the clinic where Jack practices medicine. At first, Jack attempted to treat Bob with antidepressant medications.
He also used conversation andrecommendations to help him to rethink his life and memories.
After a fewmonths, Bob began to improve, but only moderately.
Though he cooperated withthe treatment, he continued to think negatively.
He also continued to gothrough periods of depression.
As a result, he wasn’t able to return to school.
He was still going through periods of depressions.
Because the treatment wasn’t working, Jack tried something new.
He decided to use brain scans to look inside Bob’sbrain.
Brain scans are a way to look inside the brain to see how it is functioning.
What the scans showed about Bob was crucial .
They showed that his brain was damaged in a way that nobody had anticipated.
There was significant damage to the front part of his brain.
An injury in this part of the brain can contribute to depression and negative feeling.
It can also contribute to feelings of anger and rage.
The fact that his brain was injured and unbalanced explained why the treatment hadn’t worked.
The brain scans showed why the meditations and other treatments hadn’t worked.
They had failed because they didn’t address the brain injury.
After discussing the injury with Bob and his parents, they concluded that the cause of the injury was from playing soccer.
In fact, Jack knew of quite a few soccer players who had suffered head injuries from playing that sports.
Heading a hard soccer ball many times can damage the brain.
If he hadn’t played soccer, his brain wouldn’t have been injured.
With this new information, Jack used anew medication to treat the injury.
Gradually, Bob improved, and after a few months was close to full recovery.
He no longer had any signs of depression and was finally able to return to school.
Ultimately, Bob graduated from his university with honours and entered a famous law school.
From this experience, Jack realizes that the brain imaging had allowed him to save Bob’s life.
If it hadn’t been for the scans, Bob would have ended up killing himself.
Detecting and treating the injury to the front part of his brain was the key step in his treatment.
Jack now believes that the brain scan can be an important tool for psychiatrists.
The injury brain must be healed before other treatments such as vitamins, drugs or counselling, can work.