"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."

As I work on my next post, the neurobiology of eating disorders, I thought I'd share a little personal writing with you guys. I have spent many years in recovery from an eating disorder, and I have finally found pride in recovery rather than relapse. Keep an eye out for my next post, soon!

The sweatshirt draped along her pointed shoulders is a few sizes too large and does nothing to hide her unmistakable disappearing act. Her friends have their arms around her happily, though something about the way they touch her looks as if they feel they must be delicate with her. She is angular, breakable. Her smile seems forced and painful on her hollowed face that appears both timeworn and youthful at once. A bag of grapes, one cup exactly, sits in front of her on the lunch table.

Though pictures may be worth a thousand words, there are many words that cannot be seen behind the gloss of this photograph, but I remember. That girl chewed each of her red grapes thirty-six times, no more, no less, before she swallowed it and started over again. Inside the backpack by her feet hides a book, Life Without ED, a guide to eating disorder recovery, which her friend, Will, had given her just hours before. He was trying to reason with her, but she shoved the book into the depths of her backpack and his concern into the darkest corners of her mind before anyone could reveal her to herself. Though she smiled, there was a chill in her bones that served as an ever-present reminder of just how far she had fallen. Just before this picture was taken, she hurried to the nurse’s office to weigh herself, as she did every day since her mother took the scale away from her. Ninety-one. Ninety. Eighty-nine.

Days after this picture was taken, she would be rushed to the hospital with blood pressure too low to be read by any machine. She would spend the next few months narrowly avoiding hospitalization, desperate to reach a goal that I would eventually realize was an endless abyss. Three months after that picture was taken, I would call Will and admit that I needed help. I finally pulled Life Without ED out of the back of my closet and accepted that I couldn’t continue to live this way; I packed it with the rest of the things that I would take to an eating disorder treatment facility, where they would finally attempt to extinguish my fears of carrot cake and my own existence. As I nourished myself, body and soul, that girl began to seem as distant and faded as the photograph I hold in my hands.

            For a while, everyone thought I was cured, and so did I. I went out with friends for dinner and even dessert when I wanted to. The layer of dust on the dark wood of my guitar cleared away as I used it as an escape when things got to be too much to handle. I asked for help when I needed it and was unashamed to admit when I was upset or hurt or afraid. I began to write in the journals that, for so long, had only contained numbers. For the first time, I was able to reach out for help without forcing my body to scream it to the world. After a few months back in the real world, however, I began choosing the lower calorie option on the menu, weighing myself every morning and night, smiling only when the number was plummeting. Months later, what had started as little, unnoticed slips had turned into a full-blown relapse. For a few years, I would find myself in a revolving door in and out of treatment and feared that I would never recover. My weight had become a roller coaster, sometimes climbing as high as one hundred and twenty pounds, sometimes plummeting into the nineties or eighties; what I ate was just as varied, sometimes two thousand calories a day and sometimes nothing at all for days on end. I had lost myself in the numbers. She had taken over, promising that she could fix it all. I let her.

I was never quite capable of asking for what I needed. My memories of my childhood are littered with voices telling me that there were people that had it worse, that I should not complain that I had to leave yet another place I had called home, that another person in my life had walked out the door with no explanation. I was sensitive, and the people around me couldn’t understand how I felt; I learned to bottle it up rather than be ridiculed for letting it out. My family chose to brush everyone’s problems under the rug, and all of us learned to abuse something to manage the inner conflict that grew within us. My family was loving and their intentions were always pure, but just because people love us doesn’t mean they always know how to love us in the right way. I bottled it up, unable to tell anyone about the places my mind wandered at night, the things I hated the most about myself, the endless list of things I blamed myself for. I allowed my body to do the talking, my sharply protruding ribs screaming for help rather than my voice. I was constantly asking, “Am I skinny enough, yet?” Truly, I wanted to ask, “Am I good enough yet?”

I tried desperately to recover, but like a drug or an old lover you know you shouldn’t go back to, I told myself I would let her in again, just for a little while. Occasionally, I gave in for too long and when I looked in the mirror, there she was again staring back at me with a face that looked just barely human. After years of attempts to disappear and striving to recover, I began to create boundaries and allow myself to take control. Although I built walls to separate us, I still felt her in there somewhere, building a nest within my neurons, pulling at the axonal pathways in my mind. Mostly, she was a silent bystander, but she reared her ugly head when the eating disorder world and the real world met inexplicably. I would be forced to realize that although I am no longer her puppet, her voice still echoes in my skull, trying desperately to pull me back in, her last attempt to take my life.

After seven years of attempting recovery, I finally found a therapist that helped me recognize these remaining thought distortions and find what it meant to be truly healthy. Anne helped me shed light on the parts of my life that I had so long hidden in the darkest corners. Oddly enough, the more I cleared the dust away from my past, the more I was able to move on to a future when I didn’t need my eating disorder to survive the pain, something I had never accomplished in treatment. It’s sad that almost a hundred thousand dollars of treatment bills had done nothing but restore my physical health; that the people treating my disorder thought, just as I had, that it was solely about the weight. After years of rediscovering and recreating myself, I have realized that I did not want to disappear because I liked the void behind my collar bones or the valley between my hips, but because I felt inadequate and undeserving.

“It’s not about the number.” That’s all Anne would tell me. I stepped on the scale every morning and every night, sometimes a few times in between, and wondered if it’s not about the number – then what? Why did I stand on this slab of glass day in and day out desperate to see a lower number? What did the number symbolize that made me so desperate for a change? For a while, I had no idea what those glowing red numbers staring back at me could have meant. After years of treatment, I would find that the number was a way to cope with fear. It was two digits that I could control rather than a chaotic, disappointing world that I couldn’t. I was afraid of ending up like the many loved one’s whose talent, personality, happiness and beauty had been leeched from them, sucked into the black hole of mental illness. With a long history of mental illness in my family, I felt I was doomed to follow suit. I could never allow myself to be happy because in my mind, I knew it was too good to be true. My life was spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. The number was not just my relation to gravity, but a way to consolidate the overwhelming anxiety. It was my fear of losing control, my fear of loved ones leaving, my fear of never getting anywhere with my life, my fear of not being good enough for anything or anyone I wanted. It was wanting control when people continued to inexplicably walk away. It was being afraid that I wasn’t the one in control of my own destiny. It was my fear of being, somehow, simultaneously too much and not enough. The funny thing was, even after I knew all of this, it didn’t make it easier to recover. It’s never enough to know what’s plaguing you – that would be too easy. You’ve got to learn how to heal, too.

I chose to take the control back, channeling that energy into something more productive. I decided that the best way to control what was happening to me was to understand it. I dove into the research, hoping to find answers. Although I never found a cure, I found hope, inspiration and purpose. I discovered that there is a neuronal galaxy within me, a symphony of action potential melodies to make sense of this chaotic world. I was amazed at the miracle it is to be breathing, to be thinking. How unlikely is it that billions of neurons can communicate just perfectly enough to appreciate the beauty of a sunset, to tell someone that you love them. I found hope in the miracle it is to be alive.

As I read through the research, I realized how little we truly knew about the miracle that exists within us. I found that research, although much better than it was just ten years ago, still doesn’t know enough about mental illness to effectively treat it. In finding this, I realized that I needed to stop blaming myself for not being cured yet. I was being treated by a flawed system that was simply doing its best. I dedicated myself to finding answers and pursued a degree in psychology with the hope of going into neuropsychological research. I was desperate to help the many men and women that I had met who were struggling, but in the process, I also saved myself.

I tried to destroy myself because I could not find something to like. I could tell you that I hated my thighs and my high pitched voice, but I couldn’t tell you one quality I appreciated. Until I discovered the woman I aspired to be without the disorder, I was only my eating disorder. It took me years to realize that instead of being “the girl with the eating disorder,” I could be anything, so long as I could rid myself of those demons. In discovering my passion for research, I had finally found my purpose and could finally let go of the disorder that had plagued me for so long. Recovery was not about the weight gain, but about defining myself as a scientist, a writer, a musician, a loyal friend, a survivor.

Most people view recovery linearly: lose weight, get sick, gain weight, get better. I was often pressured to “just do better” because I had “gotten too much help to be this stupid.” Yet it wasn’t stupidity, it was an addiction. Just like an addiction, I wouldn’t be able to stop abusing my body until I dealt with the many reasons I felt I deserved to suffer. I would have to pick up my guitar, write until my hands ached, discover my favorite neurotransmitter and help others until I realized that I no longer needed “eating disorder” in the list of what defined me. There was no straight line from dying to recovering, but a series of highs and lows, sometimes falling from the highest of highs to rock bottom. Eventually, I would find a middle ground that my treatment team called “recovery.” The thoughts still echo quietly in my head, telling me that I have to fall back, but unlike before, I know now that it is my decision.

Next to the picture of her collapsing in on herself is a picture of me, seven years later. While her face was hollowed and struggled to smile, my face is full, my cheeks flush with excitement and can’t seem to hide the smile that is spreading across my face. My little cousin sits on my lap, my blonde hair brushing against her rosy cheeks, my graduation cake on the table beside us. I don’t worry about the size of my body in the picture, but about ensuring that I can capture this moment to remember forever. Just the day before, I had walked across the stage as they announced my name in the list of graduates in Psychology. For the first time in my life, I felt proud of my accomplishments instead ashamed of my shortcomings.

I spent the weekend with friends and family, moved by their love and support, something that would have overwhelmed her. We stayed up until the break of dawn, laughing and reminiscing about just how far I’ve come, while she would have been long gone by now. My friend Meg and I spent a day on hiking trails, something that would have caused her legs to give out and the world around her to go black all those years ago. We sipped coffee by the sea, something that may have caused her heart to take its last beat. My recovery has not been simple, nor has it ever been about my weight; in finding joy in that there was so much more that life could offer, in finding a relationship, a career and friendships that gave me a reason to live, I decided that she and I could no longer coexist.

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” Aristotle

While this is a space for me to write about the science behind mental illness, I was recently inspired to write about something that I also find very important: breaking down the stigmas that surround mental illness.

Just over a year ago, when I was hoping to pursue a PhD, I was told that I should seek other paths in life because I've struggled with mental illness. Unfortunately, I quite literally have to wear my struggles on my sleeve, while some mental illness can fly under the radar. She thought she was helping me, guiding me away from a path that she thought would lead to inevitable failure. "I've never seen someone with depression get through a PhD program. I've seen them try," she told me, "but eventually they left or just barely made it through by the skin of their teeth." I was discouraged; the very thing that had launched me into mental health research was, apparently, going to be my demise in academia. I let her fuel my mental illness, catapulting me into a deep depression filled with self-deprecation and self-destruction. Just a few months later, I was half-heartedly filling out applications for graduate programs, knowing I would be rejected. With what I thought had to be a stroke of dumb luck, I got into the Master's program in Psychology. I was convinced that they made a mistake, but I decided to dive in, anyway. 

This week, in my Clinical Psychology seminar, a wonderful professor came in to teach us about the models of treating mental illness. We were learning about Marsha Linehan, the psychologist that created the innovative Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). "You're probably wondering how someone comes up with a therapy that could help so many people with difficult to treat disorders," my professor said. "She revealed recently that she had struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder and was suicidal, the issues she now helps to treat." The year-long knot in my stomach began to loosen as hope flooded back into my veins. I spent the next two days researching the many successful people that we had no idea struggled with mental illness and discovered that Marsha Linehan wasn’t alone. Many of the people we learn about in our history and science classes that helped shape the world we live in today had their own battles to fight. This post is as much for me as it is for all of you; we need to begin to put a face to mental illness instead of allowing it to become an entrenched societal stigma. People with mental illness are not incapable, they are not lazy, they are not “crazy.” We are different, but that does not make us worthless.

I'll list just a few of the other many successful people who have struggled with mental illness; this list is anything but exhaustive, as success and mental illness are anything but mutually exclusive.

Elyn Saks graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University, earned her Master’s at Oxford, earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, and holds a Ph.D. in psychoanalytic science from the New Center for Psychoanalysis. In 2009, Saks was selected as a MacArthur Fellow and received a $500,000 genius grant. Saks also lives with schizophrenia, a disorder with a heavy stigma and an often bleak prognosis. Her disorder began when she was a student at Oxford. She now writes about legal issues related to mental health and advocates for proper treatment: "we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources."

(Watch Elyn’s amazing TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/elyn_saks_seeing_mental_illness?language=en)

Isaac Newton, a physicist, philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and mentally ill. It’s thought that Isaac Newton had bipolar disorder, psychotic tendencies and possibly fell on the autism spectrum. This didn’t stop Newton from developing theories in modern physics, laws of planetary motion, and laws of gravity – all incredible discoveries within the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.

Winston Churchill, widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, often spoke of the “black dog of depression” that followed him throughout his life. While he spent much of his time as Prime Minister trying to determine what the next step should be in World War II with Hitler, he also spent a great deal of time contemplating ending his own life. Some say that his battle with depression may have allowed him to see hope in the hopeless of World War II, and that his bouts of mania were responsible for the 43 books that he wrote.

Buzz Aldrin became the second man to walk on the moon, piloting the first human lunar landing in history. Famous and beloved, Buzz had his share of struggles that we couldn’t see. After coming back to Earth, the fame and changes got the best of him and he fell into a deep depression and an even deeper battle with alcoholism. Following his struggles, he became a chairman of the National Mental Health Association.

Others include Abraham Lincoln, J.K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Darwin, Calvin Coolidge, John Nash, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt…the list goes on for miles.

We should never allow our illnesses to deter us from our dreams, but rather inspire us to run faster toward them. Never allow anyone to tell you otherwise. Yes, these illnesses are obstacles, but as the old saying goes, nothing worth having will ever come easy.

“We are not put on this earth to see through one another. We are put on this earth to see one another through.” - Gloria Vanderbilt

Every thirteen minutes, we lose someone to suicide in the United States alone. For each of the victims we lose to suicide, another twelve are estimated to engage in a suicide attempt or self-injurious act. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in people of all ages.

Often, people think that suicide is only a risk in young men - but anyone can suffer, so if we see the signs, it's important to act, even if the person doesn't fit what we think of as the "typical victim."It may come as a surprise to most that the most suicides occurred in people between the ages of 45 and 64, but even more surprising is that the second highest at risk age group is people 84 and older. Although completed suicide is four times more common in males, attempted suicide is three times more common in females.  No matter who is struggling, it is important that we understand the facts to get every person in pain the help that they both need and deserve.

Another common misconception is that suicide is committed by the "weak," or that these victims have simply taken the easy way out. I'll preface everything I'm about to say with this: suicide is never the answer, because life always seems hardest just before things start to fall into place. Although suicide is never the right option, just like any mental illness, it's hardly a choice. The biological mechanisms behind suicide, while not completely understood, have been studied extensively. Yes. Biological mechanisms. There are some people who simply have a greater risk of suicidal ideation and behavior in response to excessive stress. As someone who has struggled with this personally and has lost people to suicide, as well as an aspiring neuroscientist, I will whole-heartedly tell you it is not a matter of choice, but a matter of treatment. 

Maybe it's difficult to believe that such a seemingly selfish and senseless act could be the result of biology and a lack of treatment, but the evidence is overwhelming. Imbalances in neurotransmitters, genetic alterations, immune responses, changes in functions and connections in the brain all play a role, along with endless social factors.

Neurotransmitters are chemicals that send messages in the brain - without them, cells in the brain wouldn't be able to communicate with each other nor with other cells in the body. They're incredibly important in everything from regulating your heart rate to giving you the butterflies when you go on a date. Keeping in mind just how important these little chemicals are in keeping you going, let's talk about how they've been found to be altered in those who commit suicide.

Serotonin, which is known as the "happy neurotransmitter" (and my favorite neurotransmitter) has been found to be altered in many mental disorders, including depression and suicidal behavior. So, biologically, what's the difference between being depressed versus being at risk for suicide? In both depressed and suicidal patients, neurons (brain cells) related to serotonin are underactive. The difference in suicidal patients compared to depressed patients in relation to serotonin, however, can be seen in two ways. First, the fluid within the spine has very low concentrations of serotonin in those that complete suicide, but this isn't true of depressed but non-suicidal patients. Second, it has been found that in those who commit suicide, serotonin is upregulated. It's thought that the brain is desperately trying to keep itself at baseline, but keeps falling short - the upregulation is thought to be compensating for a lack of serotonin in the brain, but it's also thought that this upregulation of serotonin associated with suicide is partially genetic. It's been found that serotonin genes are altered in those who commit suicide, and some genetic changes have been associated specifically with suicidal ideation but not completed suicide. These genes may explain why some people contemplate suicide while others complete it.

While serotonin has the most evidence to back its role in suicidal behavior and thoughts, there are other neurotransmitters that are just as important, if not more so, in understanding the biology behind suicide.

GABA, the neurotransmitter associated with inhibiting cell communication, is found to be highly dysregulated in victims of suicide. This decreased inhibition is seen in areas of the brain that are associated with emotion and planning which, just like serotonin alterations, are most likely caused by changes in genes. It is also thought that adrenaline, which is responsible for your fight-or-flight response, may play a role in suicidal behavior. Adrenaline has been found to be increased in those who commit suicide. Adrenaline is a fantastic neurotransmitter when you're facing a life or death situation, but when elevated during typical events, it can cause major problems. It's helpful to have a rush of adrenaline when a mother needs to lift a car off her struggling child, but what happens to that adrenaline when there's nothing life-threatening to face? In someone who commits suicide, it often correlates with much more violent ways of committing suicide.

Along with neurotransmitters, there are parts of the brains immune system that have been associated with higher risk of committing suicide.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that's associated with plasticity in the brain. Plasticity is the ability to make changes between neurons, or the ability to "rewire" the brain so-to-speak. In people who attempt and commit suicide, BDNF is downregulated in many areas of the brain. It is thought that these changes may be associated with early-life adversity, almost as if the person is hard wired to think that life is going to be endlessly difficult. No one is completely sure how this is associated with suicidal behaviors. Hopefully, future research will shed some light on this. A lack of plasticity could be associated with the difficulty in changing the thought processes associated with suicidal ideation.

Individually, these alterations may be difficult to understand in relation to something as complex as suicide. When all of these changes come together, however, you start to see brain wide changes in brain connections and functions.

The frontal cortex (associated with planning, motivation and reward) and the amygdala (associated with emotions and emotional behavior) have been found to have altered functionality in those who commit suicide. It's even been found that the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain together, is less defined in those who commit suicide. It would make sense that those who think it is necessary to end their lives would have different pathways for reward, planning and emotionality. These neural changes associated with suicide are often correlated with increased impulsivity, impaired decision making, increased attention to negative stimuli and decreased ability to problem solve. This is where it all starts to come together.

If you're anything like me (it's okay if you're not), you're starting to wonder why any of these changes would start to happen in the brain and body if they're so detrimental. There are a million speculations about why these things could happen, so I'll tell you about the one I find the most compelling - the immune system.

Most of us have heard that early-life adversity, incredibly high levels of stress or other social factors can influence your propensity for mental illness. It's been found that one of the most relevant predictors for suicide is feeling burdensome. All of these things are, of course, relevant - it's not nature versus nurture, it's nature plus nurture. Without some negative life events, it's much less likely that you'll struggle with mental illness, especially suicide. But what happens to cause it when you do experience some major life stress? When nature and nurture create the perfect storm of disaster?

The immune system has been thought to be that strange final factor that leads to suicide. The immune system is what causes inflammation, which is associated with all types of diseases like cancer - but could it be a major contributor in suicide?

It turns out, it just might be. For years, it boggled psychologists and neuroscientists why the highest rates of suicide peaked around March and April, right as spring rolled around. It's a common misconception that Christmas leads to peak suicide rates - it would make sense wouldn't it? Cold weather and lack of sunshine in tandem with having to deal with our sometimes intolerable (yet still lovable) families? Yet year after year, just as the hours of daylight start to climb, as do the rates of suicide. Some of this may be because as daylight hours begin to increase, those that had suicidal thoughts in the winter have the motivation to follow through without the increase in mood necessary to prevent depression and suicide.

Many are speculating, however, that this may be a function of immune inflammatory response. It's almost like the immune system is telling the body to abort the mission - to take their own life. Due to abnormalities in brain immune function commonly seen in victims of suicide, particularly in microglial cell function, the increase of allergens may just create the perfect storm to lead in increased suicide rates. It is thought that cytokines, which are released by those abnormal microglial cells when there is inflammation caused by things like an injury or an allergen, may have something to do with the changes in the frontal cortex. It's been found that in brains of those who commit suicide, there is increased cytokine density and other markers of immune response compared to healthy controls. While these connections are not yet completely understood, there is hope that this could help bridge that gaps in knowledge that currently exist in suicide research. Imagine preventing suicide by suppressing the immune system? It could be a pipe dream, but it could be a break through.

If you've learned nothing else from this, I hope that it helped you realize just how much research is still needed to understand suicide in order to prevent it. We understand the very basics of suicidal behavior, but more research will tell us how and why these changes came to be and how we can alter them toward normalcy for those that currently feel hopeless.

In the meantime, while we wait for that miracle cure, please take the time to participate in some way in Suicide Prevention Week. There is such a sense of shame behind the stigma of suicide that many simply don't want to admit that they are struggling. I never wanted to admit it until I came out on the other side, but many don't live to tell the tale. Talk about it. Say something if you think that someone might be struggling. Open up the conversation for someone that may not be able to. And please, if someone trusts you enough to open up, resist the urge to be angry, the urge to tell them that they are selfish for their struggles and just listen. Stop hiding from the issue and start talking about it.

I apologize for the long hiatus, everyone!

Graduate school has proven to be much more time consuming than I could have ever imagined. I'm finally in the swing of things and you should expect a post very soon.

In honor of Suicide Prevention Week, I'll be writing about suicide to get the conversation going!

"Understanding is the first step to acceptance and only with acceptance can there be recovery." J.K. Rowling

            The statistics are jarring: 43.7 million (18.6%) of Americans will struggle with some form of mental illness each year (NIMH, 2012). Yet the stigmas still prevail within our everyday conversations: the depressed are “lazy,” the anxious are just “too high strung,” the anorexics should “just eat,” and the schizophrenics are just “crazy.” Often, we judge what we can’t understand; we can read the statistics, but without a personal struggle, it’s difficult to understand that someone who is depressed can’t simply get out of bed, that someone who is anxious can’t just calm down and someone who struggles with anorexia can’t just eat. If only it were that easy – the mental health field would collapse within days. 

It is impossible to explain in words what it is to struggle with mental illness. The scars scattered across my skin like a road map of my past would show you the many years I spent wishing I could stop harming myself, the many months I spent in treatment for my eating disorder unable to fathom being any fatter and the many nights I wondered if people would be better off without me. I struggled for many years and after many therapist visits, stays in treatment and hospitalizations, I began to lose faith that I would ever get better. My self-hate came full circle when I began to punish myself for not being able to recover. I wondered what it was within me that caused me to self-destruct rather than help myself. 

Fearing that no one would be able to help me, I began to search for answers. I very quickly learned that there isn’t one simple solution. This both terrified me and comforted me: though it was terrifying that I was being treated by a system that didn’t have a definitive way to “cure” me, it also meant that these struggles were not my fault. I quickly learned that it was not a matter of will power, but of recalibrating my serotonin, noradrenaline and even hormonal levels. I became inspired to jump into the field of clinical neuroscience, to be a part of the group of people that were searching for answers. As I begin earning my Master’s in Psychology (and hopefully, one day a Ph.D) I hope to spread awareness and hope to all of you who are affected by mental illness: whether you or a loved one is struggling, it is important to have patience through the recovery process. Why? Because it is not a simple matter of deciding to get better, but deciding to recover day after day, rewiring your brain while also allowing medication or other biological treatments to help the process along.

Yes. Biological treatments. These are biological illnesses. Just as you wouldn’t blame a cancer patient for his or her slow progress, it is important to understand the complex changes in biochemistry that must occur in order to finally feel alive again. In some cases, known as “treatment resistant” cases, there may not even currently be a truly efficient way of treating the illness, leaving the patient’s brain chemistry in an abnormal state. It is so important to have both patience and faith in those struggling with mental illness because if there is one thing we do know about mental illness, it is that a solid support system is correlated with better outcomes in everything from depression to Parkinson’s disease. 

I’m hoping that over the course of these posts, you will learn about mental illness: signs, symptoms and the biological components that will help increase understanding for everyone involved – those struggling, those supporting those struggling as well as the insurance companies who are currently quite guilty of denying patients in dire need of help the coverage they need to get better (more on that later!) It will become very clear through the alterations found in neurotransmitter levels as well as differences in activity in specific brain regions, that these disorders are anything but a choice. Hopefully, you’ll find as much hope and passion in all of this as I do, because once I realized that, just like medical problems, mental illness research lacks the knowledge to truly know how to help patients, I wanted to dive in. I wanted to save the future generations from the revolving door of treatment centers, the haphazard medication process and the unsure faces of doctors, psychiatrists and therapists. In the future, I hope to be able to help find more adequate ways of treating mental illness, but for now, all I can do is inform you of the facts and offer you a little hope.

 Having a mental illness is not a choice, but a disorder of altered brain chemistry that takes time, patience and effort to heal.

 

And if you aren’t quite as passionate about it as I am, take comfort in the fact that learning something new increases the gray matter (the cells in your brain which help to increase the speed of connectivity) in your brain!

In my next post, I’ll cover the neurobiology of depression!