Why aren't mental illnesses considered endocrine disorders?

I was sitting in bed just wondering, what exactly is endocrinology? I mean, I know what my endo does for me and what he does for my mom. It's the doctor who monitors diabetes and thyroid disorders. But what is endocrinology? So I looked it up and learned that it is basically the study of hormones and their effects on the body. Then I wondered, if this is so, why are people with mental illness being treated by psychiatrists? Why aren't they being treated by endocrinologists? Mental illnesses are usually caused by hormone imbalances. Hormone imbalances are caused by dysregulation of the endocrine system. Therefore, mental illness should be treated by endocrinologists. Right? I think that DBT and CBT and all those other behavioral therapies are important in helping people realize that thought distortions are a function of maladaptive coping strategies. But the underlying cause is a hormonal imbalance in the brain. So why are psychiatrists even in the picture? Why don't we spend more energy on finding the physiological basis for mental illness? Why don't we already have a cure? I am starting to see that all of the information we need to heal mental illness has already been found, the data just isn't being interpreted effectively or maybe just not trickling down into the mainstream fast enough. What exactly are they teaching in medical school anyway? #mentalillness, #thyroid, #endocrinology, #hormoneimbalance

Body, Mind and Brain

Now that I have shifted the purpose of this blog a little bit, I hope that if you have been here before, you will keep returning. I will focus a lot on metabolic disorders, endocrine disorders, nutrition and their effects on mental health. Of course there is a behavioral aspect to mental health as well. Sometimes traumas cause mental illness also. I want to understand the interplay between how the body reacts to the mind and vice versa. I want to learn how trauma causes brain damage which leads to mental illness. I also want to learn how to heal the brain after trauma so that the sufferer can go on to live a happy and functional life. I also want to be clear that there are some mental illnesses that are completely congenital and not caused by trauma at all. These conditions are present from birth.

So what is mental illness? According to the National Institiute of Health, A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person’s thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning.

There are mental illnesses and there are brain disorders. What is a brain disorder? According to dictionary.com, a brain disorder is any disorder or disease of the brain.

Can you have a brain disorder and not be mentally ill? Yes. Can you be mentally ill and not have a brain disorder. Yes. How can you tell the difference? Let's keep going and see if we can find out.

Now that I have given some well established definitions of these two terms I am going to give you mine. I believe that a mental illness is a symptom (not a disease) of an underlying brain disorder, health disorder or well established maladaptive behavior, which leads to thoughts or behaviors which cause difficulty in daily functioning for the sufferer and/or leads to behaviors which cause harm to others.
  
A brain disorder is when the brain is wired in such a way that it causes a person to feel chronic pain, discomfort and/or suffering.

Sometimes brain disorders cause mental illness and sometimes mental illness or stress can cause a brain disorder. Wild right? And sometimes not. What? Okay, so I'm making some pretty radical claims right? Don't just turn away and call foul. Here me out. Follow this blog and learn right along with me as I continue on my path of learning.

Some of the things I will be writing here are based on what I learned as a psych major way back in the dinosaur age when I was in college. I am not a psychologist now, I am actually an unemployed anthropologist. But I did spend a considerable amount of my undergrad education as a psych major. Some of the things I have learned and continue to learn about are from peer reviewed journal articles. Some of what I learned came from web searches from sources such as Harvard University, MIT, Johns Hopkins and NAMI. Mostly, I write about the things I have learned, observed and wondered about from working with high needs children for over 20 years.

So how can you tell if you or your child has a true brain disorder and not simply reacting to stressors in the environment? 
First of all, make an appointment with your primary care physician. Before the appointment, make some simple observations about yourself or your child and write them down so you don't forget. The doctor is going to automatically assume that problem behaviors in children are due to lack of discipline. If you know this is not the case, give evidence for it. Tell her, this is how you discipline your child and they still have problem behaviors. Are there any new foods in the diet? Have there been any recent profound changes to the environment such as moving to a new home, adding a new sibling or changing schools or work? What have you noticed has worked and what has not? Do you or your child complain of chronic pain that comes and goes for no apparent reason? Do you suspect you or your child is a hypochondriac? Do you have a family history of autoimmune disorders such as Hashimoto's, lupus and/or type I diabetes or hypoglycemia, etc? Ask for a full metabolic panel including a test for TSH, T4, T3, A1C and anti-bodies.

At home, do this simple test:

1. Eliminate high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes, especially red dye #40. There is inconclusive data regarding the effects of these substances but a lot of parents report improvement in ADHD symptoms after eliminating these from the diet.

2. Eat fruits and vegetables at every meal, even breakfast.

3. Make and keep a consistent daily schedule including a consistent sleep schedule.

4. Develop a well thought out and consistent discipline plan. Everyone has differing opinions on what is the best discipline method. But really, the best discipline plan is the one you stick with consistently all day, everyday.

5. Limit screen time. This includes PBS, computers and hand held video games.

6. Make sure kids get at least 60 minutes of active play every day and at least 15 minutes in the sun with no sunscreen daily.

After making these changes and ruling out physiological illness, if you or your child still has problem behaviors or thoughts, you are going to need intervention from a mental health professional. This is where you must become an expert in your or your child's condition or suspected condition. Doctors get it wrong sometimes. Well actually, they get it wrong a lot. This is because they must rely on patient reporting of symptoms in order to make an accurate diagnosis. Try to be aware of even seemingly unrelated problems. Sometimes two things go together which seem to have nothing to do with each other. You won't know until you explore the question and discuss it with your health care team.

Thank you for reading. I have to go now because we are playing soccer in the park today with friends. Please forgive spelling and grammatical errors, I did this fast without proofing


National Institute of Health
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Free Dictionary, free online dictionary

Processing

Sometimes something happens to you that is so impactful that you just have to take a couple of days to process it all. That is what is happening to me at this very moment. So I may be back sooner but I think I need to take some time to get my thought together before I make any type of statement about how I will move forward. But this time I do promise to be back.

Other resource

When Thyroid Disease Masquerades As Psychiatric Disorder

http://hypothyroidmom.com/when-thyroid-disease-masquerades-as-psychiatric-disorder/#comment-153594

I just found this other blogger also. Together we are all stronger. Please, if you are having a problem with a psychiatric disorder, have your thyroid checked first. Not just the TSH but also the other tests recommended in this article. My hope is that over time, complete evaluation and rule out of endocrine disorders will happen by a health care professional first before psych drugs are offered.

Hodge Podge- Updates, thyroid/endocrine disorders, mental health, how to do good research on your own

I want to apologize for not posting anymore after my first two posts. I actually forgot all about this. I mean it totally disappeared form my mind. I only remembered about it when I was trying to start a blog about something else and realized, I already had one started here. Oh yeah, the blog. That's right. But here I am two years later. I just want to say that treatment for thyroid cancer was totally awful, don't ever let someone tell you that thyroid cancer is the good cancer. But it actually worked out in my favor because since it also was discovered that I had other thyroid disorders as well, removing the thyroid alleviated the suffering I had experienced for years as a result of fluctuating hormones. I am now stable on thyroid replacement medication and doing well. If you are struggling with emotional ups and downs from a thyroid disorder, please feel free to post any questions you may have regarding how to advocate for the best treatment possible. I'm here as a resource to guide you on the path of well-being and health. In the future I may post links to studies that explain the connection between autoimmune disorders, stress, sleep deprivation, PTSD, depression, anxiety and metabolic disorders all related to thyroid dysregulation. If you have a specific question, I would be happy to send you on the path to finding the answers you're looking for.
I may post things from time to time about the thyroid but I am going to shift the focus of my blogging to another topic which will be about childhood brain disorders such as ADHD/ADD, autism, anxiety, bi-polar, selective mutism, etc. I think there may be a link between metabolic disorders/endocrine disorders and mental illness, specifically, childhood mental illness. I may be barking up the wrong tree on this one but I at least want to explore the possibility because this is what I believe happened to me. I won't post crap that I read on the internet unless it is from a vetted source. Most of the research I refer to comes mainly from peer reviewed articles from professional journals. This topic is interesting to me because in my family, we have a strong history of metabolic disorders, autoimmune disorders and mental illness. It could all be coincidence or not. We won't know if we do not explore the question.
I may be witnessing the process of the development of Hashimoto's in my youngest daughter right now as we speak. I will be observing her to see how that plays out. I know there are many new agey health folks out there who think they have the cure for Hashimoto's but I don't know how scientifically sound any of that is. I am certainly trying to modify the diet and do what I can by limiting fluoride, endocrine disruptors, goitrogens and all, but I don't think it will make a difference in my daughter. Hashimoto's is prevalent in the family and, at least in our case, may be completely unavoidable and unpreventable. But we will try anyway. Maybe she doesn't have Hashimoto's, but that would mean that she is experiencing extreme fluctuations in thyroid function with no known cause. She also suffers from a pretty severe anxiety disorder called Selective Mutism. I have read several articles now that show the connection between thyroid disorder and bipolar disorder. One study actually cited a connection between emotional dysregulation and thyroid fluctuations even within the range of normal thyroid function. Hyperthyroidism is associated with anxiety and rapid cycling in bi-polar patients. I believe that this is what had been happening to me. So this is a question I will be pursuing an answer to.
In the past, I would read articles just for the personal information without putting any thought in to saving citations and what not. So I have all this knowledge in my brain but I can't necessarily point you toward where exactly I found it. I am going to be changing that. I plan to start keeping a complete list of articles I have viewed and the goal is to post the citations so that others can verify what I am learning and also add input. This is a learning process for me so I don't claim to have all the answers, just some really relevant questions. As I ask the questions and seek the answers, I will share what I have learned.
If you would like to do research on your own, it is a little known fact that you can have access to medical journal databases for free if you access them from on-campus at a public university library, at least in California. I don't know how things work in other states but it should be the same. A public university is a place of learning for the PUBLIC!!! You don't have to be a student. You already paid for it with your taxes. So please take advantage of this free resource. If this is something you are interested in but don't know how to do it, ask and I will try to guide you through it. Also, ask a librarian!!! Librarians are God's gift to the world. Their whole purpose in life is to help you find information. Isn't it so amazing that we live in a country where we have access to all the world's knowledge for free? This is what it means to live in a democracy. You just have to learn to access it. I am happy to hold your hand through the process if it seems intimidating. It really isn't as hard as it seems.


Please forgive any minor misspellings or grammatical errors. I do my best but I also write these fast without the opportunity to really proof the work. Remember, I also have young children and my first priority is to their care and not to writing the perfectly perfect blog. Thank you for your time. And remember, visit the sponsors.