The Dope

If you think that mental illness will always happen to someone else, think again. The full lifetime risk of developing a mental health disorder may be as high as 46%, at least in the crazy ole US of A, and that figure comes from a population study that specifically excluded the homeless (1). The real figure is therefore likely to be somewhat higher, maybe even as high as 50%; and while some nations show a lower incidence – for example, Denmark claims a roughly 35% lifetime risk (2) – current trends are negative (3), so mental illness will surely impinge upon your life at some point if it hasn’t done so already. 

It is a truism that most people affected by mental illness are not detected as early as they should be in the course of their illness, and most of those who are detected are neither particularly well diagnosed or treated.  The medics’ standard response is to say that changes must be made, lessons will be learned u.s.w. The odd band-wagon-jumping politician sometimes steps in and says pretty much the same thing. Most of the time, however, they are talking about new and improved pharmaceutical interventions. 

Their pharmaco-centric mind-set is not surprising. Big Pharma is one of the biggest games in town. It exerts far too much influence on university curricula designed to brain-wash medical students, and on post-qualification ‘education’ thereafter, much of which is little more than drug detailing. It rents professors and politicians and in general, behaves like a slightly less ethical but considerably more lethal Mafia (4). 

Big Pharma’s successful buying out of the FDA, for example, allowed them to promote anti-depressants and anxiolytics direct to potential consumers via TV commercials, which hugely increased psychotropic drug sales (5). This was probably not entirely helpful, as anecdotal evidence continues to emerge that anti-depressant use can trigger suicidal and homicidal psychosis in some patients (6), particularly if combined with other psychotropic drugs (7); and long-term anxiolytic use may increase the risk of dementia and death (8-10).

To be fair to the pharma companies (and I like to be fair, mostly), if the anxiolytic drugs  dementia story is true, the increased risk may only develop in certain sub-groups of patients, and it may be partly due to neuroprogression (see below).

Meanwhile, the market for psychotropes continues to grow.

The numbers of individuals presenting with a major depressive episode appear to be increasing with each birth cohort (1). There is evidence also that the average age of onset of depression is falling, from around 40 in 1988 to around 20 in 2017; with the incidence of major depressive disorder (MDD) rising by over a third in adolescents and young adults between 2005 and 2015 (11). 

Another seemingly unrelated trend is that the average age of the onset of dementia is falling, by 15 years since 1980 (12, 13). Because it is starting earlier, there are more neurodegenerative deaths in older patients. Among the over-75’s, neurodegenerative deaths have increased by 300% in men since 1989, and by 500% in women (12).

The depression and dementia trends may seem unrelated, but are probably linked. They are both signs of increased neuroprogression (14).

Neuro-what? 

Until recently depression was thought of as a transient disorder, a temporary lowering of mood which would eventually pass and leave the patient pretty much where he – or more likely she – was before the depressive episode. A bit like a cold, for example, but in the brain. That rather benign idea, however, has metamorphosed into something altogether more malignant. 

Recent research into brain structures and chemistry in depressed patients has shown clear signs of progressive brain damage in the limbic system, the hippocampus and the medial pre-frontal cortices (15 – 17). While these signs of damage may not occur in all depressed individuals (16), common findings include neuro-inflammation, altered astrocyte and microglial behavior, reduced neurogenesis, neuroplasticity and synaptic density, and increased neuronal death (15 – 18). This is, in short, a pattern of accelerated brain ageing (18); and this underlying deterioration of brain function explains why clinicians often see in their patients an increasing frequency of depressive episodes, and a progressive failure to respond to treatment (19).

Similar signs of progressive brain damage have been found in bipolar (20) and PTSD patients (21), who also often show clinical progression.

The current theory is that high levels of stress produce high and sustained levels of cortisol in the blood and in the brain, which eventually damages synapses and neurones in the circuits underlying affective and cognitive processes. The loss of these connections then contributes to the symptoms of MDD and PTSD, highly comorbid disorders that appear to have similar neurobiological underpinnings (22).

All of this relates back to a recent blog post on resilience. 

There are signs that our resilience is failing. The servicemen who fought in World Wars or more accurately Bankster Wars One and Two experienced absolutely appalling conditions for months at a time, yet the numbers diagnosed with shell shock (the old term for PTSD) were relatively small. At the slaughterhouse of Passchendaele, roughly 1% of the Allied forces reported with shell shock and 75% of those were able to return to active service without specialist treatment (23).

Fast-forward a half-century to Vietnam, a war notable for the fact that while the US armed forces slaughtered Vietnamese men, women and children with abandon and often from a great distance, more GI Joes died by their own hand after the war than were killed in active service. Fast-forward another half-century and although hard data is very difficult to obtain, it looks as if US military in the 21^st Century have become even more vulnerable.

It is typical of politicians and the MIC to prioritize offensive technology over defensive systems, and to discard damaged veterans; but the mounting numbers of mentally disabled military personnel has become a huge problem, which can no longer be brushed under the carpet (24).

I believe several different factors have damaged Western resilience. 

Firstly, there is the truly dreadful state of the food universe. Americans consume almost 2/3 of their calories in ultra-processed foods (25), have omega 6: ratios that average at around 25 (26), and a depression-inducing dysbiosis (27). This shoddy nutritional combination means that their brains, including that part of the brain where resilience resides (the VTA), is functionally and possibly structurally compromised, and the brains’ owners are therefore predisposed to poor impulse control and depressive illness.

Secondly, our schools have been undermined by a generation of intelligent but idiot (and I’m being kind) teachers and parents, whose attempts to shield their precious ones from risk and stress have left them hopelessly unfit to cope with the vicissitudes of life. This means that the millenials’ already sub-standard VTA’s are under-exercised, and under-developed. Their consequent lack of stamina, inability to deal constructively with problems and tendency to run for HR and/or lawyers at the drop of a hat, explain why many employers I know will not even invite them to interview. (Having said that, I have the honor and privilege of working with a large number of the very best of the millenials who are coherent, focused, altruistic and working to make the world a better place. They are the shock troops of the Zinzino-army.)

And thirdly, there have been the giant sucking sounds of jobs being outsourced to low pay economies, and the financial blood of the nation being drained by the bankster parasites. These twin factors have created vast swathes of the USA and Europe where there is no work, no prospects and little opportunity for children and young adults to develop identity and self-respect. This desert landscape is eroded further by the distorting mirror of Zuckerberg’s insidious FaceBook.

No wonder the neo-opioids are sweeping through the West, bringing addiction, family breakdown, suicides and OD’s in their wake. The Sackler cartel made billions of shekels in the process, but the entrepreneurial citizens of Guangdong also found a way to make a buck or two in the Fentanyl Wars (28), in a weirdly inverse version of the 19^th century Opium Wars.

Which brings us to ketamine, the former horse tranquilizer. It does work, and surprisingly quickly, to alleviate depression and to undo some of the brain damage linked to this condition (29, 30). Other drugs are being developed (ie 31), but your best options are the natural compounds Affron and HydroCurc. These treat depression and anxiety safely, effectively and extremely rapidly. I believe they will also prove to be excellent resilience enhancers and long-term protectors against neuroprogression.

For details of these compounds, see previous post ‘The Brilliance of Resilience’.

REFERENCES

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