From the moment our ancestors chiselled their first pictograph in
stone andshaped the beginning of language, we humans have been trying to
explain our own behavior. We've held responsible everything from gods to
demons, animal spirits, Cupid's arrow, the stars, the moon, sunspots,
alcohol, mushrooms, our dysfunctional parents, our mad and maddening
culture, technology, war, peace, prosperity, the other gender, and most
recently, the almost invisible but omnipresent neurotransmitter. These
days, however, we are listening, not just to Prozac or Paxil, but to the
brain and mind together.
"For the first time ever, we're able to say to people, `This is the
way our brain work,'" says John Ratey, M.D., executive director of
research at Medfield State Hospital in Massachusetts. From dyslexia to
depression, we're beginning to understand the ways we can help balance
our brains through everything from medications to therapy to behavioral
coaching. Says Ratey: "That's magic. People start reframing their entire
lives."
As Ratey explains in these pages, different disorders are reflected
by unique alterations in brain chemistry and structure, and even "normal"
variations in temperament seem patterned, in part, by the kind of brain
you were born with. Our old distinctive between health and illness no
longer hold up. Mild depression is not qualitatively different from the
kind of drawn-blinds melancholy that sends someone to the hospitals; one
is simply a whiter shade of pale. Even seemingly dissimilar disorders may
be related: "I see more and more papers on the interrelationship between
different illnesses," notes David Comings, M.D., director of the
Tourette's Syndrome Clinic at the City of Hope National Medical Center in
Duarte, California. Comings has found that disorders like depression,
migraines, PMS and Tourette's syndrome cluster in families.
These insights have freed us. Know the brain, scientists today are
saying. And then, explains Peter Kramer, Ph.D., author of the bestselling
Listening to Prozac, you can alter "your temperament with medication, or
by choosing your challenges wisely, or through talk therapy, which has
its own biological impact. The whole point is to be able to see the world
differently, even for a moment. The goal is flexibility."
Psychology is indeed being reshaped, and what we offer here is a
report from the frontlines of research--Edward Hallowell, M.D., the
coauthor with John Ratey of the bestseller Driven to Distraction,
dissects the disorders du jour, attention deficit disorder (ADD),
explaining just what characterizes this condition and how to treat it;
neuropsychiatrist Peter Whybrow, M.D, offers a lyrical, unforgettable
tour of the soaring highs of mania and the lethal undertow of melancholy;
and Ratey himself writes about "shadow syndromes," mild forms of known
disorders that can subtly derail normal lives. Finally, psychologist
Michaele Yapko, Ph.D., reviews some key strategies for avoiding
depression. In every case, the underlying theme is the same: and
integrated approach to treatment and diagnosis, a new openness to
blending both biology and psychology, and a growing sense that we truly
are a family of man, that ordinary moods and temperaments are second or
third cousins of familiar, more severe disorders.
This compassionate and inclusive approach to treatment can
radically improve our lives. In that sense, "psychology our lives. In
that sense, "psychology is actually going back to its roots," notes
Martin Seligman, Ph.D., president-elect of the American Psychological
Association. "We want to learn all we can about curing mental illness,
but we're also taking people who aren't in bad shape at all and making
their lives even better. It's like taking talented people and turning
them into geniuses."
