You may be well acquainted with the term ‘Alzheimer’, its name synonymous with memory loss and cognitive decline. What you perhaps didn’t know was that Emil Kraepelin, the professor of Aloysius Alzheimer, is held in high regard as the father of biomedical psychiatry in modern medicine. When it comes to mental illness, it isn’t as simple as getting a blood test done and finalising a diagnosis. Unlike other areas in the medical field, the understanding of mental illness remains challenging, with its corresponding biomarker research being rather underdeveloped.
Are there biomarkers used to identify mental health disorders?
Biomarker research has been successfully applied in various areas in medicine such as cancer, diabetes, and genetic diseases. However, until now, there are no reliable methods to detect mental illness using biomarkers. The traditional method of identifying biomarkers for psychiatric illnesses is to identify
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On the contrary, if a patient does not show clinical symptoms of OCD but has a positive biomarker, treatment should not be given. This discrepancy shows how difficult it is to rely only on biomarkers to diagnose mental health disorders.
Why can't scientists depend completely on biomarkers when it comes to mental illnesses?
It is well understood that mental illnesses are not caused by a single factor– rather, they are multifactorial in nature. Take depression, for example– it may be triggered due to the death of a loved one, sexual abuse, social isolation, or a family history of depression. In addition, there are many genetic positions are common between various psychiatric diseases. One problem faced by scientists when they try to use biomarkers to diagnose mental illnesses is that approximately 50% of psychiatric patients meet the criteria for two or more different mental
...s that the DSM can also falsely determine ones specific mental health, showing the struggle between diagnosing someone with genuine disorders and excessively diagnosing individuals.
Schizophrenia is one of the most misdiagnosed illnesses of all time. Its characteristics of identification – hallucinations, delusions, lack of body control, etc. - often cause it to be identified as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Doctors and scientists still debate the major cause of schizophrenia. Through research it is carefully observed that genetic factors play a larger role in the cause of schizophrenia than environmental factors.
By using identified gene mutations that are known to cause diseases, asymptomatic individuals are able to discover if they are at risk for specific genetic conditions; this is known as genetic testing. Unfortunately, genetic testing can vary in its predictive ability. For example, Huntington disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Fragile X syndrome and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 are conditions that can be determined by genetic testing (Samen, 1996). In contrast, for multifaceted diseases like Alzheimer’s, breast and ovarian cancer and colorectal cancer, predisposition can be determined with genetic testing. However, an absolute diagnosis of those diseases cannot be made (Heshka et al., 2008).
... this study the aim was to investigate the potential role of the polymorphism of the gene of monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 in conferring susceptibility to mood disorders.” (Carlo, Altamura and colleges) Their study’s results suggest not only a clinical but also a genetic and biological difference between mood disorder subtypes. (Carlo, Altamura and colleges)
National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health. Schizophrenia. 31 Jan 2013. Web. 15 May 2014
In 1906, Dr. Alois Alzheimer discovered a “peculiar disease”. Dr. Alzheimer was an expert in linking symptoms to microscopic brain changes. Dr. Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of Auguste D., a patient who had died of an unusual mental disease. Her symptoms ranged from memory loss to unpredictable behavior. Afte...
Mental disorders affect millions of people around the world, and it is the greatest untreated group of illnesses in the world. Many of the psychological disease are incurable only treatable or suppressed. There is very little research going into mental disorders due to the l...
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been used for decades as a guidebook for the diagnosis of mental disorders in clinical settings. As disorders and diagnoses evolve, new versions of the manual are published. This tends to happen every 10 years or so with the first manual (DSM-I) having been published in 1952. For the purpose of this discussion, we will look at the DSM-IV, which was published originally in 1994, and the latest version, DSM-5, that was published in May of 2013. Each version of the DSM contains “three major components: the diagnostic classification, the diagnostic criteria sets, and the descriptive text” (American Psychiatric Association, 2012). Within the diagnostic classification you will find a list of disorders and codes which professionals in the health care field use when a diagnosis is made. The diagnostic criteria will list symptoms of disorders and inform practitioners how long a patient should display those symptoms in order to meet the criteria for diagnosis of a disorder. Lastly, the descriptive text will describe disorders in detail, including topics such as “Prevalence” and “Differential Diagnosis” (APA, 2012). The recent update of the DSM from version IV-TR to 5 has been controversial for many reasons. Some of these reasons include the overall structure of the DSM to the removal of certain disorders from the manual.
Nurnberger JI Jr, Wiegand R, Bucholz K, O'Connor S, Meyer ET, Reich T, Rice J, Schuckit M, King L, Petti T, .Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004 Dec; 61(12):1246-56.
Cancer patients often wonder if going through treatments like chemotherapy and radiation are worth the risk of the side effects, in addition to the cancerous side effects. They feel that they can’t enjoy or relax in what a short amount of time they have left because they are bedridden from the nausea and pain that treatments put them through. Patients tell their loved ones to just let them die so long as they don’t have to go through any more pain. Those who are too old, are unable to recover from the effects, or are just too far in the grips of cancer, should refuse the more harsh treatments like chemo and radiation. On the positive side, refusing treatments after a certain point can save their families from the stress and cost of hospital bills. If caught early enough, patients can opt for safer and easier routes to getting rid of cancer like surgery or by doing a stem cell transplant.
The stress of genetic testing results, that may shorten your life or have no cure, will disrupt an individual physically and emotionally. Healthy people who carry the burden of having a life-threatening disease lack strong social support and coping skills. “The anxiety of living with the likelihood of one or more specific, chronic, debilitating disease create psychological burdens that outweigh the therapeutic potential of lifestyle changes or earlier treatment due to increased vigilance” (Kjono). Survivors guilt, or a mental condition experienced by those who have survived a catastrophic event that took the life of others’. For example, a brother or a sister who carry a gene alteration, like cancer, and one sibling has an increased potential for diagnosis, the other sibling will feel guilty for escaping the increased risk. Not only can a negative genetic testing result affect your well-being, but also your ability to obtain health and life insurance. “Genetic testing may permit a much more complete and refine...
Doward, J. (2013), Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? The Observer 12 May.
Genetic Science Learning Center (2011, January 24) Mental Illness: The Challenge of Dual Diagnosis. Learn. Genetics. Retrieved February 18, 2011, from http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/issues/mentalillness.html
Genetic testing has become very popular as technology has improved, and has opened many doors in the scientific community. Genetic testing first started in 1866 by a scientist known as, Gregor Mendel, when he published his work on pea plants. The rest was history after his eyes opening experiments on pea plants. However, like any other scientific discovery, it bought conflicts which caused major controversies and a large population disagreed with the concept of playing with the genetic codes of human beings. Playing God was the main argument that people argument that people had against genetics. genetic testing became one of the major conflicts conflicts to talk about, due to the fact that parents could now have the option of deciding if they
In some cases the causes of mental illness primarily found inside the individual. Some of them have been associated with an abnormal balance of neurotransmitters in the brain. If they are out of balance the communication between nerve cell in the brain disrupted (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of psychiatrist, 2005). Hence, leading to symptoms of mental illness like depression, schizophrenia. On the other hand, genetics also plays a significant role to acquire mental disorder, which is passed...