The Mystical World of Psychiatry
Posted: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
by Monbinder Kaur
Vydehi Medical College
Many believe that psychiatry is not real; it's a pseudoscience, trash, and a make belief science, it's all about hypnotism etc. However, psychiatry is a medical science of a different order that deals with the mind and its intrinsic and complicated nature. Many mental disorders or illness often having an effect on the mind as well as the body can be treated by a psychiatrist. Insomnia, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, abnormally high pressure moods, various personality disorders etc are some of the common cases under psychiatry.
Anorexia is a very common psychological disorder and more so in today's young girls. Anorexia is a mental disorder where a person stops eating or eats less for fear of getting fat. Eventually such habit leads to a loss of appetite. The concept of hour glass figure is a growing trend among today's young girls and it has had disastrous effects on the body and mind. Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common psychiatric disorders among young women. 1% of all teenage girls suffer from the condition, while for boys it is 0.1%. The disease has physical side effects like infertility among women.
Like Anorexia, other common mental disorders include hallucination, depression, headache, fatigue, anxiety, confusion, erratic behaviour , hearing voices, and weight loss.
Psychiatry deals with what's inside the head. And what's inside the head is a result of some chemical imbalance which did not happen one fine day. The way people think, their beliefs, their culture and the experience, situations in life and a lot of other things tend to shape up their psyche, their thought pattern which might at moments or for a long time be seriously challenged due to circumstances. A psychiatrist through mental counselling and dosage of medicine try to revive the balance in the mind. The function of psychiatric treatment is to open the closed mind of the patient. The closed mindedness is what harms the patient who then undergoes tremendous depression, leading to symptoms of regular psychological disorder.
Schizophrenia is another common serious psychotic disorder and a consistent challenge in the field of psychiatry from a long time. It is an abnormal perception of reality that affects all five senses- sight, touch, smell, hearing, and touch. Hallucinations, bizarre delusions, abnormality in speech and disorganized thinking pattern, multiple and split personality traits, paranoia are common behavioral patterns among schizophrenic patients.
People with schizophrenia usually suffer from major depression and anxiety disorders. Substance abuse including hard drugs remains a common problem. Social problems, such as unemployment, poverty and homelessness, are common. The average life expectancy of people with schizophrenia is about 10 years less than those without. One major reason behind this is the high suicidal rate among schizophrenics. Although not hereditary, Schizophrenia tends to run in families.
Delusion is another very common psychological disorder. People can have various degrees of delusions. In such cases, the patient holds on to his own idea about something even if it is wrong. The person might become so disillusioned, that he would not budge from his viewpoint even if presented with the correct facts. A person might believe that some conspiracy is going on behind his back. This might happen in workplace or at home. This leads to unrest, abnormal behavior, and rash reactions if the degree of delusion becomes high. Sometimes the patient's beliefs get out of proportion and he might think of himself as Napoleon or Hitler or anyone else. Such short and long term delusions are common case studies in psychiatry.
Visual and/or auditory hallucinations must have had happened to everyone but the difference between normal and abnormal lies in the frequency of such hallucinations. People see things that are not there, or hear a voice as if someone called them. For people suffering from hallucinations, it happens often. Drug abuse is one reason for hallucination, where the treatment of drug abuse is more important than dealing with hallucination. For those hallucinating to a great extent without the help of any psychotic substance, psychological counselling and mild steroids and prescribed medicines work wonders.
The Department of Psychiatry in Vydehi Hospital provides exemplary clinical care, consultation services and treatment, both to inpatients and outpatients, along with crisis and emergency services. The department is devoted to the optimal recovery of patients suffering from psychiatric problems. The department has state of the art equipments for various therapies namely Biofeedback Therapy Relaxation therapy, Multi Behaviour therapy, Brain Polariser Sex Therapy, Aversion Therapy, Electro-Sleep Therapy, Electro-convulsive therapy. A different department deals with psychological issues and cases. The psychiatric services empower individuals to change their lives in a positive manner.
Article written by Ranadwip Saha , working for Vydehi Medical College Bangalore http://www.vims.ac.in Who use to write blogs and articles in web.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Stem cells are “non-specialized" cells that have the potential to form into other types of specific cells, such as blood, muscles or nerves. They are unlike "differentiated" cells which have already become whatever organ or structure they are in the body. Stem cells are present throughout our body, but more abundant in a fetus.
Medical researchers and scientists believe that stem cell therapy will, in the near future, advance medicine dramatically and change the course of disease treatment. This is because stem cells have the ability to grow into any kind of cell and, if transplanted into the body, will relocate to the damaged tissue, replacing it. For example, neural cells in the spinal cord, brain, optic nerves, or other parts of the central nervous system that have been injured can be replaced by injected stem cells. Various stem cell therapies are already practiced, a popular one being bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukemia. In theory and in fact, lifeless cells anywhere in the body, no matter what the cause of the disease or injury, can be replaced with vigorous new cells because of the remarkable plasticity of stem cells. Biomed companies predict that with all of the research activity in stem cell therapy currently being directed toward the technology, a wider range of disease types including cancer, diabetes, spinal cord injury, and even multiple sclerosis will be effectively treated in the future. Recently announced trials are now underway to study both safety and efficacy of autologous stem cell transplantation in MS patients because of promising early results from previous trials.
History
Research into stem cells grew out of the findings of two Canadian researchers, Dr’s James Till and Ernest McCulloch at the University of Toronto in 1961. They were the first to publish their experimental results into the existence of stem cells in a scientific journal. Till and McCulloch documented the way in which embryonic stem cells differentiate themselves to become mature cell tissue. Their discovery opened the door for others to develop the first medical use of stem cells in bone marrow transplantation for leukemia. Over the next 50 years their early work has led to our current state of medical practice where modern science believes that new treatments for chronic diseases including MS, diabetes, spinal cord injuries and many more disease conditions are just around the corner.
There are a number of sources of stem cells, namely, adult cells generally extracted from bone marrow, cord cells, extracted during pregnancy and cryogenically stored, and embryonic cells, extracted from an embryo before the cells start to differentiate. As to source and method of acquiring stem cells, harvesting autologous adult cells entails the least risk and controversy.
Autologous stem cells are obtained from the patient’s own body; and since they are the patient’s own, autologous cells are better than both cord and embryonic sources as they perfectly match the patient’s own DNA, meaning that they will never be rejected by the patient’s immune system. Autologous transplantation is now happening therapeutically at several major sites world-wide and more studies on both safety and efficacy are finally being announced. With so many unrealized expectations of stem cell therapy, results to date have been both significant and hopeful, if taking longer than anticipated.
What’s been the Holdup?
Up until recently, there have been intense ethical debates about stem cells and even the studies that researchers have been allowed to do. This is because research methodology was primarily concerned with embryonic stem cells, which until recently required an aborted fetus as a source of stem cells. The topic became very much a moral dilemma and research was held up for many years in the US and Canada while political debates turned into restrictive legislation. Other countries were not as inflexible and many important research studies have been taking place elsewhere. Thankfully embryonic stem cells no longer have to be used as much more advanced and preferred methods have superseded the older technologies. While the length of time that promising research has been on hold has led many to wonder if stem cell therapy will ever be a reality for many disease types, the disputes have led to a number of important improvements in the medical technology that in the end, have satisfied both sides of the ethical issue.
CCSVI Clinic
CCSVI Clinic has been on the leading edge of MS treatment for the past several years. We are the only group facilitating the treatment of MS patients requiring a 10-day patient aftercare protocol following neck venous angioplasty that includes daily ultrasonography and other significant therapeutic features for the period including follow-up surgeries if indicated. There is a strict safety protocol, the results of which are the subject of an approved IRB study. The goal is to derive best practice standards from the data. With the addition of ASC transplantation, our research group has now preparing application for member status in International Cellular Medicine Society (ICMS), the globally-active non-profit organization dedicated to the improvement of cell-based medical therapies through education of physicians and researchers, patient safety, and creating universal standards.
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