Mental Health Interventions: Genetics And Brain Development

It was recently made into a movie starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth and Kristen Stewart.

Siamese twin brains, viruses that eat patients’ memories, blind people who see through their tongues.

In The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean travels through time with stories of neurological curiosities. Masterful explanations and razorsharp wit his fans have come to expect, Kean explores the brain’s secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary people whose struggles, resilience, and deep humanity made neuroscience possible, with the lucid. He weaves these narratives gether with prose that makes the pages fly by, to create a story of discovery that reaches back to the 1500s and the ‘high profile’ jousting accident that inspired this book’s title. Studies show that half of those who will develop mental health disorders show symptoms by age 14, We know that the time between prenatal development and early adulthood is crucial for the brain.

Despite this knowledge, we continue to fail our children by ignoring problems until they reach cr levels. We have unconscionable rates of suicide, school ‘drop out’, homelessness, and involvement in the juvenile justice system, instead of investing in prevention and early intervention programs and providing access to appropriate services. So it’s not unlike how physical or occupational therapy supports a person following any physical injury. Luckily, we know that genes and physical characteristics of the brain do not operate outside of influence from the environment. Of course by influencing the environment they live in we can have a positive influence on how a brain works and continues to grow, while we can’t yet change the genetic code someone is born with.

There’re critical periods during brain development where the brain goes through rapid growth and change.

We must address most of the factors we know play a role in its development and we must address these factors early, So in case we truly look for to address mental illness.

At birth, an infant will have almost all the neurons it will ever have in its lifetime. Besides, the pruning process is especially tied to important brain development and mental health problems in adolescent years, The timing of these changes provide additional evidence for why focusing on mental health problems among youth is critical, and why waiting until someone reaches adulthood is harmful. Actually, within the first few years of life, the brain will develop twice the percentage of synapses as it will in adulthood. Now this process, called blooming, makes infancy a sensitive time for learning and engaging with outside information. Synapses that are engaged and used repeatedly become stronger.

Blooming is followed by pruning -the elimination of unnecessary connections between neurons and strengthening of important connections. And therefore the analysis below and accompanying fact sheets highlight critical information that can be used as a background for stakeholders interested in understanding and implementing preventive policies and practices in their communities. From the influence of genetics and prenatal health all the way into early adulthood, we are learning more about the critical points in brain development and life experiences that increase the risk for or provide protection against the development of mental health disorders. So, studies around the country prove over and over again that we are able to prevent or mitigate the effects of mental illness and allow individuals to live fulfilling, productive lives in the community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWMuGeEeStA

We know how to act early. Then again, the information below presents a timeline of important factors we know are harmful to mental health throughout the early lifespan, and highlights a couple of programs and policies that address risk factors and increase protective factors with intention to promote the prevention and early intervention of mental illness.

Risks and protective factors are often used as a framework for addressing problems that impact prevention and early intervention of mental illness.

These four categories provide a decent framework for exploring the different ways we can support people in reaching their recovery goals, while there’s some overlap among the categories and no exact formula for how much a specific factor will affect an individual.

While protective factors are helpful and support recovery, risk factors are harmful and impede recovery. We have chosen to address harmful or helpful factors in four categories. Essentially, the categories are. Then, it’s crucial to acknowledge the influence of genetics and brain development, while a lot of the helpful and harmful factors discussed below address environmental factors.