Affect

You can’t judge a book brain by it’s cover.

So much of our work with ADHD is based upon necessary, but limited pre-technology diagnosis. For years we had to rely on appearances, and didn’t have the means to measure function, much less see specific areas of the brain as they function. As a consequence of using only one set of glasses we still use phenomena as targets, and many critique valid, peer reviewed findings regarding hard brain evidence.

As you will see in this video, ‘anxiety‘ can take on many different faces – and cognitive anxiety, you heard it first here, is simply not in the books yet – strange, but true. If we don’t look for it, we just can’t see it – and so much of ADHD symptoms are associated with anxiety. I see so many who say they aren’t anxious, but suffer from complete mental shutdown from cognitive anxiety. You will get it with this video.

Sign up either on the blog here for email updates or over at my Channel on YouTube to keep up with the many planned ADHD and CorePsych videos. Might as well stay posted for these small, but useful tidbits from years of ongoing office work, – evolved from when we couldn’t see what we were shooting at.

And, of course, not all OCD is ADHD, but with a history and significant additional findings we will get the medications dead wrong if we miss ‘dopamine‘ and only make the ‘serotonin‘ diagnosis.

Drop me a comment to see what you think about these findings.

Company Claims EEG Scans Can Help Identify ADHD (science.slashdot.org)
Teaching Children about ADHD – A Book Review (adderworld.com)
The Addictive Potential of ADHD Stimultants According to JAMA (medicineandtechnology.com)

—>Tweet this post below! For ADHD Medications: Download complimentary white paper Precise Solutions now, – and get ready for the complete version of ‘The Patient’s Guide’ details to follow. Get Neurotransmitter Details Here

Tagged as: ADD and ADHD, ADD/ADHD diagnosis and treatment, ADHD Medication, ADHD Stimulant Medications, affect, anxiety, Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Child and Adolescent, cognitive anxiety, Health, medication details, Mental health, obsessive compulsive disorder, Therapeutic Window, youtube

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Overview
When I began training in psychiatry, almost 40 years ago, much of the diagnostic psychiatric world evolved from affect thinking: depression and anxiety, euphoria, and misperceptions of reality. In a word, we began with a Freudian, affect driven, trauma driven set of patterns.

Beyond Cigars

Freudian thinking, and careful observations of behaviors were all we had until technology arrived.

Meeting Anna Freud
In fact, one of the highlights of my early training in Philadelphia was meeting Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, [the founder of child psychoanalysis] at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis after her interesting presentation on her book, Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, hosted by the Association. [See her remarks on personal qualities of psychoanalysts, and you will understand more of my early interest.]

Now functional brain science, SPECT, fMRI, qEEG, is changing the way we make brain and psychiatric diagnosis. With the understanding of brain function we inevitably change the way we think about the patient in the room… the way we actually make the diagnosis.

These are interesting contemporary comments by Harvard Professor John Ratey from a User’s Guide to the Brain:

“The transition from trauma to biology has unfortunately failed to wean clinicians from affect-centered diagnosis. If you are unhappy and decide to seek help, the main thrust of the diagnostic process begins with an inquiry into how you feel. From this initial information, diagnosis and treatment proceed, as a rule, by either sifting through your psyche for sources of guilt, anger, or unfulfilled longing, or by attempting to modify the affective symptoms pharmacologically, or both.”

And for an edgy bit more, read on:

[click here to continue this article…]

Tagged as: affect, brain disorders, brain imaging, cognition, fMRI, Freud, John Ratey, psychiatric diagnosis, psychoanalysis, QEEG, SPECT