my name is Nahum Shirota and today I’d
like to talk to you about the science
and the soul of mental illness I have a
personal relationship with mental
illness myself I’ve struggled with
depression for a long time and I
actually happen to be a science teacher
here at Ranney and it’s a unique
perspective that I find myself having
having struggled myself with depression
I can also see my students every day
struggling with one form of mental
illness or another and I can’t tell you
how much it hurts to be able to watch
somebody go through something and only
be able to be the person up at the front
of the room talking about the anatomy
and physiology of the femur it’s really
hard and I’d really try to go out of my
way to have a personal relationship with
all of my students as you probably know
adolescence is unlike any other part of
your life right your brain is developing
it has this whole concept of synaptic
pruning where it’s starting to connect
with other parts of the brain and the
mind is expanding as a result of that
and then these teenagers we put them in
the most stressful situations right
because we think that they can handle it
and for the most part they can but when
they don’t succeed when we say that you
have to learn math and science and
English and history foreign language art
and music and then we test you on it and
then we give you a number and that
number for a lot of them is a
representation of their self-worth so
when they fail it’s a punishment and I
think that we can’t afford to go on like
that at the same time they’re becoming
aware of the world around them it’s no
longer black and white their
understanding the nuance and the gray
area the different perspectives and
their emotions are starting to become
more varied but their brain isn’t yet
ready to process those emotions so when
I watch my students go through this it
makes me confused
and I wanted to learn more about my own
depression something that could help me
really process and understand it because
without understanding it you can’t begin
to get better so I’m a teacher let’s see
all these really nice pictures so I
wanted to look at the epidemiology or
the why how widespread mental illness is
everyone in here I think has a personal
relationship with mental illness whether
it is a whether you have been afflicted
by it or whether your friends your
family members or any member of your
community it is immensely widespread
almost half a billion people have a
diagnosis of a mental or behavioral
disorder and chances are that this value
is completely underreported there are
many medical professionals clinical
psychologists who believe nowadays that
depression is the number one killer in
the world why because depression can
cause lifestyle factors that cause you
to completely ignore self-care it can
cause heart disease it can cause
hormonal imbalances it can cause
substance abuse obesity and a whole wide
variety of things that might actually
hurt and kill somebody according to a
study done by the National Institute of
Mental Health if you were female you had
a one in five chance of having a mental
breakdown within that past year and if
you were 16 or 17 similar values of
those adolescents who had a mental
breakdown that’s 2.2 million 70% at a
severe impairment now from my
perspective severe impairment looked
different based on who you were in some
case it was it was a student who just
didn’t want to talk anymore
maybe they had an emotional outburst
maybe they developed a temper some cases
it was absenteeism or self-harm and in
very drastic situations it could be
suicide and that’s a 70% of teenagers
struggling with mental illness 60%
didn’t even seek treatment and
suicide is also the second leading cause
of death for people 15 to 34 it’s
incredibly widespread and we need to do
something about it so you come to the
question what’s going on in my brain
what is going on and how can I help
others there’s been a huge revolution
with regard to mental illness I don’t
know if you know this but now we look at
mental illness like a disease that’s
progress right and that’s incredible and
when you get depression you have a
diagnose you go and see a medical
professional and they help you out
ideally but I think that in order to
understand it you can start to delve
into what do these scientists think
because even if you do that that’s no
guarantee of actually getting treatment
so I looked into how what is going on in
your brain to actually cause depression
there’s eight fundamental theories the
first one is genetics according to twin
studies up to 40% of people who have
depression probably got it from a parent
on the other and this is really great
right and it’s a reason it’s like okay
it’s just in my genes I don’t need to go
outside I it’s my genes I don’t need to
worry about it anymore right well
unfortunately that doesn’t cover the
other 60% and we have no idea what
actual gene to look at we don’t even
know if there’s a specific relationship
between a number of genes and the
environment so where do we go from there
there’s the mono amine hypothesis the
idea that serotonin and dopamine and
another chemical called norepinephrine
these chemical imbalances can cause you
to actually fall into pits of despair
you’ve probably heard of drugs like
prozac paxil these are drugs that
influence the mono amine pathway and
they’ve been really useful for millions
of people unfortunately we’re likely
only treating a downstream mechanism
that’s not the actual fundamental cause
of depression there are a lot of people
who have taken these drugs and they it
had either has no effect or
unfortunately even get worse there’s
another chemical known as gab
and after looking at post-mortem studies
of people who committed suicide and had
a history of mental illness we found
that they had similar levels compared to
people who were not diagnosed
fortunately anytime we make a drug to do
it nothing works
it could be glutamate devising drugs to
influence the glutamate pathway has also
helped people with depression but as you
can see from the pie chart glutamate is
the most common neurotransmitter in the
entire brain by a targeting glutamate
we’re not only influencing emotions or
probably also influencing motor
coordination
we’re also influencing personality fear
everything so there’s got to be
something else right baby it’s brain
damaged in a lot of people who’ve had
neurodegenerative disease a lot of
people who’ve had concussions they are a
more at risk of depression unfortunately
it’s really hard to actually find an
underpinning a molecular understanding
of what’s actually going on the other
thing is maybe it’s just certain regions
of the brain are overstimulated so we
come up with electro stimulatory
therapies to try to treat it doesn’t
work may work it may help some person
really good but the other ten people we
test doesn’t work so much
two more hypotheses the first one the
next one is stress there are two parts
of the brain called the hypothalamus and
the pituitary glands that control
hormones and the part above your kidneys
known as the adrenal glands that release
adrenaline this is part this is the
stress response system and as we know
stress absolutely is a cause of mental
illness right and it causes you to
process the world in a completely
different way you feel like you’re
physically in danger unfortunately we
devised a drug to influence it doesn’t
really help last one is circadian
rhythms your sleep and wake cycle the
activity that your brain does over the
course of 24 hours we have found that if
we manipulate it a little bit it can
unfortunately we still don’t know what
the cause of depression is we have eight
fundamental theories but we still don’t
have
how it works okay so in summary there is
no uniform of theory uniform theory for
how depression works and I gotta tell
you I’m a science teacher right
this is incredibly frustrating for me
because I had I felt like like it like
science have let me down
logic and reason and and and things I
can see and feel in touch that’s my
anchor to the world right that’s how I
understand the world that’s how I help
my students come up with cognitive
schema to do it and science I felt like
I had let me down don’t get me wrong if
a person is being treated well for
depression on drugs that’s great but it
doesn’t help everybody so what did I
what could I do I was still struggling
with depression and I saw students still
doing it too so I sought to change my
behavior towards a more healthy manner I
started hanging out with friends some of
them are here today I started exercising
a lot I started doing a lot of martial
arts and really throwing myself into my
hobbies as you know depression tends to
let you make you lose control concept
with who you are so this was really
difficult
cooking reading and self-care all of
these things I thought could help me
with my depression helped me forget
what’s going on in my head and guess
what it really worked for like a week
maybe a month and sometimes I’d fall
back into a pit of despair and they know
try to reignite that kind of passion
again and it would work again but there
was something missing from this
treatment that I had devised and that I
was working with therapists to do so I
began to seek mindfulness mindfulness is
a way of seeing the world a way of
observing the present moment without
judgment one of the fundamental issues
with depression is that you lose sight
of who you are and no drug can fix that
my favorite metaphor of depression is
that you can think of yourself your
spirit your soul
whatever it is as a giant tree trunk
it’s a giant oak tree and depression or
mental illness is a vine a parasitic
organism surrounding that tree and
choking off nutrients it interweaves
through the trunk it goes through the
root system and it chokes off the
branches and doesn’t allow anything to
live drugs electro-stimulation can be
the axe that you take that hacks away at
that vine and rips them off and allows
the tree to continue to live but there
is no drug that has been built yet no
electricity military therapy that can
reignite the root system that can
restate photosynthesis and allow the
tree to thrive and grow for that you
need to turn to something besides just
the physiology of the brain we all know
that the brain can influence the way you
see the world right all you have to do
is look at somebody with a
neurodegenerative disease or a
concussion or something else right but
if the brain can influence the mind is
that a two-way street could the mind
influence the brain this is what
mindfulness can do it is a way of
so I decided to look at the science of
mindfulness I’m a scientist right
there’s a lot of issues with with the
studies a lot of confirmation biases on
the part of scientists a lot of bad
samples but in spite of all that this is
a young field and so there are five
brain regions that in response to
mindfulness will actually be enhanced in
functionality more neural activation and
these four regions are coupled they
begin to communicate with each other
more easily by the way all these brain
regions have to do with attention
emotion and self-awareness this is this
is an example of the mind influencing
the brain for the better by the way we
also observed diminished activity in the
amygdala the part of the brain
responsible for fear processing and you
can usually impulse control issues now
I’m still very uncomfortable with
mindfulness because I’m a scientist
right I need to have something I can see
and feel and touch and you don’t talk
about mindfulness without talking about
spirituality or God or something extra
from your body right so I’d like to
leave you with a quote from Carl Sagan
who said that science and spirituality
are not opposites science is a profound
source of spirituality and the fact of
the matter is is that if we want to help
our teenagers deal with stress deal with
emotional upheavals and deal with trauma
it cannot be from a strict physiological
point of view we need to reignite their
passions for life we need to reignite
their love of their selves and if they
don’t love themselves then we have to
love them unconditionally and teach them
how to love themselves thank you [Applause]
like to talk to you about the science
and the soul of mental illness I have a
personal relationship with mental
illness myself I’ve struggled with
depression for a long time and I
actually happen to be a science teacher
here at Ranney and it’s a unique
perspective that I find myself having
having struggled myself with depression
I can also see my students every day
struggling with one form of mental
illness or another and I can’t tell you
how much it hurts to be able to watch
somebody go through something and only
be able to be the person up at the front
of the room talking about the anatomy
and physiology of the femur it’s really
hard and I’d really try to go out of my
way to have a personal relationship with
all of my students as you probably know
adolescence is unlike any other part of
your life right your brain is developing
it has this whole concept of synaptic
pruning where it’s starting to connect
with other parts of the brain and the
mind is expanding as a result of that
and then these teenagers we put them in
the most stressful situations right
because we think that they can handle it
and for the most part they can but when
they don’t succeed when we say that you
have to learn math and science and
English and history foreign language art
and music and then we test you on it and
then we give you a number and that
number for a lot of them is a
representation of their self-worth so
when they fail it’s a punishment and I
think that we can’t afford to go on like
that at the same time they’re becoming
aware of the world around them it’s no
longer black and white their
understanding the nuance and the gray
area the different perspectives and
their emotions are starting to become
more varied but their brain isn’t yet
ready to process those emotions so when
I watch my students go through this it
makes me confused
and I wanted to learn more about my own
depression something that could help me
really process and understand it because
without understanding it you can’t begin
to get better so I’m a teacher let’s see
all these really nice pictures so I
wanted to look at the epidemiology or
the why how widespread mental illness is
everyone in here I think has a personal
relationship with mental illness whether
it is a whether you have been afflicted
by it or whether your friends your
family members or any member of your
community it is immensely widespread
almost half a billion people have a
diagnosis of a mental or behavioral
disorder and chances are that this value
is completely underreported there are
many medical professionals clinical
psychologists who believe nowadays that
depression is the number one killer in
the world why because depression can
cause lifestyle factors that cause you
to completely ignore self-care it can
cause heart disease it can cause
hormonal imbalances it can cause
substance abuse obesity and a whole wide
variety of things that might actually
hurt and kill somebody according to a
study done by the National Institute of
Mental Health if you were female you had
a one in five chance of having a mental
breakdown within that past year and if
you were 16 or 17 similar values of
those adolescents who had a mental
breakdown that’s 2.2 million 70% at a
severe impairment now from my
perspective severe impairment looked
different based on who you were in some
case it was it was a student who just
didn’t want to talk anymore
maybe they had an emotional outburst
maybe they developed a temper some cases
it was absenteeism or self-harm and in
very drastic situations it could be
suicide and that’s a 70% of teenagers
struggling with mental illness 60%
didn’t even seek treatment and
suicide is also the second leading cause
of death for people 15 to 34 it’s
incredibly widespread and we need to do
something about it so you come to the
question what’s going on in my brain
what is going on and how can I help
others there’s been a huge revolution
with regard to mental illness I don’t
know if you know this but now we look at
mental illness like a disease that’s
progress right and that’s incredible and
when you get depression you have a
diagnose you go and see a medical
professional and they help you out
ideally but I think that in order to
understand it you can start to delve
into what do these scientists think
because even if you do that that’s no
guarantee of actually getting treatment
so I looked into how what is going on in
your brain to actually cause depression
there’s eight fundamental theories the
first one is genetics according to twin
studies up to 40% of people who have
depression probably got it from a parent
on the other and this is really great
right and it’s a reason it’s like okay
it’s just in my genes I don’t need to go
outside I it’s my genes I don’t need to
worry about it anymore right well
unfortunately that doesn’t cover the
other 60% and we have no idea what
actual gene to look at we don’t even
know if there’s a specific relationship
between a number of genes and the
environment so where do we go from there
there’s the mono amine hypothesis the
idea that serotonin and dopamine and
another chemical called norepinephrine
these chemical imbalances can cause you
to actually fall into pits of despair
you’ve probably heard of drugs like
prozac paxil these are drugs that
influence the mono amine pathway and
they’ve been really useful for millions
of people unfortunately we’re likely
only treating a downstream mechanism
that’s not the actual fundamental cause
of depression there are a lot of people
who have taken these drugs and they it
had either has no effect or
unfortunately even get worse there’s
another chemical known as gab
and after looking at post-mortem studies
of people who committed suicide and had
a history of mental illness we found
that they had similar levels compared to
people who were not diagnosed
fortunately anytime we make a drug to do
it nothing works
it could be glutamate devising drugs to
influence the glutamate pathway has also
helped people with depression but as you
can see from the pie chart glutamate is
the most common neurotransmitter in the
entire brain by a targeting glutamate
we’re not only influencing emotions or
probably also influencing motor
coordination
we’re also influencing personality fear
everything so there’s got to be
something else right baby it’s brain
damaged in a lot of people who’ve had
neurodegenerative disease a lot of
people who’ve had concussions they are a
more at risk of depression unfortunately
it’s really hard to actually find an
underpinning a molecular understanding
of what’s actually going on the other
thing is maybe it’s just certain regions
of the brain are overstimulated so we
come up with electro stimulatory
therapies to try to treat it doesn’t
work may work it may help some person
really good but the other ten people we
test doesn’t work so much
two more hypotheses the first one the
next one is stress there are two parts
of the brain called the hypothalamus and
the pituitary glands that control
hormones and the part above your kidneys
known as the adrenal glands that release
adrenaline this is part this is the
stress response system and as we know
stress absolutely is a cause of mental
illness right and it causes you to
process the world in a completely
different way you feel like you’re
physically in danger unfortunately we
devised a drug to influence it doesn’t
really help last one is circadian
rhythms your sleep and wake cycle the
activity that your brain does over the
course of 24 hours we have found that if
we manipulate it a little bit it can
unfortunately we still don’t know what
the cause of depression is we have eight
fundamental theories but we still don’t
have
how it works okay so in summary there is
no uniform of theory uniform theory for
how depression works and I gotta tell
you I’m a science teacher right
this is incredibly frustrating for me
because I had I felt like like it like
science have let me down
logic and reason and and and things I
can see and feel in touch that’s my
anchor to the world right that’s how I
understand the world that’s how I help
my students come up with cognitive
schema to do it and science I felt like
I had let me down don’t get me wrong if
a person is being treated well for
depression on drugs that’s great but it
doesn’t help everybody so what did I
what could I do I was still struggling
with depression and I saw students still
doing it too so I sought to change my
behavior towards a more healthy manner I
started hanging out with friends some of
them are here today I started exercising
a lot I started doing a lot of martial
arts and really throwing myself into my
hobbies as you know depression tends to
let you make you lose control concept
with who you are so this was really
difficult
cooking reading and self-care all of
these things I thought could help me
with my depression helped me forget
what’s going on in my head and guess
what it really worked for like a week
maybe a month and sometimes I’d fall
back into a pit of despair and they know
try to reignite that kind of passion
again and it would work again but there
was something missing from this
treatment that I had devised and that I
was working with therapists to do so I
began to seek mindfulness mindfulness is
a way of seeing the world a way of
observing the present moment without
judgment one of the fundamental issues
with depression is that you lose sight
of who you are and no drug can fix that
my favorite metaphor of depression is
that you can think of yourself your
spirit your soul
whatever it is as a giant tree trunk
it’s a giant oak tree and depression or
mental illness is a vine a parasitic
organism surrounding that tree and
choking off nutrients it interweaves
through the trunk it goes through the
root system and it chokes off the
branches and doesn’t allow anything to
live drugs electro-stimulation can be
the axe that you take that hacks away at
that vine and rips them off and allows
the tree to continue to live but there
is no drug that has been built yet no
electricity military therapy that can
reignite the root system that can
restate photosynthesis and allow the
tree to thrive and grow for that you
need to turn to something besides just
the physiology of the brain we all know
that the brain can influence the way you
see the world right all you have to do
is look at somebody with a
neurodegenerative disease or a
concussion or something else right but
if the brain can influence the mind is
that a two-way street could the mind
influence the brain this is what
mindfulness can do it is a way of
so I decided to look at the science of
mindfulness I’m a scientist right
there’s a lot of issues with with the
studies a lot of confirmation biases on
the part of scientists a lot of bad
samples but in spite of all that this is
a young field and so there are five
brain regions that in response to
mindfulness will actually be enhanced in
functionality more neural activation and
these four regions are coupled they
begin to communicate with each other
more easily by the way all these brain
regions have to do with attention
emotion and self-awareness this is this
is an example of the mind influencing
the brain for the better by the way we
also observed diminished activity in the
amygdala the part of the brain
responsible for fear processing and you
can usually impulse control issues now
I’m still very uncomfortable with
mindfulness because I’m a scientist
right I need to have something I can see
and feel and touch and you don’t talk
about mindfulness without talking about
spirituality or God or something extra
from your body right so I’d like to
leave you with a quote from Carl Sagan
who said that science and spirituality
are not opposites science is a profound
source of spirituality and the fact of
the matter is is that if we want to help
our teenagers deal with stress deal with
emotional upheavals and deal with trauma
it cannot be from a strict physiological
point of view we need to reignite their
passions for life we need to reignite
their love of their selves and if they
don’t love themselves then we have to
love them unconditionally and teach them
how to love themselves thank you [Applause]
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