When the Mind and the Brain Meet the Body....

Since deciding to go into semi-retirement about 5 years ago, pakdokter had stopped attending major psychiatric conferences and even most of the scientific lectures that were occasionally organised in town. A visiting Professor of Psychiatry from Canada was in town last night and as pakdokter had no other engagement to go to, pakdokter decided to accept the invitation to the talk to see if there was anything new to be learnt.

Professor Aval Schaffer is Head for the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Programme at the University of Toronto in Canada. He was a very eloquent speaker who discussed a complex subject in a manner that made it simple ( at least for pakdokter) to understand. How pakdokter wished that pakdokter's teachers at medical school those days had taught their subjects like this.



Although there had been no new ground-breaking discovery lately, Dr Schaffer was able to describe and explain the Neurobiology of Depression in a simple and clear presentation. He showed new evidences pointing to the fact when one suffers depression, there is a reduction of the density/volume of brain matters in specific areas of the brain as well as a hypoactivitiy of the front part of the brain and a hyperactivity of the areas in the middle core regions of the brain where emotional experiences are processed and moderated.

All these support the thesis that depression is a 'real' physical brain disease and not a weakness of character or personality or a problem with one's attitude.





There is a strong belief that genetic factors are a major contributory cause in the development of the disease ( unfortunately these genetic factors are found to be located at around 100 loci) and injury to and stress effects on the brain will set off a chain of dysregulation of brain circuits, changes in endocrine hormones, autonomic nervous system and immune system dysfunction and also changes at the cellular and subcellular levels of the brain cells which then cause the development of neuropsychiatric symptoms.


As such, it is important to emphasise and encourage the depressed patients to seriously take the antidepressant treatments and preferably to take it for a long period of time.

After a very long break from academic lectures like this, this turned out to be quite a refreshing exercise in brushing up pakdokter's little knowledge in psychiatry.