During the development and now the release of the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there has been a lot of debate among those in the neuroscience community about how disorders should be diagnosed and whether certain categorizations are too far-reaching.
Dana Alliance member and Director of the National Institutes for Mental Health Tom Insel recently argued:
the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever… Patients with mental disorders deserve better.
During last Saturday's Staying Sharp session, we covered the event live using Storify, a program that allows users to pull information from all over the internet—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.—and assemble it in one place. You can find Dana's Storify post from Staying Sharp here: http://storify.com/dana_fdn/staying-sharp-mount-vernon.
As you can see, the Storify post includes many tweets and photos, listed chronologically, and allows readers to follow the event as if they were there. Towards the end, you can find the panelists' "one important nugget" they shared with the audience.
We will be using Storify again at the next Staying Sharp event in Las Vegas in a few weeks. Stay tuned!
If you'll be in Westchester County, NY, this weekend, please join us on Saturday, May 4 for a free Staying Sharp forum. The program includes a panel discussion from 9 am to 11 am with DABI member Patrick A. Griffth, M.D., FAAN, from Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and three other neuroscientists: Desiree Byrd, Ph.D, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Christopher Edwards, Ph.D., from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC and last but not least, André A. Fenton, Ph.D., from New York University Center for Neural Science. They will be discussing the latest information on the aging brain, memory, Alzheimer’s disease, brain health and more, with a particular focus on issues that affect the African American and black communities. For the last 30 minutes the experts will take questions from the audience.
This will all be happening at the Grace Baptist Church at 52 South Sixth Avenue in Mount Vernon. Reservations are highly recommended as space is limited and these forums fill up fast. To reserve your spot register now by calling 1-8777-926-8300. For more information go to www.dana.org/stayingsharp or email stayingsharp@dana.org. We hope to see you on Saturday!
At a recent TEDxCaltech talk, Dana Alliance Executive Committee member Tom Insel, M.D., began by offering some sobering yet motivating statistics:
Suicide is the most common cause of death for individuals ages 18 to 25.
There are 38,000 suicides every year; one every five minutes.
90 percent of suicides are directly related to brain diseases and disorders.
Over the past 30 years, the mortality rates for heart disease, stroke, Leukemia and AIDS have decreased by as much as 80 to 90 percent, while suicide mortality rates remain the same.
Neuropsychiatric disorders cause the highest morbidity among all medical causes including 30 percent of all disability, mainly because such conditions affect young individuals who must manage them for a lifetime.
Helen Mayberg, M.D., a professor of psychiatry, neurology, and radiology at Emory University School of Medicine, has been awarded the fifth annual Joan and Stanford Alexander Award in Psychiatry. Each year, Baylor College bestows the honor upon “a mental health professional who has made significant contributions in research, education and clinical or community service for people suffering from severe and persistent mental illness.” Past award winners include Dana Alliance members Nora Volkow, M.D., and Eric Kandel, M.D.
Mayberg is being recognized for her pioneering work using deep brain stimulation (DBS) for patients with treatment resistant depression. The Dana Foundation funded her research in this area, which was described in a 2012 Dana grantee interview.
