BLOG No. FIFTY

Welcome back to my blog on anxiety and depression. Today will be the last blog for a while, as the expenses to build and maintain it have cost me over 8,000 dollars. That’s a lot of dough, even for a doctor.

But much good has come of it. Several people have a read my blogs—usually directed by a friend—and have come to see me. Those patients are all better now. It’s a small price to pay for helping someone get their life back. Although I will keep the site up and available, I will not be adding any new blogs in the foreseeable future after today.

But today I want to discuss the future of psychiatry. If you Google just that, you will get a pretty wide variety of answers. Most sites talk about getting more resources out to the community, more tele-health, artificial intelligence, and the like.

But someone has to program that artificial intelligence. And those resources moving out into the community are great, unless they’re spreading the same nonsense that most providers are currently doing. Although there is a little chatter on the Internet regarding future research, I did not read one word about the Glutamic Theory.

And my loyal readers know exactly what I think of that…pthhhhhhh! (If I spelled that right, there should be slobber dripping down your screen). As previously mentioned, balancing the GABA and glutamate is paramount in sending anything other than simple unipolar depression into remission. And isn’t that our goal? So what if we doubled the number of treated patients in the next 10 years—then twice the number of patients will be 40% better.

And seeing the host of psychiatric conditions as a spectrum and not a bunch of separate diseases would go a long way in healing patients. Even if the psychiatric psyche doesn’t bond with the Glutamic theory and sing kum-ba-yah around a fire, seeing the psychiatric diseases as a spectrum would go a long way. It MUST be recognized that D2 dopamine plays a role in most anxiety and depression. We must learn, during the patient interview, to ask D2 questions: do you have racing thoughts, 0 to 60 anger, mood swings, trouble falling or staying asleep, derealization or depersonalization, and/or OCD? Not asking these questions of every anxiety and depression patient is like putting a patient on penicillin without looking at their allergies.

The future of psychiatry scares me. And I am usually an optimist. But YOU can you help me. Share these blogs with anyone that you think you would read them. And while you are doing that, I am currently writing a book on the subject, using my blogs as an outline. I hope to publish it in 2021.

Well, our time is short. And I feel a certain sadness, kind of like when one of my medical students moves on to his or her next rotation. But I am always excited when a new one comes to spend time with me. But isn’t that life?

Well, my glass of wine for the last blog it is a Nickel and Nickel Chardonnay. But I must tell you, I paid a lot more the and ten cents for it! Until we meet again, this is Dr. G saying ALWAYS keep the faith!