The future of mental health care: Brain-zapping, big data, and beauty sleep.

On January 21, Dr. Chris Frueh (who writes as Christopher Bartley) gave a talk on some of the upcoming innovations in mental health care. You can watch the whole thing here (starts at about 14:30).

There are all kinds of new treatments on the horizon, like microbiome testing, Ketamine infusion and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).

Of course most of us don’t (yet) have the opportunity to hop into one of these when the mood strikes:

“Just a little off the top, please.”

So the first line of defense against depression and anxiety is to attend to lifestyle:

Not cutting-edge, but low cost and minimal side effects.

Dr. Frueh stressed that the first two are paramount. Exercise is an effective treatment for depression.  Sleep deprivation damages your moodmesses with your hormones, and can induce psychosis-like symptoms within 24 hours.

I was relieved to note that I’m doing pretty well on most of these (assuming we’re not going to get all picky and literal about what constitutes “moderation”).

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes.

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