Last week, we saw how our ingrained fear response can occasionally lead us to feel threatened and anxious even when we are objectively safe. But these fear responses are also incredibly important survival mechanisms that can keep us alive and kicking in terrifying and dangerous circumstances. Many people who go through extreme traumas retain only fragmented and distorted memories of the actual traumatic event. This memory loss occurs because the brain shuts down the areas responsible for careful thought and processing, which can distract us from reacting to the threat efficiently. Meanwhile, our bodies gear up to fight, run, or…
Comments closedMonth: May 2021
Has your anxiety increased in the last year? If so, you’re not alone. Over the past year, the social, personal, and environmental stressors of the pandemic have caused a dramatic increase in the prevalence of mental disorders—most commonly anxiety and depression. We discussed depression last week, so we know that environmental triggers can worsen or even cause episodes of depression. Perhaps even more than mood disorders, anxiety disorders are strongly impacted by social and psychological context. Anxiety disorders—which include phobias, panic disorders, and trauma disorders—are innately tied to our sense of self-preservation. Evolutionarily speaking, an attuned sense of fear and…
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May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so to continue with our trend of investigating the underpinnings of the brain, we are dedicating this month’s series to the origins and treatments of mental illness. Due in part to the innate complexity of the human brain, the roots of mental illness can be extraordinarily complicated to untangle. Many psychologists use what is known as a biopsychosocial approach to understanding mental health. This approach acknowledges that mental illness emerges from an interconnected web of biological, psychological, and social factors. Reducing any mental illness to simply a matter of faulty neurochemistry, a product of…
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