Mindfulness Medication

Hey team, Over Thanksgiving break I read a book discussing findings of more modern psychiatry research with the use of brain scans and genetic studies. Although it was not the most modern anymore since it was written a few years ago, I still learned quite a bit that I’d like to share. The main takeaways I got pertain to neuroplasticity and activity in specific brain regions. Familial depression, as labeled in the book, is not a discreetly defined term but one that refers to more severe and heritable depression as the name implies. We all know that there is a genetic component to mental illness along with developmental/ environmental. We can never pin down what the exact cause is, and we probably never will, as many are required to intersect in order for symptoms to manifest and possibly persist in the case of chronic psychiatric disorders. Familial depression is depression that seems to have a dominant genetic component that is less determined by environment as shown by twin adoption/ ...

Hey team, I have been back into my understanding of authenticity and wrote this as a collection of different ideas I've taken in and conclusions I've come to. Accepting your authenticity, exactly as it is and nothing more, emerges as the remedy for suffering. This acceptance extends to acknowledging the limitations and randomness of your origin. Birth thrusts individuals into the privilege lottery, encompassing both known hardships associated with factors like skin color and family wealth, and more profoundly, the unique personalities of parents, siblings, teachers, and friends that significantly shape one's worldview and expectations. These expectations become ingrained, influencing the persona we construct and how strongly we identify with it. They often manifest as conditional love, implying acceptance only if certain criteria are met. While this might align with societal norms, it is not the true essence of love. True love is the acceptance of someone at every new momen...

Hey team!! I just finished "Endocrine Psychiatry," a book by Edward Shorter and Max Fink, and I'd like to share my understanding of endocrinology in psychiatry from what I took away from this book and add some of my own insights to the findings presented. To start, let me define endocrinology as the field of medicine dedicated to studying the various hormone systems in our body. Hormones are signaling molecules that a certain gland will secrete into the blood, where they enter general circulation and can affect every organ with receptors for that specific hormone. Cortisol is a glucocorticoid steroid, meaning it's an alteration of the typical 4-ring steroid structure. It is secreted by your adrenal gland during times when your body needs to focus, keep its eye on the prize, and deal with the here-and-now stressor. Cortisol is activated by the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal), and through a negative feedback loop, it turns off its own response. So when cortiso...

  Hey team!! Today I'd like to put into writing my understanding of the causes of depression, that is I'd like to explain a more whole-istic approach to how depression, as a debilitating disorder, arises and persists with biological and psychological manifestations.  To start I'd like to define depression as a persistent low and unpleasant mood, for long periods of time, where the amount of pleasure attainable is subjectively lowered, where quality of life is so low to the extent that one’s own existence is questioned on the basis of so little reason to go forward. This is more than the pain and hurt one feels as a specific response to an individual event that results in feelings of short lived sadness (ex. Break up, harassment, grief, ect). While these individual events can and are contributing factors to the disorder of depression, in isolation they are far from encompassing the complete and complicated subjective experience of having a depressive disorder.   My us...

Hey team! I'd like to write a post about why I'm studying pharmacy specifically and why I've stuck with it. This is to let all the folks back home know but also to remind myself of my intention, which I find helps keep my head in the right place. Pharmacy is the study and practice of pharmaceuticals (drugs). From around my senior year of high school, I started to develop an interest in medicinal drugs, more specifically psychiatric drugs. This was likely due to seeing my family rely on specific agents from time to time to help keep them steady and level-headed (in a simplistic sense). But far beyond my interest in the drugs themselves, I saw firsthand what quality care looks like and how much it is valued. This is a result of seeing a counselor for some rough times and eventually getting closer to my pediatrician, who would prescribe me antidepressants. Although both of these people, to no fault of their own, gave me some misinformation on the matter of psychotropic drugs a...

Hey team, a quick post on authenticity. Authenticity represents the subjective experience stripped of the delusions and lies we tell and attach to ourselves about our reality (ego). Authenticity is the acceptance of one's own and complete self. While the self is an impermanent and always changing phenomenon, much like the slope of a curve (not constant), authenticity is the acceptance of one's current self. We often pretend that our self is static: we were born as us, and we have always been us with all our unique likes and dislikes, and ways of thinking. But that statement can never be the truth as we are constantly changing, whether we are fully aware and understand it or not. On the other hand, it is also ignorant to negate that there is nothing constant about us, as we clearly have memories of our past and continue to experience life in the same body (though it's still ever-changing). I believe the true constant we carry with us through our lifetimes is awareness. Aware...

Hey team, I've been diving into the fourth edition of Essential Psychopharmacology by Stephen M. Stahl, and it's truly an incredible read—very digestible despite being a hefty 1,000 pages. Though I made it all the way to page 999 before I started questioning my life choices (just kidding, of course), this week I focused on the chapter discussing brain pathways in schizophrenia and the corresponding treatments. In this post, I’ll break down some of these pathways and explore how medications target them, while also explaining why they come with distinct side effects. Dopamine Pathways: Dopamine is a multifaceted neurotransmitter involved in a range of cognitive and emotional processes. In the context of schizophrenia and psychosis, dopamine takes center stage. To clarify, dopamine neurons originate in two primary areas of the brain: the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the substantia nigra (SN). While the VTA is often highlighted in discussions about dopamine, it’s not the o...