Brain Wars: How Not Looking at the Brain Hurts Patients and Professionals

Psychiatry and by extension all mental health professions have not embraced the clinical use of neuroimaging, whether it is SPECT, PET, QEEG or functional MRI techniques. This leaves psychiatry as the only medical specialty that virtually never looks at the organ it treats, leading to misdiagnoses, ineffective treatment (outcomes are virtually no better than the 1950s), and persistent stigma. This lecture will focus on how neuroimaging enhances diagnoses, leads to more effective treatments, and shatters stigma. Based on a brain imaging database of more than 170,000 brain SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries, Dr. Amen has seen neuroimaging changes the discussion from mental health to brain health, which increases compliance, decreases stigma, and improves outcomes.