M LaVora Perry
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read

I am a lay person and from what I’ve read and in my personal experience, psychiatrists do ascribe to the idea that mental illnesses and disorders have both a biological and psychological component and that one’s brain -- the organ itself -- can be both negatively and positively affected by one’s psychosocial experiences. So, although I’ve met exceptions, I’ve found the notion that practicing clinical psychiatrists generally ignore the relationship between psychology and psychiatry to be primarily false. This is especially true of the latest generation of psychiatrists.

Furthermore, in my readings, contemporary psychiatry views narcissistic personality disorder as a condition predominantly caused by the conditions one experienced during childhood, versus it predominately having a biological cause, and hold the view that narcissism exists on a spectrum we all operate along to greater or lesser degrees — npd being on the extremely high end. An excellent book on this theory is “Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad -- And Surprisingly Good -- About Feeling Special” by Dr. Craig Malkin, MD.

Regarding Trump, it seems to me his npd does cause him severe social impairment. He just doesn’t realize it does precisely because he is extremely narcissistic. Just because he outwardly appears unable to consciously suffer as a result of his npd doesn’t mean he won’t in the future. Again, Malkin’s book is an excellent read on this topic.


Regarding psychiatric medication, I’m 55 years old and have bipolar disorder II. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 49. The symptom that most distressed me from my teenage years until I found effective treatment was severe depression that lasted from a week to a few months, taking up six months total each year.

When severely depressed, I couldn’t get out of bed. My illness caused me to drop out of college and be unable to consistently remain gainfully employed. It impaired my ability to parent my three young children, who are now adults. In my teens and early 20s, I attempted suicide more than once.

Prior to age 49, I hadn’t seen a therapist or taken medication for recurring depression in almost 30 years. Nor had I thought of suicide during this time. I sought treatment after I’d spent six consecutive months depressed twice in a two-year period -- from fall until spring in both years -- which culminated in a thought about suicide.

I took medication and engaged in talk therapy. Medication helped with the minor highs (hypomania) of bp II. Therapy helped me gain clarity. But neither prevented my debiltating depressions.

My visit at Dr. Daniel Amen’s clinic in Washington, D.C. changed my life. Although clinic director Joseph Annabelli’s holistic recommendations for diet and lifestyle changes were reasonable, what helped me most were the medications and dosages he prescribed based on viewing images of my brain. Annabelli not only showed me the regions of my brain that caused my bp symptoms, he showed me the one that caused undiagnosed ADD as well.

In consultation with the psychiatrist I saw at home at that time, I began to slowly implement Annabelli’s medication recommendations. As a result, in the last three years, I’ve experienced depressive episodes less than six times total and each episode has lasted from one hour to two days max. This is a phenomenal improvement over spending six months depressed each year.

In addition, after stabilizing my bp as Annabelli advised, I began taking medication for ADHD and immediately felt like I’d just removed a pair of dark sunglasses from over my eyes. I was able to focus on a task I hadn’t been able to complete in several years.

Annabelli had said my ADHD was caused by an old head trauma. It wasn’t until some time after my visit with him that I remembered the head-on car collision I’d been in at age 9 -- the same age at which my ability to remain focused became impaired.

I’ve generally tried to live a healthy lifestyle, even during all those years when I suffered with depression, although being depressed hindered my ability to do it. But I have no doubt what has enabled me to have a quality of life I haven’t experienced since I was a young child -- psychiatric medication. You can write all the articles and cite all the research on the efficacy of psychiatric medications you want but my personal reality is that finding the right ones and dosages for me -- based on studying the physical organ that caused my symptoms, my brain -- gave me back my life.

In my opinion, the only way psychiatry will advance beyond its shot-in-the-dark approach to treatment and begin to effectively treat mental illnesses over the long term is to stop being the only medical discipline that treats a condition without examining the organ from which its symptoms originate. In the case of mental illnesses, this is the brain.

Dr. Amen’s brain imaging methods are the future of psychiatry. Every psychiatrist who genuinely wants to help their patients get better should immediately begin to study and implement them.

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M LaVora Perry

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I'm a mother, actor, and author of “Taneesha Never Disparaging,” a humorous book about a black Buddhist 5th grader| ig, tw, li @mlavoraperry mlavoraperry.com

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