A deeper look at anxiety

I thought it might be interesting to tell people about some cases I see to give a flavour.

I am not going to highly select the successful ones, but to show you typical things I see and do.

Today it’s S. He’s 15 and came as he got anxious suddenly. As is not unusual for me, someone wondered if he might have ADHD.  He was mildly anxious earlier in life. The only things obvious more recently were changing schools and a joint infection. I am a firm believer in the contributory role of physical AND psychological causes, and now we know that inflammation really has a role in mental health conditions (The Inflamed Mind, Ed Bullmore, Short Books Ltd), my ears pricked up.

Long story short: he had no marked inflammatory blood markers, no real vulnerabilities on his gene profiles (I do these a lot these days to see the template the world is impacting upon) but his gut testing wasn’t right. He had quite a few things that would not help inflammation and another test showed a toxic metal load. There’s good evidence that toxins in the environment are more important than we think in the jigsaw that is mental health/illness. So we treated those alongside some more conventional medication treatment for anxiety (Sertraline, but in a rather low dose) and he improved.  He had had some CBT too, but to be fair that was before me.

Who knows what was more important of these?  But it just seems to me to make sense to look at the whole picture, not just a bit of it.

Today’s messages: whole picture is often important, and more complicated than you think. ADHD is over-suspected or blamed. Parallel treatments may work but the cost is not being sure what does what.

More soon….!