Curated paper #2 Trevor Murray

         When diving deeper into what happens in the brain, I find it interesting that some
 researchers make a clear distinction between the brain and the mind. In a paper that we were
 assigned to read, Mind, Brain, and Personality Disorders. They separate the two entities in their
 own categories by showing that the brain is based on genetics, biology, and is simply the organ
 that controls the rest of the body based on internal factors. On the other side the mind is actually
 based on environmental factors, dealing with more psychological factors in the individual. This
 distinction can help shape and help us better understand some neurological diseases that affect
 a lot of individuals. At the same time while looking into these diseases, I was also curious to see
 some of the societal complications that can arise when these neurological diseases progress
 too far.
         One of the first brain diseases that a majority of us hear about is Alzherimer’s disease.
 Alzheimer’s disease is a specific type of dementia, with loss of cognitive function and memory.
 One main thing that causes neuron death are plaques in the brain, the plaques are formed by
 beta-amyloid, and while Beta-amyloid is needed by neurons to continue their normal function.
 With Alzheimer’s they actually get cut up into pieces, causing them to clump together, disrupting
 neuron activity. With neuron activity declining in those areas, they’ll start degrading and begin to
 die off. The second form that can take place is entanglements in the neurons, where the tau
 protein, which is found in neurons to help with microtubule and neuron stability, becomes highly
 phosphorylated. The tubules will start to break apart, neuron microtubules break apart and get
 tangled together. Overall while there are different forms of how the neurons in the brain are
 impaired for Alzheimer's disease the major areas that are affected are typically the entorhinal
 cortex and hippocampus. And will eventually affect the cerebral cortex which is responsible for
 language, reasoning, and social behavior.
         When looking at the societal impacts that Alzherimer’s has had not just in the U.S. but
 globally as well. When looking at the numbers provided by Alzheimer's Association on their
 website. We see that there are nearly 7 million people in the U.S. living with Alzherimer’s with
 the number projected to rise to 13 million people by the year 2050. Globally, there are 55 million
 individuals with dementia, with this number projected to rise to 139 million individuals by the
 year 2050. One thing I found to be interesting on the Alzheimer's Association page, is that
 women were twice as likely to get Alzheimer’s than men. When looking into reasons why that is,
I came across a gene known as the ApoE4. Typically the gene codes for apolipoproteins that
 help regulate fats and cholesterol that circulate throughout the system, and even within the
 brain. Other variants of the gene can code for proteins that help clear clumps of proteins within
 the brain, preventing blockages to occur. However, the ApoE4 gene isn't the best at being able
 to clear the protein clumps out of the way which causes the onset of neurodegeneration. While
 both men and women have the ApoE4 gene, women have been observed to have worse
 memory performance, as well as greater brain atrophy causing this imbalance we see with
 women being more susceptible to the effects of Alzheirmer’s.
         Apart from Alzheimer’s disease, one of the other brain diseases that I was looking into
 more deeply was schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that affects how an
 individual can interact with others, mostly by affecting how an individual thinks, feels, or
 behaves. They’ll mostly experience delusions, and hallucinations that can interrupt their normal
 thought process, and change how they interact with their environment. While the cause of
 schizophrenia hasn't been discovered, it’s seen to be a blend of both genetic history and
 environmental factors. For individuals who have schizophrenia they have a history of traumatic
 experiences in their childhood, in either living conditions, or even by experiencing some form of
 domestic abuse in their home. For a period of time, my mom worked in the social services for
 the county that we lived in. While she didn't work for the foster care system, she did work in
 dealing with individuals and their cases with food stamps as a welfare fraud investigator. A
 majority of the time she was looking into families where the parents were either inappropriately
 using the food stamps they were given, or they were lying and neglecting their children to get
 more food stamps. And while she never did see children or even adolescents with
 schizophrenia, some were starting to develop mental illnesses due to the family situations that
 they were living in.
         These experiences that my mom had, showed me the importance of mental illnesses
 and the awareness that people should have. While I’ve been working on my biology degree at
 SUU, I’ve also had the opportunity to work on a Criminal Justice minor. Which has helped me
 understand some of the inner workings of the criminal justice system that we have in the state of
 Utah as well as the country. When it comes to understanding mental illness in the criminal
 justice system, it’s very interesting to see certain symptoms that individuals experience may
 seem disorderly or even non-compliant. Which leads to individuals with mental illness interacting
 with law enforcement and the criminal justice system more frequently. According to the National
 Alliance on Mental Illness(NAMI), individuals with mental illnesses are over-represented in our
 nation’s jails and prisons. 2 out of every 5 people that are incarcerated have a history of mental
illness. At the same time the crimes that they are incarcerated for are typically non-violent,
 misdemeanor crimes (i.e., petty theft, disorderly conduct, loitering, trespassing, etc.). It’s hard to
 see individuals who may not have had full control of their actions placed behind bars, and
 instead of getting the proper treatment they need, they’re sometimes met with subpar treatment
 which can actually lead to worsening health. Showing that the gaps of care and knowledge
 about mental illness within the criminal justice system, need to be fixed. While those fixes won't
 happen overnight, individuals with mental illness should be able to be passed off and receive
 the proper care that they need, instead of being incarcerated.
         On a different note, I was curious to see that drugs and medications that typically benefit
 us, can also lead to symptoms or forms of mental illness. When thinking of ayurveda and how
 that applies to drugs and medications that we take, the effects are usually beneficial. Typically
 these drugs and medications can alter how neurotransmitters absorb or release certain
 chemicals in the brain. For instance, individuals with depression can take a wide variety of
 different antidepressants to help raise levels of serotonin and norepinephrine. It does this by
 blocking the re-absorption of serotonin in the brain and allows serotonin to stay longer and have
 more of an effect on the individual. Helping them by boosting their mood, increasing motivation,
 even helping their happiness levels. For other drugs like morphine and methadone, they block
 neurotransmitter pathways to prevent specific hormones and chemicals from being absorbed.
 This causes great forms of pain medications, since they block pain receptors that are in the
 brain and central nervous system.
         However, while opioids like morphine and methadone can alleviate pain in the body, I
 saw some research showing that they can have adverse effects on mental health in the form of
 addiction. One of the main drugs that I saw when dealing with these adverse effects was
 methadone. Methadone is typically what’s used to wean people off of morphine. Yet the
 substance itself can actually have the same addictive effect on the brain, causing people to seek
 after it more. When reading about it, the addictive effect that it can have is so strong that it’s
 typically administered by appointment with a caretaker/doctor and is given in very small doses..
 There’s even disclaimers saying that if you’ve missed a dose, you’re supposed to skip it and
 forget it instead of trying to take two doses to make up for it. The hard part is seeing how this
 addiction can actually take a toll on an individual's mental health. When I was originally looking
 up why methadone is so addictive, or how someone can become addicted to it. The first thing to
 pop us is the Suicide and Crisis hotline. After seeing that be the first thing to pop up, I was
 extremely disheartened. For one, a drug that is used to be able to help those overcome
 addiction to pain killing opioids, to then become the addiction itself, is insane to think about. But
at the same time it’s insane to think that people suffer such an imbalance of either pain or
 having an addiction that they feel the only way they’ll be able to overcome it is to overdose,
 potentially ending their life. Ultimately, methadone is just a small drop in the pond when it comes
 to drug dependency as well as individuals struggling with mental health in the form of addiction.
 Which is why more research needs to be done to be able to help individuals fight their addiction
 and help them overcome drug dependency by finding other types of pain blockers that are less
addictive.