The 10 Most Meaningful Advances in Mental Health Since 1996
Article originally written by Peg Rosen for Psycom. Article preview below.
At a time when the Internet was just ramping up, Dr. Goldberg saw tremendous potential. As a practicing psychiatrist, he knew many people were struggling with difficult feelings and mental illnesses. He wanted to give them useful information and a way for them to help themselves.
So, he created The Goldberg Depression Test—the Internet’s first self-assessment tool—and founded Psycom. (Did we mention that Psycom preceded Google and WebMD…just sayin!)
Although Dr. Goldberg is no longer with us (he died in 2013), Psycom continues to carry out his vision by providing tools and information to anyone struggling with their mental health.
8. Recognition of the Gut-Brain Connection
Butterflies in the stomach. That gut-wrenching feeling. A nauseating sense. For eons, we’ve known by experience that how we feel in our head can impact how we feel in our gut. And for a while now, research has backed that up, showing that mental health issues such as anxiety and depression can exacerbate or even precipitate conditions like irritable bowel syndrome.
More recently, scientists have begun to believe that the gut-brain axis (the communication channel that connects our brain with the 100 million neurons lining the walls of our gut) may well be a two-way street.
“Studies from across a variety of scientific disciplines have confirmed that abnormalities in gut microbiota can and do impact the brain,” says James Greenblatt, MD, chief medical officer of Walden Behavioral Care in Dedham, Massachusettes, and a member of the clinical psychiatry faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Dartmouth College School of Medicine.