Medical Malpractice

In the early 1990s, when brainswitching, was first proposed as a cognitive behavioral method to halt a depressive episode, there wasn't much scientific research to support it. Anti-depressants were touted as the best solution.

Also there was the little matter, of which not everyone is aware, that anti-depressants were the treatment of choice for depression according to the DSM IV. This is the legal standard for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. That meant if a psychiatrist or medical doctor did not prescribe medication for depression, they could be subject to a malpractice suit for having made that "contrary" decision. Contrary as far as the DSM IV was concerned.

However, because of new questions raised this year about the efficacy of anti-depressants, there may be some changes in the DSM IV when it morphs into the DSM V at the next publication. Newsweek's cover story on February 8, based on the research of Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein of the University of Connecticut, claims that placeboes are just as effective as anti-depressants in the treatment of depression,

Kirsch and Sapirstein saw that patients did improve on anti-depressants. "This improvement," says Newsweek, "demonstrated in scores of clinical trials, is the basis for the ubiquitous claim that antidepressants work. But when Kirsch compared the improvement in patients taking the drugs with the improvement in those taking dummy pills-clinical trials typically compare an experimental drug with a placebo-he saw that the difference was minuscule."

Brainswitching was ahead of its time in recommending mind exercises over anti-depressants. There is now much more support for brainswitching, and other alternative methods, in the research of the last 5 years. For instance, Rafael Malach and Ilan Goldberg of the Weizmann Institute of Science reported in 2006 that the "self-related" function of the brain, that part of the brain involved with introspection, actually shuts down during an intense sensory task.

Or, another way to put it, the brain can actually "lose itself," lose its power of self-focus, when engaged in some demanding task. The research involved getting subjects to classify animal picture cards, or name selections of musical pieces, while at the same time indicating whether or not they had a strong or weak emotional response to what they were classifying.

The researchers found that the regions of the brain involved with processing something in the environment, such as classifying the animal or music, was distinctly different from one's introspection about it, whether or not one felt strongly or neutral about one animal or the other, or one piece of music or the other.

The parts of the brain activated during either the classifying or emotional response to the animals or music were quite distinct and segregated. To make this judgment, the researcher used magnetic fields and radio waves to scan blood flow in the different brain areas, which would indicate brain activity going on in the different parts of the brain.

The conclusion of the research is that the self-focused "observer" doesn't seem to be present when one is involved in some intense task. Or, you could say, as the researchers did, the brain actually switches off "self." This research is very support of the cognitive behavioral techniques involved in brainswitching.

In the first place, in order to be depressed, a person has to think their depression. The person has to be self-focused on the pain they are feeling. The "observer part,"" the "self" of the brain must be present and functioning in order to experience the pain of the depression. Brainswitching, like the experiment of Malach and Goldberg, actually separates the message from one part of the brain to the other that depression is being produced. Some relief is immediate.

The whole idea of brainswitching is to do some intense mental task, such as thinking a nursery rhyme like row, row, row your boat over and over. The point being that the brain, in concentrating on thinking the thought repetitively, loses the "observer" of the depression. The observer disappears, the "self" disappears, it goes "offline," and therefore the depression cannot sustain itself.

Depression depends upon anxious thinking to produce the stress chemicals that cause the chemical imbalance that causes depression. When the depressed person uses a simple brainswitch exercise first, to separate the message from one part of the brain to another that depression is ongoing, and then immediately gets intensely busy with chores or work, the person's brain temporarily "loses" the "self" that was suffering with depression. The chemical imbalance now has a change to stabilize.