Ageing and uncertainties in love, work, economic well being, social acceptance is making us stare at an epidemic of mental health disorders.
Depression leads the problem cutting across different age groups. Dementia, Alzheimer's, brain injury, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and Parkinson are other villains affecting our mental health. We are fr away from understanding these disorders and also having implementable effective strategies to combat them.
In this light the initiative of Barrack Obama to give a special focus on mental health through BRAIN INITIATIVE is laudable.
The premise is by understanding the activity of the human brain, by mapping the neural pathways, by imaging it, we will make progress in unraveling the mystery of brain and its afflictions.
There are voices which bring attention to the plight of children and maternal care. By improving health, nutritional, educational and access parameters for infants and children we may probably tackle mental health in a much better way.
To quote from Lancet article, "As many as 200 million children fail to reach their full potential as a result of exposure to risk factors—malnutrition, infection, poor management of pregnancy, birth complications, and lack of stimulation and nurturing—in the first 1000 days of life. Protecting young brains from these threats in developing nations should be part of the BRAIN Initiative to ensure that the project has global impact, he says."
Guess we need to hack at the root as well as take care of the leaves and branches of the problem!
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