What If We Could Prevent Mental Illness?

Phenylketonuria is a disease that results in mental retardation. It’s an inability of the infant’s body to get rid of an amino acid called phenylalanine. If you’re born with a certain gene, you can’t get rid of it and end up with mental retardation. But according to psychiatrist David Mays, author of the Major Mental Illness Pocket Guide, the way we treat phenylketonuria may be the way of the future in treating a range of psychological disorders.

In this brief video clip, David explains, “We now screen every infant born in the United States for the gene for phenylketonuria. If they’ve got it, we put them on a certain diet and they don’t develop the illness. Imagine if we could do the same thing for schizophrenia, for Alzheimer’s Disease, or for any other clearly biological diseases due to a genetic vulnerability? Then we could intervene early to do everything possible to prevent the onset of illness.”

In the Networker Webcast series The Uproar Over DSM-5, David delves into what the biological interventions might look like in mental health and they could revolutionize the future of treatment.

The Uproar Over DSM-5:
How The New Standards Affect Your Practice
Click here for full course details