Resilience Important for Mental Health

July 16, 2014 · Posted in Risk Factors · Comment 

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A symposium at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association suggested that resilience may hold the key to healthy aging, and overcoming trauma and stress.

Resilience in Aging

Former APA president Dilip Jeste began the symposium with a discussion of successful aging. He noted the importance of optimism, social engagement, and wisdom (or healthy social attitudes) in aging. In a group of 83-year-olds, those with an optimistic attitude had fewer cardiovascular illnesses, less cancer, fewer pain syndromes, and lived longer. Those with high degrees of social engagement had a 50% increase in survival rate. Wisdom comprises skills such as seeing aging in a positive light, and having a memory that is biased toward the positive (the opposite of what happens in depression, where negatives are selectively recalled and remembered). Jeste encouraged psychiatrists to focus not just on the treatment of mental illness, but on behavioral change and the enhancement of wellbeing. He suggested asking patients not just, “How do you feel?” but instead, “How do you want to feel?”

Resilience in the Military

Researcher Dennis Charney gave a talk on resilience based on his work with people in the military, some of whom experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He cited a series of important principles that could enhance resilience. The first principle was to reframe adversity—assimilating, accepting and recovering from it.  The second principle was that failure is essential to growth. The third principle was that altruism helps, as does a mission for the survivor of trauma. Charney suggested that a personal moral compass is also critical, whether this is based on religion or general moral principles. Other factors that are important for resilience include having a role model, facing one’s fears, developing coping skills, having a support network, increasing physical well-being, and training regularly and rigorously in multiple areas.

Charney and colleagues studied Navy SEALS who went through SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training. Those SEALS who had the highest resilience during this severe training exercise had the highest levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine and NPY (an antianxiety neuropeptide). NPY levels are low in people with PTSD. Charney and colleagues reasoned that giving a peptide that acted on the NPY-1 receptors intranasally (so that it could cross the blood brain barrier) might be therapeutic. In a rodent model of PTSD, the peptide prevented and reversed PTSD-like behaviors. Further clinical development of the peptide is now planned.

The Effects of Stress

Researcher Owen Wolkowitz described how stress accelerates the mental and physical aspects of aging. Telomeres are strands of DNA at the end of each chromosome that protect the DNA during each cell replication. Telomere length decreases with stress and aging. Read more