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Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Albert Gore, spoke passionately about the importance of new neuropsychiatric research at a symposium at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., last month on "The Science of Emotion."
The symposium covered topics ranging from the way in which the groundwork for later emotional response is established in childhood to new insights from neuroimaging on how neural pathways in the brain respond to stress. It was moderated by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Steven Hyman, M.D., who introduced Gore.
As an advocate for the mentally ill, said Hyman, Gore knows that "mental illness is nobody's fault-it's not a moral weakness, but represents increasingly well-definable abnormalities in the brain that we can approach."
Praising the symposium as "extremely timely and important," Gore remarked that "we are learning more and more about the fine line between the health and illness that result from the interplay between our brain and our body."
New discoveries in neuroscience "may be the key to unlocking a new understanding of our total health" that could lead to breakthroughs in prevention and treatment, Gore added.
Psychiatric research "matters because mental health care professionals working on the front lines are translating the products of this virtual explosion of knowledge to a huge alliance of millions and millions of Americans who are experiencing and suffering from the symptoms of various mental illnesses," said Gore.
This is not "just science for the sake of science, which of course has an important place all its own," she noted. Rather, it is "science for the sake of millions of women, millions of children, millions of men, and millions of families-millions of people whose lives have been touched by mental illness."
As President Clinton's mental health adviser, said Gore, she has had the opportunity to meet with people of all ages and walks of life to hear their stories of anguish, of hope, "of treatment that has worked, of people being restored to productivity. I have been moved by their courage and have been awed by their very resilience in the face of sometimes very daunting odds. I recognize that the personal triumphs that have been told to me are in large part the result of these three decades in which the mysteries of the mind have been unveiled to advances in neuroanatomy, neurobiology, neuro-imaging, and shared human work."
Although science and society have come far, there is still far to go, observed Gore. "When I stop and think about mental illnesses, it seems that these disorders may be among the last to be freed from fear and misunderstanding in the hearts and in the minds of so many people in the public. That, too, is what these advances in neuroscience are all about; taking away that stigma. Over the past few years as new medications and psychotherapeutic treatments have proven beneficial to people with mental illnesses, I have seen, as I know you have, the [wall] of suspicion and fear and ignorance about mental illness [begin] to crumble." Despite the progress, we, as a society, must and can do better, said Gore. Although millions of Americans will suffer from some symptom of mental illness this year, only one-fourth of those will seek help, she noted. Those who fail to get adequate treatment may be unable to be productive and to contribute to "their jobs, their communities, and their families," she added. Given the availability of good treatments now and the hope for better treatments in the near future, this is unfair and unacceptable, said Gore.
In the next decade, depression alone will be "the second-leading cause of years lost to disability, not only in the industrialized world, but in the developing world as well," she observed.
"What is the connection between the growing acceptance of mental illnesses as real and treatable diseases and the focus of this conference that you're attending-the science of emotion?" That connection is the recognition that "there is a profound relationship between the brain and the environment in the conduct of all aspects of our daily lives. We now know that our brains are wired biochemically and that can color our perceptions of our environment, shade our responses to events, and tint our future experiences as well."
The philosopher and psychologist William James observed that "our individuality is founded in feeling," Gore noted. A world devoid of the full range of human emotions would be a poorer world indeed, she said.
"Through the research ongoing today we may very well soon learn about the distortions and emotional signals in the brain that occur in mental illness," Gore said. With such knowledge "further inroads can be made not only in the treatment of those illnesses but possibly in predicting and preventing them in the first place. But the science of emotion helps explain mental health as well as mental illness. By demonstrating the very fine neurochemical line that may actually separate mental health from illness, it is also helping to demystify and destigmatize mental illness."
Through the kind of cutting-edge research being discussed at the symposium, said Gore, we are beginning to understand "the meaning of mood and emotions and why we need so very many words to describe a state of mind. In doing so we are expanding the science of the brain, and the result, I am convinced, will do more than enlighten us; it will do more than explain why we feel. Critically the result of the work being described at this conference will help lead to still further breakthroughs in treatments for citizens not only of this nation, but throughout the world, whose lives are touched by mental illness."