Traumatic Brain Injury

What is Depression?

Depression (known as clinical depression or major depressive disorder) is the most common mental health problem in the nation and across the globe. Everybody gets the blues from time to time. For most of us, we bounce back from these low moods and get back to enjoying our lives. For some people, however, the sense of sadness, emptiness, or hopelessness doesn’t dissipate, and it begins to affect how you think, how you feel, and how you act. When these feelings persist, this mood disorder can interfere with daily life and that can lead to psychological and physical issues.

Who has Depression?

Approximately 17.3 million people in America are affected by depression, representing over 7% of the adult population. The condition is more common in females, who are twice as likely as men to suffer a depressive episode. Research shows the condition is rising most rapidly among teens and young adults. About 36% of girls will experience clinical depression during their teenage years compared to 13% of teenage boys.

Consequences of Untreated Depression?

It is estimated that nearly 2 out of every 3 people struggling with depression don’t seek or receive treatment for their condition. When left untreated, depression can ruin your life. Clinical depression increases the risk of substance abuse, destroys relationships, interferes with your ability to excel at work, and makes you more vulnerable to certain medical conditions. For example, people with depression are more likely to develop heart disease and are more likely to die following a heart attack than people without the condition. Even more troubling is the fact that depression is the cause of two-thirds of suicides.

Untreated depression severely increases the risk of:

Why Choose Amen Clinics for Brain SPECT Imaging?

Over the past 30 years at Amen Clinics, we have built the world’s largest database of brain scans—over 200,000 scans and growing—related to emotional, learning, and behavioral problems. We have scanned people across the globe from 9 months old to 105 years old and have been helped them with a wide variety of mental health conditions and other cognitive issues. Our decades of experience, in addition to our scientific research on SPECT (over 70 peer-reviewed studies published), guides us in being the best in the world for brain SPECT imaging.

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Why Choose Amen Clinics for Brain SPECT Imaging?

At Amen Clinics, we’ve found through over 30 years of practice that seeing your brain is essential for developing your personalized treatment program. As part of a comprehensive evaluation, the brain scans give our physicians additional information to make a clear diagnosis and to find the right solutions for your need, so you can finally start feeling better.

 
SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) is a nuclear medicine study that evaluates blood flow and activity in the brain. Basically, it shows three things: healthy activity, too little activity, or too much activity. A healthy “active” scan shows the most active parts of the brain with blue representing the average activity and red (or sometimes red and white) representing the most active parts of the brain. In the healthy scan on the left, the most active area is in the cerebellum, at the back/bottom part of the brain. The brain scan on the right shows overactivity in the deep limbic system (the brain’s emotional center), a pattern commonly seen in depression.
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7 Types of Depression

Our brain imaging work at Amen Clinics has helped us identify 7 different brain patterns associated with depression. And each type requires its own treatment plan.

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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard.

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“With A Better Brain Comes A Better Life”

– Daniel G. Amen, M.D.

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