Mental Health News

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In recent mental health news it seems that our small friends, the laboratory mice over at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory underwent a series of harrowing foot shock treatments.  These electrifying tests were performed in order to allow their researcher handlers to find a way to halt the fear response. 

Fear and anxiety treatment in humans may soon benefit from what researchers learned from these little white mice.  Many mental health conditions such as PTSD and anxiety attacks are a result of our inability to stop experiencing learned fear from a specific traumatic event.  This happens a lot with soldiers returning home from wars.

The researchers recreated traumatic events for mice by placing them in an environment where their feet would be randomly shocked with mild currents of electricity.  Later they placed those mice back in the same environment without shocking their feet.  What makes this big mental health news? Well, the mice with elevated levels of an enzyme called, Cdk5, persistently froze up in fear even after they should have realized that their feet wouldn’t be shocked.  Other mice whose levels of the same enzyme were inhibited by researchers quickly got over their learned fear in the same environment. 

In people it’s possible that inhibiting this same enzyme in those who experience fear and anxiety can help them overcome their mental health issues faster.  Although so far this particular idea is still in the early stages of study, its possible that a drug can be created that will eliminate fear.