Richard Bergland - Patients Quotes

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Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is the best therapy for unipolar depression that exists.... they have found that the smile will return to the face of the patient on the very same day that cortisol dynamics return to normal.

Richard Bergland
Despite the evidence that ventricular hormones do not make their way out of the ventricle, the presence of large ventricles in many schizophrenic patients, and the ability of two-dimensional gels to provide a profile of peptides in the ventricle, not a single catheter has been placed into the ventricle of a schizophrenic patient to measure the peptides in the ventricle.... There is no animal model for this disease, the answer can only come from human studies.

Richard Bergland
Patients with uncontrolled epilepsy have an evaluation that usually begins with electrical studies of the surface of the brain.... A hole is drilled in the skull, and electrical measurements made from within the depths of the brain. A large flap of the skull is then lifted up, electrodes placed on the surface of the brain, and the flap sewn back into place so that more electrical studies can be done. The risks... are far greater than those associated with the ventricular taps needed for hormone studies.... If the team of doctors.. can help... areas of the brain that are sending 'bad' signals would be identified and removed... large portions of the brain might be taken away.

Richard Bergland
Somehow the same nurses, physicians, administrators and legal ombudsmen who prevented the study of the ventricular fluid of a patient with senile dimentia, or obesity, or depression, or schizophrenia, because of the risks, will encourage diagnostic tests and therapy for patients with epilepsy that are far more destructive and immutable than the measurement and manipulation of hormones in the ventricle.

Richard Bergland
Despite the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy... it may cause long-lasting problems with short-term memory.... Yet despite the protests, the ability of cortisol studies to identify patients who will benefit from ECT guarantees that more patients will receive it.

Richard Bergland
The measurement of hormones in the bloodstream of patients will not reflect the endocrine activity of the brain.

Richard Bergland
If a 'memory peptide' could be found to be deficient in patients with dimentia, these patients could be treated in the same way that patients with diabetes are treated with insulin.

Richard Bergland