The visit focused on identifying the challenges facing patients with neurological disorders, and increasing communication between scientific researchers, clinicians and the New Mexico community.
The BBHI is an organization at UNM focused on brain and behavioral illnesses.
“The idea of the Brain and Behavioral Health Institute is to improve education, research and clinical services,” said Dr. C. William Shuttleworth, director of the BBHI and professor of neuroscience.
During the meeting, one of the challenges addressed by the BBHI was the intense stigma surrounding mental illnesses. While other neurological conditions, such as strokes, have long been understood to be the result of abnormalities or damage to the brain, mental health disorders have traditionally been difficult to visualize, and therefore often thought of as less legitimate problems.
Using post-traumatic stress disorder as an example, Shuttleworth discussed how scientific advances are allowing clear visualization of the areas of the brain that are affected.
“Returning service folks have problems with executive control, attention, maintaining jobs and relationships, and now for the first time you can really start to see why,” Shuttleworth said. “This is as fundamental as breaking a leg.”
Another challenge detailed by the BBHI was the lack of communication and interaction between scientific investigators working in different aspects of similar fields — for example, a clinician working with human patients and a scientific researcher studying an animal model.
“The investigators here at UNM are really scattered,” Shuttleworth said. “We have folks actually scattered all over town ... they haven’t really met each other, and that’s a travesty.”
Shuttleworth detailed some initiatives the BBHI is undertaking to break down barriers dividing researchers and encourage communication.
“Think about when there are times when you’re running up against those artificial dividers that we can be helpful,” Heinrich said.
Another goal of the BBHI is to put scientists and clinicians into communication with the greater New Mexico community.
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“One of the pieces of feedback we got early on was that a lot of the time people in the community did not understand anything that was coming out of a scientist’s mouth — or a clinician’s, for that matter,” said Margaret Migliorati, a behavioral therapist and community liaison for the BBHI. “We’re training our clinicians and scientists to better communicate what they’re doing and why it’s so impactful and important.”
Heinrich, who has a scientific degree in engineering, said he has often experienced this type of problem first-hand.
“It’s worth looking at, because I think it’s a huge problem,” Heinrich said.
Migliorati also stressed the importance of scientists interacting with patients suffering from the disorders they study so that they can understand their concerns and daily struggles.
During his visit Heinrich also heard from two mothers of children suffering from neurological problems who spoke about their struggles. He also toured the facilities in the UNM Biomedical Research and Integrative NeuroImaging Center (BRaIN), and discussed using some of the facilities at the BRaIN as a way to improve health care and education through telehealth, including many informational online and live web seminars.
Shuttleworth said he was pleased with how the conference went.
“Anything we can do to increase awareness of that key issue, bringing together brain and behavioral health, is a good day,” he said. “And having someone as high-profile as Martin Heinrich talking to us about that, understanding that and agreeing with us on that is great.”
Lauren Topper is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
