Michael Edmund Chapman Stroth

               This memorial weekend I will be returning to the hills of Appalachia where I was raised for my tenth year high school reunion, and today, marks eight years since the death of easily the closest friend I have ever had. Within two years of graduation, my closest friend would succumb to the local culture of prescription drug abuse, and die as a consequence. This story is all too common, addiction plagues many parts of the United States, especially from where I came. I watched at a distance as my friend would become unrecognizable, from a gentleman and a scholar to a thief. In this time, he was hospitalized for suicidal ideation, and had been treated for depression. My friend clearly was in need of help. I did what I could while I was away, but knew intervention was required and It lead me to return to my mother’s the summer after my sophomore year of college. I was packing for my homecoming, when I received the call informing me of his death. I was shocked, finding the news incredible. Although I initially didn’t believe it, it wasn’t hard to conceive. His downward spiral was already evident, and I just wish, still to this day, that I could have made my return to him earlier. To remain on track to finishing my undergraduate degree in three years, instead of returning home immediately, I had chosen to spend the initial ten days of that summer traveling to the islands of the Caribbean for school credit. I often still wonder what I could have done to change the situation, but I certainly have to accept this past for what it is. What I will not accept, is the current state of mental healthcare in the United States.

           ​Recently, I was an exhibitor at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. I was there representing a nutraceutical company, and spoke with hundreds of psychiatrists. I was surrounded by huge complex displays containing some of the most technologically sophisticated advertising representing the various pharmaceutical companies currently making fortunes from these doctors’ use of their drugs. In my modest booth, to my surprise, I spent my first day explaining to these practicing physicians the methylation cycle. A pivotal biochemical pathway in our bodies, and the primary role of folate (B9), responsible for many things, but importantly the creation of our neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. I learned this from my biochemistry teacher in my first year of naturopathic school. After reading things claiming the lack of science employed in the education of naturopathic physicians, I was afraid I would be getting schooled by these many “distinguished fellows” in the APA. The opposite actually occurred, rarely did I find a physician with the knowledge of this cycle and its importance in cognition. When I did find a physician with intimate knowledge of this pathway, after he had abducted my explanation to another doctor, he would later admit to me that the accuracy of the details wouldn’t matter, as the vast majority wouldn’t know the difference. To their credit, I know that after medical school, most are destined to forget a great deal of the details within our medical educations. With medical science regularly changing, and the methylation cycle a relatively new discovery, it is reasonable to accept the slow adoption of this information into the conventional medical system. It came as a surprise to me though, that physicians who regularly manipulate neurotransmitters in the brain, would be so unaware of this biological process.
​                When asked about my product, a methylated version of folate, side effects were often brought up. To my knowledge, little side effects have been shown with the use of methylated vitamin B9. Despite my inability to speak to much more than an upset stomach reported by one psychiatrist as a side effect, I can assure you they come nowhere near the side effects experienced with the use of the pharmaceuticals regularly prescribed. Various forms of amphetamine, continually prescribed to developing children, maintain a fear in me regarding the generations affected by their over-prescription. While working as the Chief Health Officer for the Boy Scouts of America, I was placed in charge administering several hundred children’s medications. The number of kids on high doses of these harsh drugs was astounding. It certainly can be argued that there is a place for these drugs in medicine, but as primarily monetarily driven companies, many pharmaceutical companies pour much more money into advertising than they do research and development. Alternative therapies have shown promising results that can be easily implemented into treatments for adolescence, but sadly they won’t have a commercial aired during the Super Bowl for them. One of these, increasingly being referred to as Vitamin N, is nature. Stanford has recently published a study providing that time in nature can reduce anxiety and rumination, as well as increase cognition. Sadly, funding studies for nature won’t likely result in making billions of dollars in the medical industry, so it is unlikely that many more studies will pour in. Fortunately for us, there are enough dedicated to the spread of this idea, that there is actually a commercial out there for prescription Nature.
                     With increasing numbers of industry funded studies that produce questionable results for drugs with unknown mechanisms, I remain concerned about the outlook of mental and general healthcare. These studies are rarely reproduced, and statistically skewed in order to present a favorable outcome. FDA approval of a drug is increasingly tainted by the lobbying efforts of big pharmaceutical companies, and their representatives, typically non-medical professionals, are paid to highlight off-label uses. The medical system routinely treats conditions of mental health with a single mechanism of action, and these mechanisms are only focused on once a drug has proven to manipulate it. This is a result of the monetary gain possible when this drug can be patented and pushed onto the general public. I know there is a better way to approach the mental healthcare of today. I’ve been witness to the conventional while at work for a mental crisis center, and the emerging trends like that of wilderness therapy.  I am lucky to have this great opportunity to be exploring the type of medicine I am currently studying. It pains me, that none of my efforts will benefit my late friend, but I continue to pursue this endeavor in order to honor his death, a continuing motivation to help those who might benefit from these safe alternative approaches to mental health in the future.

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About Alexander Arrington