Treatments

Anxiety Disorder

are a group of mental disorders characterized by feelings of anxiety and fear. Anxiety is a worry about future events and fear is a reaction to current events. There are a number of anxiety disorders: including generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, panic disorder, and selective mutism.

Treatmentmay include lifestyle changes, counselling, and medications. Counselling is typically with a type of cognitive behavioural therapy. Medications, such as antidepressants or beta blockers, may improve symptoms.We also use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), the current FDA Approved Protocol for the treatment of Depression and Anxiety.

Bipolar Disorder

also known as manic depression, is a disorder with alternating periods of depression and elevated mood. During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy or irritable. During periods of depression there may be crying, a negative outlook on life, and poor eye contact amongst other symptoms.

Treatmentcommonly includes psychotherapy, as well as medications such as mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. Severe behavioural problems may be managed with short term antipsychotics or benzodiazepines. In periods of mania it is recommended that antidepressants be stopped.

Personality Disorder

are a class of disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behaviour, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating markedly from those accepted by the individual's culture. These patterns develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability.

Schizophrenia

is a disorder characterized by persistent delusions and hallucinations, associated with abnormal social behaviour and failure to understand what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, hearing voices that others do not, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and a lack of motivation.

The mainstay of treatment is antipsychotic medication, along with counselling, job training, and social rehabilitation. In more serious situations—where there is risk to self or others—involuntary hospitalization may be necessary, although hospital stays are now shorter and less frequent than they once were.

Couple Therapy or Relationship Therapy

is a subset of relationship counselling. It may differ from other forms of relationship counselling in various regards including its duration. Short term counselling may be between 1 and 3 sessions whereas long term couples therapy may be between 12 and 24 sessions. Couples therapy is more about seemingly intractable problems with a relationship history, where emotions are the target and the agent of change.

Dementia

Dementia refers to a syndrome (a group of symptoms) which affects a person's intellectual and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily functioning. Different types of dementia exist, depending on the cause.

Causes

Dementia has many causes. It's not always caused by the same disease.

Progressive dementia : These are dementias that get worse with time. There are several types of progressive dementia.

Alzheimer's disease :This is the most common among the progressive dementias and usually occurs in in people aged 65 and older. However early-onset forms of the disease can occur, usually as the result of a defective gene. It is caused by destruction of brain cells through formation of plaques (clumps of a normally harmless protein called beta-amyloid) and tangles (fibrous tangles made up of an abnormal protein called tau protein). Alzheimer's disease usually progresses slowly, over seven to 10 years, causing a gradual decline in cognitive abilities including memory, and language, judgment, behavior and abstract thinking and ultimately leading to sever disability including movement disorders.

Lewy body dementia :In this disorder the brain cells are destroyed by abnormal clumps of protein called Lewy bodies. The symptoms are predominantly fluctuations between confusion and clear thinking (lucidity), visual hallucinations and tremor and rigidity. Other symptoms may be similar to Alzheimer's disease. People with this disorder will often have acting out dreams, including thrashing or kicking during sleep.

Vascular dementia :In general, vascular dementia is more common with age. It is a result of damage to the brain caused by "mini stokes" (lacunar infarcts) that destroy small parts of the brain. It occurs due to interference with blood supply to the brain. The symptoms may be similar to Alzheimer or Lewy body dementia but occur suddenly and progress in a "step ladder" pattern, with sudden onset of a group of symptoms, a period (sometimes months) with no worsening, and then sudden onset of another group of symptoms with worsening of the condition. People with high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, or previous strokes or heart attacks are at risk of developing this disorder.

Frontotemporal dementia : This disorder is caused by damage to the brain cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain associated with personality, behavior and language. Symptoms of frontotemporal dementia — include socially inappropriate behaviors, loss of mental flexibility, language problems and difficulty with thinking and concentration It usually occurs between the ages of 40 and 65.

Phobias

Fear is a very normal emotion, but it is also an essential emotion. To be totally without fear is to be in serious danger. Fear is an essential defense mechanism.

A phobia is an unreasonable and overwhelming fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger, causes intense physical and psychological distress, and affects the ability to function normally at work or in social settings.

genetics and traumatic experiences appear to influence the development of phobias. Phobias are linked to the amygdala, almond shaped areas in the brain that trigger secretion of hormones that affect fear and aggression

Headache

Primary Headaches

A primary headache is caused by dysfunction or overactivity of pain-sensitive features in your head.

Chemical activity in your brain, the nerves or blood vessels of your head outside your skull, or muscles of your head and neck — or some combination of these factors — may play a role in primary headaches.

MIGRAINE

Migraines are chronic headaches that last for hours or even days which can completely disable a person. Some migraines are preceded or accompanied by symptoms or signs (auras), such as giddiness, often nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound, flashes of light, blind spots or tingling in the arm or leg. Not all migraines are the same. Most people experience migraines without auras.

ClusterHeadache

Cluster headaches, on the other hand, begin quickly and are one-sided, short-lived, excruciatingly painful headaches. They can recur frequently for several weeks and then subside, but another bout may develop some months, or up to a year, later. Sleep is often disrupted, with the headache causing you to wake up at the same time each night. The eye on the side of the headache often becomes inflamed and watery and you might have a blocked nose on the affected side.