Scientific Sessions
Depression and anxiety are among the most common mental disorders in the world, impacting mood, behavior, and functioning in daily life.
How it affects mental health:
If not treated, they have the ability to interfere with work, relationships, and lead to long-term physical illness. Early treatment and diagnosis improve recovery.
Areas of Focus:
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Advances in antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications
• Behavioral activation strategies
• Mindfulness-based treatments
• Prevention of relapse in the long term
PTSD arises after exposure to trauma, such as war, abuse, or catastrophe. It affects control of emotion and memory.
How it affects mental health:
PTSD causes hyperarousal, flashbacks, and avoidance, with resulting impairment of everyday functioning. Prompt treatment prevents long-term mental illness.
Areas of Focus:
• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
• Trauma-informed care
• Exposure techniques in therapy
• Medications to treat PTSD
• Military and first responders PTSD
Mental disorders begin in late adolescence and are shaped by peer, hormonal, and school stress.
How it affects mental well-being:
Early identification supports lifelong wellness. Without intervention, the consequences are school dropping out, use of drugs and alcohol, or suicide risk.
Areas of Focus:
• Screening for mental health in the schools
• Peer pressure resistance and bullying
• Social-emotional education designs
• Therapeutic models for parent-child interventions
• Epidemics of teenage depression and anxiety
Workplace burnout, stress, and lack of work-life balance greatly contribute to adult mental illness.
How it affects mental health:
Severe stress over a long period influences productivity, motivation, and retention of employees. Workplace mental health initiatives lead to improved well-being.
Areas of Focus:
• Detection and recovery from burnout
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs)
• Organizational policies on mental wellness
• Remote work and isolation issues
• Increasing resilience among staff
Addiction and mental illness are often co-exist, requiring coordinated treatment modalities for dual diagnosis.
How it affects mental health:
Ignoring one aspect worsens the other. Cooperative treatment facilitates recovery success and relapse rate decrease.
Areas of Focus:
• Integrated treatment models
• Abstinence vs. harm reduction
• Role of peer support groups
• Neurobiology of addictions
• Complexity of dual diagnosis
Women have certain mental health issues involving hormonal fluctuations, pregnancy, and social stressors.
How it affects mental health:
Untreated conditions like postpartum depression or perimenopause anxiety can deteriorate relationships and quality of life.
Areas of Focus:
• Postpartum and perinatal disorders
• Domestic violence and trauma effects
• Menstrual-related mood disorders
• Mental health and reproductive health
• Gender-sensitive care modalities
Older adults are exposed to loneliness, cognitive impairment, and loss, putting them at risk for mental illness.
How it affects mental health:
Mental health in aging affects quality of life, physical health, and independence. Delayed treatment results in dementia and depression.
Areas of Focus:
• Dementia and Alzheimer's care
• Aging depression and anxiety
• End-of-life psychological care
• Social support for aging populations
• Cognitive stimulation therapies
Mental health inequities exist between nations and communities and often affect the most vulnerable one.
How it affects mental health:
Limited access worsens conditions and increases mortality. Closing the gap improves public health outcomes.
Areas of Focus:
• Global mental health policy reform
• Low-resource community-based treatment
• Cross-cultural psychiatry
• Equity-based interventions
• Mental health financing policy
Suicide is a preventable death with early detection and timely intervention.
How it affects mental health:
Mental illness, trauma, and hopelessness drive suicide risk. Intervention programs avoid death and reduce recurrence.
Areas of Focus:
• Early warning signs and risk assessment
• Postvention support and care
• Suicide among youth and older adults
• Evidence-based prevention programs
Digital technologies like apps, teletherapy, and AI are transforming the provision of mental health care.
How it affects mental health:
Technology breaks down barriers to access, offering timely treatment. However, data security and customization are concerns.
Areas of Focus:
• Mobile mental health apps
• Telepsychiatry and virtual therapy
• AI and chatbots for mental health
• Monitoring and diagnosis in digital
• Ethical challenges in digital health
Mindfulness exercises and the development of long-term resilience enhance self-regulation and mental acuity.
How it impacts mental health:
They alleviate stress, enhance focus, and reduce anxiety and depression in general.
Areas of Focus:
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
• Guided meditation skills
• Breathing and body awareness
• Neurobiological effects of meditation
• Techniques for developing resilience
Mental health policies must promote rights, dignity, and treatment access.
How it affects mental health:
When people’s rights are not respected and there are no strong laws to protect them, they are less likely to ask for help. This also keeps the shame and negative thinking going.
Areas of Focus:
• Mental health legal frameworks
• Institutionalized patients' rights
• Autonomy and consent in care
• Community reintegration policy
• Advocacy and governance reforms
Diseases like anorexia and bulimia are a result of body image distortion and social pressure.
How it affects mental health:
They affect body and emotional health, leading to long-term complications if left untreated.
Areas of Focus:
• Early intervention in adolescents
• Cognitive and eating therapy
• Body positivity training
• Media and cultural role
• Family-based models of treatment
Sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea are an effect and cause of mental illness.
How it affects mental health:
Sleep disorders at the chronic level cause increased risk of depression, anxiety, and memory loss.
Areas of Focus:
• Sleep hygiene education is needed
• Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia
• Correlation between sleep and mood disorders
• Medications and behavior therapies
• Management of circadian rhythm disorders
Neurodiverse patients (autism, ADHD, dyslexia) can have similar mental health requirements.
How it affects mental well-being:
Social isolation and social misperception heighten self-esteem and anxiety. Inclusive care is required.
Areas of Focus:
• autism spectrum disorder: mental well-being
• ADHD: anxiety management
• Emotional and sensory regulation
• Inclusive work culture and learning
• Parent and caregiver support
Neurodegenerative diseases are a condition of progressive breakdown of the brain and nerves, affecting the whole nervous system and leading to poor cognitive and motor functions. Prolonged stress can significantly worsen or even be a factor of onset for this disease.
How stress affects it :
Inflammation caused by stress harms the mechanism of the brain and slowly degrades cells leading to a significant risk of memory loss. Long-term stress can speed up the already existing disease by changing hormone levels and excessive segregation of cortisol in our bodies.
Conditions:
✔️ Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
✔️ Parkinson’s disease and PD-related disorders
✔️ Prion disease
✔️ Motor neurone diseases
✔️ Huntington’s disease
✔️ Spinocerebellar ataxia
✔️ Spinal muscular atrophy
Neurological Disorders lead to Disrupted functioning of the Brain, spinal cord, and nerves hence, damaging the whole nervous system and resulting in progressively degrading cognitive and motor abilities. When blood flow to the brain is interrupted or not adequate our body responds with a stroke, which leads to poor neurological functions and even complete brain damage.
How stroke affects Neurological Disorders :
– Our brain commands various functions of our body and after brain damage, these functions are interrupted or stopped.
– Already existing neurological disorders can trigger several functions of our body leading to stroke and other complications.
Conditions –
- Acute Spinal Cord Injury
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Cerebral Aneurysm
- Epilepsy and Seizures
- Muscular Dystrophy
- Ischemic Stroke
- Thrombotic Stroke
- Embolic Stroke
- Hemorrhagic Stroke
- Intracerebral Stroke
- Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA)
- Subarachnoid Stroke
Types of Strokes:
– Ischemic stroke occurs when the blood flow passage to the brain is damaged or interrupted.
– Hemorrhagic Stroke is caused by excessive bleeding within the brain.
Clinical Neurophysiology is the study, diagnosis, clinical trials, and evaluation of functions of the brain, nerves, and spinal cord. Stroke leads to damaged blood flow passage to the brain can influence the evaluation.
How stroke affects Clinical Neurophysiology:
- Stroke can damage or disrupt several brain functions and hence affect the results of clinical trials or diagnosis.
- Stroke can progressively damage the nervous system and affect nerve conduction studies.
Types of Strokes:
✔️ Ischemic stroke
✔️ Hemorrhagic stroke
✔️ Transient ischemic attack (TIA)
✔️ Thrombotic Stroke
✔️ Embolic Stroke
✔️ Intracerebral Stroke
✔️ Subarachnoid Stroke
Neuropsychology studies evaluate the electrical functions of the brain toward behavior and cognition. Addiction is the harmful process of misusing a drug despite fatal outcomes. Neuropsychology explores how substance abuse affects the functioning of the brain.
How addiction is studied in Neuropsychology:
- Substance abuse interferes with the brain’s natural state and disrupts functions involved in reward, motivation, and decision-making.
- Dependency on a harmful substance also degrades cognitive abilities and leads to impaired judgment.
- Neuropsychology also studies decision-making, attention span, and memory loss due to substance abuse.
Key Concepts :
✔️ Reward system
✔️ Impulse control
✔️ Neuroplasticity
✔️ Behavioral
✔️ Treatment innovations
Amongst the Neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are the most common, they lead to progressive breakdown of the brain, nerves, and spinal cord leading to a deteriorating nervous system and poor cognitive and motor abilities.
- Alzheimer’s Disease:
– Poor cognitive functions result in memory loss, less attention span, and imbalanced reasoning.
– Amyloid plaques and tau tangles progressively build up in the brain leading to lost signal between neuron and brain commands.
– Diagnosis is done through cognitive tests and other methods depending on the complexity of the disease. - Parkinson’s Disease:
– Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive brain disorder that leads to the deterioration of the nervous system by damaging several nerve connections.
– It results in poor motor functions and symptoms like shaking unintended and uncontrollable movements, and difficulty with balance and coordination.
– Severe symptoms involve difficulty walking, talking, and chewing food.
The brain is the commanding part of our nervous system, with its complex underlying mechanisms and structure it performs various functions to optimize our needs.
Key Structures:
✔️ Cerebrum Lobes
✔️ Cerebellum
✔️ Brainstem
✔️ Limbic System
✔️ Basal Ganglia
Key Functions:
✔️ Cognitive Functions
✔️ Sensory Functions
✔️ Motor Functions
Both fields aim to highlight the functions of the brain, while Neuropharmacology focuses on the mechanism of drugs and their effect, Neorchemistry helps in understanding the internal process and complex connections in the brain and how it commands the whole nervous system.
Neuropharmacology :
– Interaction of Drugs with different components present inside the brain like ion channels and neurotransmitters.
– Studying the clinical trials and advancing the evaluation.
Therapeutic Drugs :
✔️ Antidepressants
✔️ Antipsychotics
✔️ Antiepileptics
✔️ Neuroprotective Agents
Neurochemistry :
– Studying the crucial chemicals – serotonin, dopamine, and other signals between neurons.
– Study the functioning of these chemical messengers.
– Explore and study the pathways these messengers travel through.
Brain injury is the harm or damage to the brain caused by various internal, external, or both factors. Such as trauma, stress, accidents, and stroke. Behavioural Neuroscience specializes in that injury or damage will affect the behavioral pattern of the person, in terms of cognition and motor functions.
Brain Injury :
– Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) refers to any physical trauma or concussion to the head, it also refers to severe situations like Coma.
– Acquired Brain Injury – (ABI) refers to internal damage to the brain due to stroke, stress, trauma, or infection.
The objective of Behavioural Neuroscience:
– It involves the evaluation of specific brain functions and areas
– It includes clinical trials and other methods that prove how damage to any part of the brain will lead to significant behavioral changes.
– Researchers also explore treatments and other therapies to help reverse and improve these behavioral changes.
Cognitive Neuroscience is the study of mental processes including underlying cognition processes. Psychology is the study of simple and complex behavior and mental functions. Combined the researchers in these fields understand how underlying cognition can affect the behavioral pattern.
Key Concepts:
✔️ Brain Structure
✔️ Neural Pathways
✔️ Neuroimaging methods
✔️ Cognitive functions – perception, attention, memory
Combined Study:
✔️ Behavioral Neuroscience
✔️ Clinical Application
Neuroplasticity
✔️ Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neurobiology is the study of the nervous system and all its components- the brain, the spinal cord, nerves, neurotransmitters, and chemical messengers. Neurobiology connects with behavior to understand the role of genetic makeup and environmental factors in influencing a person’s behavioral pattern.
It studies how the mechanism of the nervous system affects our decision-making process, thoughts, opinions, and actions.
Key Concepts:
✔️ Neurons and Synapses
✔️ Neural Circuits
✔️ Brain Regions
✔️ Hormones
✔️ Neurotransmitters
Related Disorders:
✔️ Mood disorders
✔️ Neurodevelopmental Disorders
✔️ Neurodegenerative Diseases