Daniel Amen, MD: the Impact of Brain Imaging on Psychiatry and Treatment for Improving Brain Health and Function Interview by Karen Burnett
CONVERSATIONS Daniel Amen, MD: The Impact of Brain Imaging on Psychiatry and Treatment for Improving Brain Health and Function Interview by Karen Burnett Daniel G. Amen, MD is regarded as one of the world’s foremost so I had spent years looking at people’s body parts. And when I experts on applying brain-imaging science to clinical psychiatric prac- decided to be a psychiatrist, I kept agitating my professors, like, tice. He is a board certified child and adult psychiatrist and the medi- “Why aren’t we looking at the brain? I mean, obviously, the cal director of Amen Clinics, Inc. in Newport Beach and San Francisco, brain is the organ of psychiatric problems. Shouldn’t we be California, Bellevue, Washington, and Reston, Virginia. looking?” And they kept telling me not yet, not ready. When I Dr. Amen is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric first started looking in 1988 using a technology, called quantita- Association (the highest award given to members) and an Assistant tive EEG [electroencephalography], I was so excited because I Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University could get more information on my patients’ brain function. I of California, Irvine School of Medicine. went to my first lecture on brain SPECT [single-photon emission He is the author of 49 professional articles, 5 book chapters, includ- computed tomography] imaging in 1991 and it changed every- ing the co-author of the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry’s thing I did. I could become better at diagnosing my patients chapter on Functional Imaging in Clinical Practice, and over 30 books because I had more information.
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