Why this research document was prepared
This research work is designed to help you survive the 21st century and beyond by understanding how your mind works, how it affects your behaviour and the kind of events you will experience or other people will experience from you in your environment based on beliefs generated from the side of the brain applied the most.
It is also designed so that you — as a responsible, loving and independent person — can implement techniques to help avoid falling into the trap of experiencing extreme one-side brain functions leading to what psychologists call mental illness.
This is especially true in today's climate given the rapid pace of change in our predominantly rational society, the high population levels and ways people cope, limited resources to support human endeavours and the pressure to survive is increasing, and how R-wing governments in the world want to reduce funding to mental health research and treatment despite the growing numbers of people suffering from the disease.
Understanding mental illness in the 21st century
Although this research work was prepared to assist anyone with a general interest in the human brain, we have given a particular emphasis on the problem of mental illness.
Mental illness is an insidious disease of the mind affecting literally tens of millions of people around the world. In Australia alone, with a population of around 18 million, it is claimed that approximately 20 per cent of the Australian population are or will suffer some form of mental illness.
In the United States, the estimated number of people who meet the latest criteria for mental illness is now 44 million. (1)
In the western world, mental illness is ranked as the third most common medical disorder after coronary heart disease and cancer and, together with stress-related disorders, is fast becoming the number one issue of concern for all medical practitioners in the 21st century and beyond unless something is done now.
According to the 1986 edition of Maxcy-Rosenau Public Health and Preventive Medicine on page 1344, it states that:
'A rising pandemic of chronic disease - a large proportion of which is chronic mental disorder and impairment - is producing a major crisis in all public health work.'
Reporter Leah De Forest commented that in one particular form of mental illness known as depression, the disease has become an "epidemic":
'....We are seeing an enormous surge in this disease of the mind, with all its wretchedness, and it is being called an epidemic. The World Health Organisation has estimated that by 2020, depression will be as big a burden on world health as heart disease. In Australia, it is the fourth most common ailment that doctors encounter.' (2)
What are governments doing about the social problem?
As of 2005 in Australia, not much.
Keith Wilson, chairman of the Mental Health Council of Australia, tried desperately to convince Australian Health Minister Mr Tony Abbott of why the government should do more to help people affected by mental illness. While speaking at a conference attended by Mr Abbott, he spoke frankly about his son's affliction with schizophrenia. He said he wanted to find help for his son at a time when his son had turned increasingly violent, attacking his brother and damaging property:
'For 20 of those we found it impossible to find and access appropriate care and intervention for him. I was angry about the system's failings. I was really angry and my anger has never abated, that's what drives my advocacy.
'The appalling state of mental health services is a national crisis and demands a national response....Bring us in from the cold, help us to become real participants in Australian society, don't leave us as the lepers of the 21st century, untouchable, untouched.
'Minister, we look to you and your cabinet colleagues, and especially the Prime Minister, to really listen to the thousands of voices in this report [titled Not for Service]. I know, minister, that you're a man who takes a high moral position as a Christian believer...this situation is actually immoral. We have an immoral disregard for the lives of millions of Australians stricken through no fault of their own and stigmatised and left out.' (Price, Matt. Our mentally ill can no longer be ignored: The Weekend Australian. 22-23 October 2005, p.20.)
On hearing this, Mr Abbott argued the only thing he could do was wait for the state governments to relinquish their powers to the Commonwealth. Until then, his hands are tied as we were told.
In the meantime Mr Abbott could not find a couple of hundred thousand dollars to fund an important internet site for depression suffers until eventually he was thoroughly embarressed on radio by influential broadcaster Alan Jones. As Mr Jones put it to the Health Minister:
'You're fiddling and arguing over a couple of hundred thousand dollars. I wish the same kind of scrutiny applied to the hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, Tony, that goes everywhere else. I think it's an absolute disgrace...there is more to life, Tony, than industrial relations legislation.' (Price, Matt. Our mentally ill can no longer be ignored: The Weekend Australian. 22-23 October 2005, p.20.)
Within a week, Mr Abbott eventually conceded the web site should be funded and he may contemplate a possible takeover of the health sector to solve some major problems. And Prime Minister John Howard was stirred into action to sit down with state premiers to discuss the problem.
But only if the fundamental causes for mental health are properly acknowledged and solved. And that means a thorough understanding of what it means to be mentally ill and what is really happening in the brain to create it. (3)
What do we know about mental illness?
Before this 1986 research study was conducted, not a great deal other than a few common trends.
For example, although mental illness has no barrier to age, race, culture or other social classes, it does tend to peak in the adolescence age (around the age of 14 according to the 1941 study in the United States by the Baltimore's Eastern Health District (4)), and in the old-age bracket (the incidence of mental illness rapidly increases after the retirement age of 65 according to a study of people in a mental hospital in Syracuse in 1952 (5)).
However, one thing is definitely clear - the problem is increasing in numbers and the authorities are looking for answers.
Among the patterns emerging include the nature of modern society in the early 21st century and what it means to live in a rational world run by humans, the rapid pace of change we see in the Western world and the expectations generally placed on people to adapt to this change, the type of foods we produce, the way people's brains develop through life and how we think and solve problems, the focus on money, and the way we show our social responsibility for our fellow human beings.
All these patterns must be understood before we can properly tackle the issue of how the brain works.
Until then, more must be done to understand why and how mental illness can and do arise in human beings.
The challenge to find an answer
As the crisis starts to hit hard on our modern society, there is mounting pressure on the authorities to find ways of tackling the problem, from understanding the reasons and causes behind this disease, to ways of preventing it. We need to tackle this problem now because the authorities are realising how the disease is somehow closely linked with many other important social problems of modern society, including chronic gambling and days off work due to stress, to more serious issues such as youth suicide (especially for young males) and crime.
So how do we explain mental illness? Can we solve the problem? And what can individuals and society do to stop it from spreading to normal healthy people? Is it a problem of genetics or the environment?
Why this research document was prepared
This study has now come full circle and for the first time something interesting has emerged from our work.
At first we tried to look at mental illness in terms of the common behaviours experienced by people afflicted by this disease. Then we tried to understand what could be happening in the brain to cause these problems in a specific way. Then we discovered something interesting. It concerns the behaviours of the so-called "normal" person we see today. In fact, we have noticed how the average person would mimick "unnormal" behaviours of mentally-ill patients in a subtle way.
So we had to digress from standard mental illness research by taking on a more holistic and complete look at general human behaviour in the life of an apparent "normal" person.
This is when we started to learn something about the human brain, how it works, the limits to how far the brain can perform, and the way your body and environment influences your thinking.
What we are realising is that we are all living in an "imbalanced" life described in simple terms in the present time as L-brain, or the rational side of thinking and behaving. We don't realise it as being "imbalanced" because of how socially reliant we are on others for guidance and acceptance of supposedly appropriate rational behaviours we generate and how our L-brain side is quick to mimic other people's behaviours without question as if we think they are normal.
But there is something about the R-brain that some people follow in life (especially in religious, art and certain Asian cultures) which helps us to reveal this imbalance in modern society so acutely and with much greater meaning than ever before.
And with this imbalance comes a better understanding of how mental illness is likely to occur, the likely specific areas of the brain that are causing the problem, and what we should be doing to minimise this problem in future, thereby closing the circle of research and so hopefully advancing our understanding of this problem.
Those insights are now published freely and exclusively on this web site for your own personal development. In fact, as governments decide on what to do, this web site will attempt to present an independent solution. It will be a solution which you can implement in your life as well as help you to understand the pitfalls of modern society so you can balance the problems in your own local environment.
A new world awaits you!
So let's begin by unlocking the secrets of your mind, the way you and the people around you behave, and the environment you live in.
Welcome to the beginning of a new way of thinking and behaving for the 21st century and beyond...
