May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Depression and anxiety are gripping adolescents and there is no easy pill to swallow to eradicate this from their lives. Someone cannot just simply “cheer up” or “snap out of it” to solve the problem. Twenty percent of youth between 13-18 live with a mental health condition and that number seems to continue to grow each year. Jackie Sheppard, who has over 50 years of study and research in this area of science and medicine, discusses the connection between the gut and the brain. Issues start in the gut, which affects the brain, and the body affects the mind, will, and emotion of a person. Could the solution to overcoming mental illness be more than just taking medication? Could it be found in replacing the things we’ve deprived from our bodies?
