Having served as the director of inpatient psychiatry at VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha is currently a psychiatrist with Gateway Homes, where he provides care to people living with chronic mental disabilities. An active member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha has extensive knowledge of recovery pathways for patients with substance abuse issues and has a strong interest in the field.
As defined by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, addiction is both a mental illness and an intricate brain disorder that involves a chronic imbalance in motivation, memory, reward, and related brain circuitry. Over the past few decades researchers have found that an addict's environment matters. To test this theory, one classic study provided rats kept in cages with a pair of options: to drink from a regular bottle of water or from a bottle of morphine-water. During the course of the study, out of the 10 rats, 9 selected the morphine-water compulsively and to the point of death. However, Dr. Bruce K. Alexander discovered a flaw in this study in the early 1980s and chose to conduct his own experiment. Instead of keeping the rats alone in cages, Dr. Alexander constructed an enriched environment known as Rat Park, which included access to games, toys, socialization, and sex. The result was that a majority of the rats did not partake in drinking the morphine-water. Even those that did drink morphine-water imbibed in much smaller amounts than the rats in the earlier study. With morphine-water readily available, they did not display addictive forms of behavior. Dr. Alexander's study ultimately led to the conclusion that one's social environment can have a major impact in determining the form and scope of addictive behavior.
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AuthorSince 2006, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha has worked for Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, as a forensic psychiatrist and attending physician for the men’s long-term forensic unit. Archives
January 2020
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