In the world of medicine, the success of a drug is often measured by its ability to target and treat specific biological causes of disease. Yet in the realm of psychopharmacology, this approach has proven frustratingly inadequate. Psychiatric disorders, unlike physical ailments, are often opaque, multifaceted, and resistant to the “silver bullet” solutions that have transformed other areas of medicine. This has led to the development of a wide array of psychiatric drugs that often produce inconsistent results.
In a new paper, Alfonso Troisi, a professor at the University of Rome, argues that the root of this problem lies in the medical model itself. He believes that an evolutionary approach to psychiatry—one that prioritizes behavior and functional capacities over symptom-based diagnoses—could revolutionize the field.
Troisi acknowledges the validity of criticisms aimed at psychopharmacology, pointing out that psychiatry operates within a framework that tries to mimic traditional medicine, leading to inconsistent and often unsatisfactory results. He suggests that drug development for psychological disorders often relies more on fortuitous discoveries and guesswork than on a solid scientific foundation.
“In psychiatry,” Troisi explains, “the traditional pathway for drug development often begins with a serendipitous clinical observation of efficacy, followed by intensive study of the drug’s actions. As a result, new drugs mimic existing ones, with no substantial novelty in terms of mechanism of action.”
By advocating for an evolutionary framework that prioritizes behavior and functional capacities over symptom-based diagnoses, Troisi aligns with the critical stance that current psychiatric methods often fail to capture the complexity of mental health issues. While Troisi’s evolutionary perspective provides a fresh lens, critical scholars might argue that it still risks oversimplifying the social, cultural, and political factors that contribute to mental health issues.
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The error is thinking that computer brained academics can find a solution to a problem that isn’t in their material or psychological reality at all, but someone else’s. Naturally the solution would then be external, when the root of the problem is within consciousness itself, therefore never will the two ever meet. Having cured my own psychosis and trauma through patient observation, I see that I never needed a solution at all. The problem itself is the solution, because our own understanding the problem, which is painful and traumatised and confused elements of conscious existence, is the only solution. It leads to understanding of the actual, and that understanding resolves the problem. So it is not a solution at all. It is clarity of seeing, a clarity that is natural to all life forms except humans who have other humans outside of their heads and consciousness trying to control their heads and consciousness, which is a primitive absurdity today.
So understanding is the only solution, only it is not a solution at all. It is the product of unprejudiced perception of what actually is, which is what all animals and young children, who are healthy, take for granted. We forget this unprejudice awareness for socially conditioned thinking within, and socially conditioned psuedo-experts without. And everything you psuedo-experts and academics talk about is mere speculation on something you cannot touch, because the only place the primary phenomena in question is known to exist is in my own consciousness. You could plunge into understanding your self through meditation, but that has nthing whatsoever to do with the problem you are trying to work on which is other people’s suffering, which is actually just more of this social violence that characterzes the whole field of mental health and psychiatry.
Of course, you could become real human beings instead and listen to me and others like me say this, explain the nature and character of the psychological suffering, and explain exactly what my actual practical problems are in trying staying with and observe and understand and thereby resolving my troubles, and you will discover that we are traumatised, damaged, and cannot even endure the violence of ordinary social existence, so to try and confont all the historical trauma caused by this violent and loveless social existence on top of the manifest impossibility of living this ordinary life is just too much to ask any human being. Then you will understand what any real, unspoiled, natural human beings have always understood – that we ALL need understanding, because out of that comes compassion, intelligent action, which in the case of the psychological suffering within society you call ‘mental health’, would be to listen to, understand and support me by helping me find a safe place or supportive circumstance to observe, understand and go through these traumatic mental, emotional and non-ordinary movements within consciousness and therethrough go beyond it. I have gone beyond all this level of stuff and confront the march more insane society beyond it which is now perceived directly, without prejudice. In this process I learn what we could all easily learn – profound truths that indict not just the whole of psychiatry but the whole of a social historical process that has destroyed humanity and the whole entire system of life called Mother Nature and the Earth.
But instead of this possibility you lot get excited by yet another new brand of experts intent on working only on the behavioural and social qualities of the sufferer as if that is ever, ever going to lead to real healing of the problem. It again just makes us problem people more perfectly adjusted to the dysfunctional and destructive social system that destroys us. And you call this ‘treatment’. It’s the self-regulation of society through the negation and processing of troublesome individuals, not the helping through understanding and caring about the troubled individuals destroyed by this even more troubling society that conditions you into a state of absolute blindness and obsequous acceptance of every form of domination, violence and vampiricism that dominates and destroys the whole social process today. Wake up and smell the coffee. Black coffee, black oil, black milk of a deathly white society.
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