From Vox: “Despite having more access to medication in the US than ever, over 50,000 Americans died by suicide last year — the highest number ever recorded. The US Surgeon General describes mental health as ‘the defining public health crisis of our time,’ but we’re [sic] barely any closer to understanding the neuroscience of mental health than we were 50 years ago.
Despite the popular framing of mental illnesses as being fundamentally caused by electrochemical imbalances in the brain, a pile of evidence decades in the making suggests the truth is much more complicated. It’s the biggest open secret in neuroscience — psychiatric medications often don’t work.
. . . It could be that neuroscience simply hasn’t had enough time to develop truly effective mental health therapies for most conditions.
. . . But it’s also possible that some of the best mental health care lies outside Western psychiatry altogether.”
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