The power of psychiatry to shape our sense of self

The belief that mental illness will be shown to be caused by the brain dominates psychiatric thinking. Of course brain abnormalities can cause organic mental illness, such as dementia and delirium. But most mental illness has not been shown to be caused by brain abnormalities. Research has failed to identify such definite biomarkers of functional mental illness. Biomedical psychiatry is more like a faith that people are expected to believe than a proven scientific practice.

Having such a basis for practice does not seem to matter, as biomedical approaches dominate mental health services. Although psychosocial interventions are used, medication plays a key role in treatment. People are encouraged to believe that medication is correcting a brain abnormality that has caused their mental health problems.

The biomedical hypothesis has obvious attractions, even if it seems to oversimplify. Understanding the reasons for mental health problems are generally complex and in a sense unprovable. Being able to latch onto a physical, more mechanical, explanation may seem to offer more certainty. But such mechanistic thinking fails to provide a complete characterisation of human beings and life in general. Organisms are self-organising and self-reproducing systems unlike inanimate objects. The brain is only part of a person, who needs to be understood as a whole.

Believing the hope that mental illness can be fixed in the brain may, therefore, alter our understanding of ourselves. If we are no more than the operation of our brains, then our subjective sense of meaning is reduced. People deserve more from psychiatry than to be treated as objects.